The Elven Days

of Christmas

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A. K. Caggiano

Copyright © 2023 A. K. Caggiano

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever.

The Elven Days of Christmas is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental, and would, frankly, be pretty
damn wild, don’t you think?

Cover Art and Headers by Anna Mariya Georgieva

First printing 2023 by A. K. Caggiano

For more, please visit:

http://www.akcaggiano.com

ALSO BY A. K. CAGGIANO

Standalone Novels:

The Korinniad - An ancient Greek romcom

She’s All Thaumaturgy - A sword and sorcery romcom

The Association - A supernatural murder mystery

Vacancy
a contemporary (sub)urban fantasy trilogy:

Book One: The Weary Traveler

Book Two: The Wayward Deed

Book Three: The Willful Inheritor

Villains & Virtues

a fantasy romcom trilogy:

Book One: Throne in the Dark

Book Two: Summoned to the Wilds

Book Three: Eclipse of the Crown

Celeste’s Spinoff: Bound to Fall

Xander’s Spinoff: Bound and Tide (coming soon)

For More, Please Visit:

https://akcaggiano.com

For anyone with firstborn daughter energy

May you end up on the naughty or the nice list,

whichever you prefer

Contents
Author’s Note

1 - An Accountant and Too Few Fir Trees

2 - Two Cranky Siblings

3 - Three Funny Words

4 - Forewarned ‘Bout Birds

5 - Fuuuuuckiiiiing Aaaaannoooooyed

6 - At Least Six Times A-Lying

7 - Seven Seconds in The Transcendental Plane

8 - Already Ate Crow

9 - Seemingly Benign Bargains

10 - Too Much Attention

11 - Pipers Piping

12 - My True Elf Said To Me

13 - Well, The Song Doesn’t Go This High, So...

14 - And My Bow

15 - Much Thicker Than A Candy Cane

16 - Beating Out A Confession

17 - Dropped Messages And Other Unfortunate Miscommunications

18 - One Big Mama Bird

19 - Not So Immaculate Conception

20 - Kids Get Over Stuff Quickly, Right?

21 - Guilt, The Gift That Keeps On Giving

22 - Probably Not What They Meant By A-Milking

23 - Better Than Coal

24 - Baby, It’s Cold Outside

25 - Stocking Stuffer or Chimney Euphemism, Reader’s Choice

26 - Eat Your Heart Out, Hallmark

27 - Christmas Magic? More Like Mom’s Unpaid Labor

28 - How Lovely Are Your Branches

Epilogue - In A Neat Little Bow

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Author’s Note:
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Please be aware that this book contains discussions of longterm grief and
the loss of a parent, discussions of terminal illness and death, discussions of
infertility, and depictions of domestic exploitation amongst other
potentially triggering content.

For a full list, please visit the author’s website:

https://akcaggiano.com/trigger-warnings/

This book also contains explicit sexual content.

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Reading Note:

The Elven Days of Christmas takes place in the same universe as Vacancy
and The Association; and while I don’t think familiarity with these books
and their world is necessary at all to enjoy TEDoC, here are just a few
things you might find useful to know:

In my head, I call it The Vacant Universe because it all started with

Vacancy, and it makes me laugh to refer to something as “vacant” that I
purposefully dumped every magical being I can think of (except ghosts!)
into. The VU is essentially our contemporary world but secretly dotted with
neighborhoods, small towns, and a few, sprawling cities where magic exists
freely. A plethora of enchanted beings exist within, running their own
government and functioning just like us, more or less. These places are
surrounded by human-repelling barriers, though that doesn’t stop a number
of human protagonists from accidentally finding their way in and fucking
things up. One of these magic-only cities is called Bexley, which you’ll
only hear by name in this book.

Of all life in the UA, there are five types: fae beings, nether beings, the
charmed, the hexed, and humans. TEDoC is largely only concerned with
fae beings, creatures who originally came from a parallel realm and brought
magic to this world. The fae eventually spawned highly magical
descendants, amongst whom were the elves.

Ah, elves, there we go! Elves are extremely long lived and connected to the
earth, but there are essentially two kinds: hippie-dippy tree huggers and up-
tight bureaucrats. They function together to preserve enchanted forests, but
usually have very little interaction with humans. Until, of course, one of
those up-tight elves has a baby with a woefully unprepared human, and our
male lead is born.
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1
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An Accountant and Too Few Fir
Trees
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The world was a pall of white, snow blanketing the earth and hanging
thickly from branches bent under its weight. A second shroud of white
hung in dense clouds above, though the sun broke through to set the frosty
scape aglitter. Otherworldly in its beauty, the picturesque wonderland
stretched for as far as one could see in every direction, and, gods, was it
fucking cold.

Kol was only half made for traipsing through frozen forests, and he wasn’t
even really sure about the frozen part. He pulled his coat tighter around
hunched shoulders, which helped, and he grimaced harder, which didn’t
help, but he had convinced himself long ago that indulging in feeling bad
made one feel better, so he did it anyway. But Kol still shivered, his feet
went numb in his boots, and his back ached in a way that definitely wasn’t
supposed to happen until after turning thirty, and because he wasn’t feeling
at one with the world around him at all, he silently cursed his half-elven
ancestry for failing him so spectacularly yet again.

The human half of Kol was no better—in fact, it was probably much worse
—and as he tugged his skullcap down over ears that were pointed both too
much and not enough, he let his irritation shift from the magical to the
mundane. He’d inherited a human constitution and fortitude, both of which
were significantly weaker than an elf’s, yet all the responsibilities that came
with protecting the charmed way of life. The worst of both worlds, and into
neither did he fit.

You are simply different, he could hear his mother’s voice in his mind over
the whipping winds. He wasn’t meant for toiling directly with the earth
alongside those that were full-blooded—twelve broken bones in a hydra
incident, a nearly fatal bout of cockatrice pox, and a manager who had a
mental breakdown trying to keep him alive proved that—but he was an
exceptional counter. At least coordinating expeditions to enchanted
locations and turning scribbled elven field notes into legible reports were
much easier expectations to live up to, and they could be done from the
relative comfort and safety of an indoor seat behind a computer screen.
Usually.

Beneath Kol, a fehszar lumbered along, bothered by neither the temperature

nor the crossed blood of its rider. The charmed creature’s lanky legs and
coarse fur were made for harsh winters, and it took him toward Everroot
Grove on instinct—a good thing since only creatures who were born there
could find the way. Even if Kol had any idea where he was headed, he
couldn’t see past her antlers which was just as well surrounded by nothing
but white.

Enchanted trees liked liminal spaces, human-made borders included, so

though it often moved, Everroot Grove usually hovered at the farthest
northern tip of the region he managed for the Elven Perennial Agency. He
hadn’t cared to which sector he would be assigned once he was relegated to
an office job, but if he knew he’d be thrust so unceremoniously into the
field again, he might have fought a little harder for something tropical.

The fehszar trekked on, and Kol squeezed himself in tighter, damning the
job left undone that had landed him up to his ears in snow. Usually, he was
as meticulous as the administrative gnomes he worked alongside, double-
checking well before winter took a firm grasp on the earth to be sure there
were no anomalies in the ensorcelled thickets and spectral coppices of the
EPA’s Northeastern Planar Region, but Kol had been...off.

One would think removing extracurricular distraction would be

advantageous to one’s career, but the past three and a half seasons had
instead been an especially painful slog, and as a result, Kol’s work was
sloppy. Really, he should have been grateful this was his first critical
mistake, but an entire grove going unaccounted for was theoretically
calamitous—he didn’t exactly know since no one had ever screwed up so
badly. Not that it was his screwup, but when the groundwork was left to a
bunch of lazy, aimless, lackadaisical—

Kol grunted, and the fehszar snorted in response. He could hear his
mother’s voice in the back of his mind again, suggesting his thoughts about
his cousins were unkind. She wouldn’t use that word, kind, more likely
appropriate or befitting, but after twenty-eight years of translating elvish
colloquialisms, he knew what she would actually mean. It wasn’t the
responsibility of the sylvidai elves in the field to make sure everything was
accounted for anyway, it was his, but with the seasonal numbers due in just
over a fortnight and absolutely nothing turned in on Everroot Grove, they
were lucky all he could do was have unkind thoughts.

If only he were back in his apartment in Bexley, he’d be...well, he’d be

stuffed into his closet-turned-office with a cup of lukewarm coffee and a
tactus pothos he had to jolt back alive with a spell every three and a half
days because it didn’t have a window. But at least he’d be warmer.

The next breath Kol took was deep and biting, but with it came the
crispness of pine and the tickle of Magic. He craned his neck over one of
the fehszar’s massive antlers to see hazy mountain peaks in the distance
and thick spruces filling the valley ahead. Finally, he was getting close.

Kol was not as keenly skilled as his full-blooded, elven kin, neither the
sylvidai of the deep forests nor his mother’s more meticulous and
bureaucratic elucidai tribe, but Magic was far from lost on him. It may have
taken him twice as long to learn how to hasten a plant’s growth, but once he
could see the structure of the spells in his mind, the hard-won shapes
carved themselves into his brain permanently. Elves weren’t supposed to
need to be taught to communicate with animals—they could do that before
communicating with one another—so it was thought for twelve years that
Kol never would pick up the skill, but he set himself to studying the
unspoken language of head tilts and chuffs, and eventually, he found he
could speak without talking to most creatures, mind abuzz with their silent
dialect.

And then there was precision. Even the laziest sylvidai rarely spilled a cup
of tea or missed their target when they truly took aim, so for most of his
childhood, Kol was known as clumsy and helpless until he finally learned
to see the strands. All creatures descended from fae were meant to see them
when they focused hard enough, thin threads of magic woven betwixt the
planes of existence, and if followed, one could emulate perfection. They
weren’t as sharp for Kol nor as abundant, but after years of intensive study,
they appeared when needed.

Counting took precision too, but it was mostly human precision, he

thought, because he never had trouble with keeping track of things or
making sense of a mess. Unlike every magical pursuit which took him
twice the work for half the result, accounting and reports came to him as
naturally as waking up, and so the EPA put him to work in the way that
suited him and the association as a whole best.

The length of the fehszar’s legs made quick work of the snow drifts as they
descended into the forest, and when the trees’ variety was lost, Kol knew
they had found Everroot Grove. Alcyon spruces sprung up in every
direction, the gentle grey-green of their needles shadowed beneath a fleecy
blanket of snow on each limb, but the trees were unmistakable in how
distinguished they stood.

It was stronger there, the Magic, sweeping in on the next breeze like an
unexpected invitation, and another voice followed, one that wasn’t his
mothers, and it wasn’t the fehszar’s, and it wasn’t even his own.

Home.

Another freezing gust blew in right behind, and the strange spark in Kol’s
chest was replaced by the reminder that frostbite was a thing. Home was
the muffled sounds of a city, the blue light of a television, last night’s cold
pizza for breakfast, not whatever this frigid netherhole was, so he had most
definitely heard wrong.
The fehszar knelt so he could dismount because even with Kol’s height,
fehszar were the tallest things on four legs in these forests. His boots
crunched into the untrodden snow, gaze drifting over the orchard before
him, and in that moment, he didn’t believe the work was possible. Not for
the number—no, even things that multiplied or disappeared or illusioned
themselves were countable—but for the trees’ sheer presence. For how
many thousands of years had they grown? How many creatures had been
born in their boughs? How much magic had been harbored safely within
Everroot Grove?

There was a nudge at his elbow, and the fehszar’s massive snout covered
him with a hot swirling breath. “Right, I know, you’ve got a vacation to get
started too.”

She cocked her head, antlers that could scoop him up and catapult him right
over the mountains tilting along with her, and she told him silently that a
little break from her herd was vacation enough.

Kol pulled out his thaumatix from the inner pocket of his coat. “Sorry to
intrude on your alone time, I know how important that can be.” Kol knew
better than most, actually. Perhaps too well. Maybe he would see Benny
and Poffin when he got back to Bexley, but not if they insisted on going to
that gnome bar where the ceilings maxed out at five foot three.

Biting off one of his gloves, the frigid air numbed his fingertips as he
tapped around on the screen and got to work: count, photograph, catalog,
repeat. The fehszar followed behind, giving him someone to mumble to
when the rare mood struck, and after a few hours, he found one of the
cabins set up by the EPA. It was a single room with a small fireplace and
fluffy bedding, and it smelled of dried lavender and seejia buds that hung
from the ceiling—the work of sylvidai elves, no doubt, who of course
found the time to come out and refresh the cabin but not record the alcyon
spruce numbers. Runes were carved into the wall over the hearth and the
sink, a good replacement for plumbing and kindling. At least he’d be able
to brush his teeth and wouldn’t freeze to death for the few days it would
take to finish the work.
More counting and walking and cataloging took him through the day and
into the night until he retired to the cabin and fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next day, he covered a surprising amount of the grove with the help of
his fehszar escort, and time ticked by rapidly. Kol had been behind a screen
for so long, he’d forgotten what it was like to walk amongst the ancient and
enchanted, but nestled into the trees, the cold was less biting, the whiteness
less blinding, and something comforting and friendly fluttered just at the
edges of his vision as he worked.

That is, until he had to walk along the barrier at the grove’s outer edge.
Meant to keep humans away, the unseen boundary both urged him to leave
and attempted to tug him deeper in as if it didn’t know quite what to make
of a half-elf. He could fight it because he knew, though it made things no
less unpleasant.

But he would escape that bitter, disjointed feeling soon enough. He only
had another acre or so, and as soon as he figured out why there was a
splintered stump between the next two spruces, he could move on and...

“Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me.”

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2
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Two Cranky Siblings
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Winter came all at once to Hiberhaven, usually just after Halloween, and it
stuck around until May, but Piper never minded. The cold kept the tourists
away once the brilliance of autumn and the allure of the holidays were over,
a wet spring meant the waterfalls up in the mountains would be doubly
impressive, and falling snow always felt like magic. But first, Christmas.

The truck rattled down the highway, shocks, breaks, suspension, something
needed a fix, but the problem could be worried about in the new year.
Instead, Piper squeezed a smooth stone in her hand, tipped her head back,
and closed her eyes in the passenger seat, intending to appreciate the quiet
beneath the pickup’s rumble. There wouldn’t be much quiet going forward,
but for now—

“I think I tore something.”

One of Piper’s eyes popped open, setting itself on her brother. “I doubt that
very much.”

“You have no idea how hard it is chopping down a tree, Pippy, you’ve
never had to do it. It sucks.” Presley’s whining filled up the cab as he
rubbed at his shoulder, other hand on the wheel.

“Well, it’s not your rotator cuff if you can move it like that.”
He immediately went still and pursed his lips in thought. She was just
making things up, but when she put on the voice she learned from her
mother, the doctor voice, they’d been calling it since childhood, she was
convincing enough. Presley shook his head but released his arm. “And
there was all that hiking! You’re used to it, but it’s a lot flatter in
Brookhampton. I’m not doing anything else the rest of vacation, I hope you
know that.”

She chuckled—as if experience had ever led her to expect otherwise. “Well,
thank you for maiming yourself in the name of the MacLean Christmas
Tree. Dad will appreciate it, and so do I.” And mom too.

“Anything to make you guys happy.” He grinned, flashing her the crooked
smile he inherited from their father, one she hadn’t seen in a long time.

“Actually, it would really make me happy if you cooked dinner tonight.”

“Well, anything but that. Unless you want Sonny’s?”

Piper groaned at the thought of more greasy burgers and fries—their

father’s answer to everything. “I already prepped for lasagna,” she said,
closing her eyes again. Despite that she should have probably been
annoyed, the darkness behind her lids lit up with the forest once more, and
she smiled instead, turning over the smooth stone in her fingers.

Presley complained the entire time, but trudging through the snow and
picking out the perfect tree was still one of Piper’s favorite parts of
Christmas. It used to be a full-day affair for all four of them, starting with
breakfast at the Hiberhaven Diner, pancakes for everyone because they
needed the carbs their mother joked, and then they would head to the
national forest. Their father would try to distract Piper and Presley from
arguing over who would find it that year with promises of cookies that
devolved into threatening a call to Santa, and their mother would blaze the
trail that inevitably led them to The Tree.

For the last five years, it had only been Presley’s moaning and groaning
that filled up the frigid forest on their two-man trek for The Tree. Yes, there
were perfectly fine, pre-chopped and de-squirreled ones conveniently
located in the parking lot of Mr. Hoffman’s hardware store right in the heart
of Hiberhaven, but Piper didn’t want one of those. So she used up all her
goodwill with her little brother as soon as he arrived in town by insisting
she needed that last moment of peace and quiet in the woods before the rest
of their family showed up. It wasn’t a lie—she did mentally bottle up the
serenity of the forest to slowly decant as her sanity would unravel over the
next two weeks—but it was also only half the truth.

She just couldn’t tell Presley the real reason she needed to go out into the
forest to find The Tree was because of magic.

Of course, it wasn’t magic, not really, since Piper knew magic wasn’t a
thing. Knowing is funny like that, as one can be absolutely convinced and
yet be entirely incorrect, but even though Piper knew what she felt in the
forest wasn’t really magic, capital M or otherwise, being shown The Tree
still felt nothing short of magical.

The first year the two of them hiked out into the national forest on their
own, it had been a sound. She never could identify the bird, but Piper
followed the twittering—a song her brother professed to not hear—and
when it stopped, she was standing before the perfect pine. Another year, a
flicker of a sourceless light between branches beckoned her off the path,
and again that Christmas’s tree presented itself to her as if just waiting to be
chopped down. Regardless of what it was, signs or luck or just the
consequence of time, there was always a warmth that came with spotting
The Tree, and that warmth felt too much like her mother placing a hand on
her shoulder and whispering, “What do you think of that one, honey?” to
not seek it out every year.

This year, however, was particularly not-magical-but-sure-felt-like-it.

Presley had wandered with her for a bit but eventually dropped himself into
the snow, declaring she was impossible to please when she said no to the
fifth fir he pointed out. Despite that he picked up and put down heavy
things for fun, he griped about the weight of the axe and told her to call him
when she finally found whatever the hell she was looking for. Piper
continued on until there was a tingling along the back of her neck, and
there in the silence of the looming conifers and crispy snow, she waited
until a shock of crimson cut through the white.

The cardinal flitted from branch to branch, impossible to miss as Piper

followed after. Cold feet and fatigue forgotten, she hopped over logs and
sank into snowy mounds, but the bird gave her just enough time to catch up
before darting off again until it finally came to stillness on The Tree.

It’s perfect, the distant memory of her mother’s voice said, and even though
one of the needles pricked her finger painfully when she reached out to
touch it, Piper called for Presley and declared it had been found.

With The Tree tied up in the bed of the old pickup, Presley drove them
back, his duty to the MacLean family complete, and Piper’s about to begin
in earnest. But the pending exhaustion, complaints, and thanklessness
would be fine because Piper had convinced herself that little spark of not-
really-magic was all she needed.

Magic, however, had other ideas.

Down a dirt road on the outskirts of Hiberhaven, the family vacation cabin
that had become her permanent home years ago was a hulking yet inviting
place. Its log facade blended into the dense wood that surrounded it, and
the snow had melted off its high-pitched roof, a deep, mossy green. The
multicolored lights she’d strung up all over the porch were blinking over
her father’s figure as he stood under the eaves, Doc tucked up under an arm
and celebrating their return with a soulful little howl.

Warmth spread out in Piper’s chest as she spied the wreath hanging on the
front door. For the last five years, she’d laid the wreath out then pretended
to forget about it, and when her father inevitably declined to accompany
them on the tree hunt, she asked if he could hang it for her. The years when
he actually went through with it were always better.

But then a fist tightened in Piper’s stomach. They’d pulled in beside a truck
so big it made her hatchback look like a toy, and Uncle Russ was already
shouting as he climbed out of it.
“At least he’s only bringing one of them this year, right?” Presley
mumbled.

The truck’s other door flew open, and not one but three young boys piled
out.

“Actually, it looks like Russ is on Christmas duty for almost all his exes
this year.” Piper watched the three shove one another from the safety of her
seat then lifted her eyes back to her father. The smile he was giving Uncle
Russ shifted from perfunctory to genuine, and that warmth in her chest
grew just enough to convince her to drop the smooth stone she carried into
her bag and go out into the snow.

“Dad, Luke punched me!”

“I did not!”

“Is anybody bruised?”

“No!”

“Yeah huh!”

“Well, only little bitches bruise!”

“Noah, just punch him back. And don’t say ‘bitch’ in front of your cousin,
she probably doesn’t like it.”

Piper arrived at exactly the right moment to garner snotty sneers from all
three of Russ’s preteens. As chivalrous as her uncle likely thought he was,
making her the barrier to their new favorite swear word definitely shot her
all the way down to the bottom of the cousins-we-tolerate list.

“Make sure they don’t draw blood.” Uncle Russ elbowed the oldest of his
three just before they chased one another up the stairs and into the house.
Then he pulled Piper and Presley into a rib-shattering hug, the smell of Old
Spice and teriyaki jerky on his jacket filling up her senses.
After trading warm enough civilities, Presley took Russ to help with the
tree, and Piper and her father watched from the porch. “How’d it go?” he
asked, hesitation there as he watched Russ pull a knife from his pocket to
start sawing at the ties.

“Pretty good. Doctor Dog might need to take a look at Presley’s shoulder
though.”

The Scottish terrier in her father’s arms perked up at his name with a muted
yip. He was still looking rather dapper wearing the plaid sweater she’d
wrestled him into that morning.

“I’m sure he’ll prescribe lots of licking and a hefty dose of get over it.” Her
father smirked, eyeing Presley who looked to have no trouble as he hauled
the tree from the truck bed, but his amusement fell away just as quickly
into another far-off stare. The lines around his eyes as he squinted into the
brightness of the snow were a little deeper, and the patches of grey in his
hair had almost taken the auburn completely over.

“You should really come with us next year.”

He took to petting the dog to evade the invitation. “Deb’s whole side just
got dropped off.” He turned to the open front door and dropped his voice
low. “And she hasn’t dumped that idiot husband of hers yet.”

Piper sucked her teeth and grinned. “Why would she? Luis does every
single thing she asks, and he’s smoking hot.”

“Oh, come on, Pippy, don’t say things like that to me.” Her father’s nose
crinkled in exactly the way she expected, but if he was going to keep
declining to take part in Christmas merriment, the least he could do was
suffer the reminder she was an adult. “I just think it’s weird that you have
an uncle who’s younger than you.”

“Russ’s last wife and I went to high school together.”

“She was still older.”

A ruckus rose from beyond the open front door—someone was excited or
injured, it was hard to tell—and Piper’s eyes widened on the darkness
within, waiting. It would be mostly fine, she was almost certain, because it
was mostly fine every year, in the end, as long as she stuck to her schedule.
But before it could end, it had to begin, which meant her foot had to cross
the threshold.

All that Piper knew about magic was that it didn’t really exist, so she
certainly wasn’t aware that thresholds were as liminal as any other border,
including those that housed enchanted groves. Crossing such bounds
always meant change, though it could be as simple as making one’s
stomach feel funny, or as complex as having a curse laid upon one that
could only be broken by true love, which, really, were two profoundly
similar things when it came right down to it.

“Come on, everyone wants to say hi.” Her father gave her a gentle push
inside, and a flurry of commotion descended upon Piper like a flock of
seagulls on an abandoned bagel. Aunt Deb’s jubilant shouting filled the
foyer, her husband, son, and very pregnant daughter-in-law crowded
around, and there were tight hugs, slippery boots, and too many suitcases
strewn haphazardly about. Then the whirlwind of family was gone, and
Piper found herself standing alone with not one but two toddlers in her
arms.

One screamed and one laughed, the sounds indistinguishable but equally
ear shattering. Being the only childless woman left in the family too often
meant babysitting duty, for practice, someone would inevitably say and
make her ovaries twist up in silent rebellion. Piper was spouseless too,
which the MacLeans took even more offense to, the only difference being
that when they began in on those complaints, there wasn’t a temporary
husband to saddle her with, a thing she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved
about or not.

Rarely do characters know the genre of the book they’re in, and almost
never are they aware of the tropes. Piper MacLean was no exception to this
rule.

“Who wants a treat?”

Despite she’d used the voice normally reserved for the dog, Piper’s littlest
family members understood, and their shrieks turned cheerful. She made a
beeline around the stairs and into the living room where she’d filled a
massive jar with cookies the night before. There were only two ricotta
cookies left, and they weren’t as fluffy as her mom’s, but they’d do.

Piper politely abandoned the babies with the first family member she could
find just in time to watch the spruce be dragged into the room. She grit her
teeth as water sloshed out of the stand she’d set up that morning in
preparation, and needles rained down when the ties holding the branches
were cut, but even Piper was able to momentarily ignore the mess as the
boughs fell into place. An earthy smell filled up the room as it was steadied
before the picture window, the snowy forest behind. It really was The Tree.

A pop broke the silence, and Aunt Deb cackled as she held up a bottle of
wine. “Who wants a glass?”

Piper used the ensuing ruckus to slip away and gather supplies, scurrying
around the others to clean up the water and needles, and then returned to
the entryway to rearrange the suitcases. There was another puddle of
tracked-in snow that needed to be sopped up on hands and knees, and Piper
set to it until the front door opened and nearly cracked her in the head.

“Oh, honey, you don’t need to kneel, it’s not like I’m the queen.”

“Grams!” Piper popped back up to her feet and delicately wrapped her arms
around the elderly woman on the threshold. Behind her, two more aunts and
their daughter bustled in with more bags, one all bright greetings, and the
other complaining about their driver—they were not taking a ride-share
back to the airport, and Piper agreed to drive them herself while remaining
in the hug with her grandmother. That would be everyone, and that meant it
was time to start dinner.

Lasagna wasn’t quick, but the kitchen was tucked into a corner of the
house, and people only poked their heads in to check on how it was coming
every twenty or so minutes. The others caught up elsewhere, the kids ran
about and yelled, and at some point, Aunt Susan would order everyone into
the basement to bring up the decorations, all of which left Piper in the
relative quiet of bubbling pots and softly playing carols.

She gave the bolognese a last stir as she read over the recipe’s steps again.
It wasn’t the first time she made it alone, but she needed to be sure she
hadn’t screwed up the amounts as was too often the case. Running a finger
down the page and the added pencil marks for a double batch, faded but not
yet gone, she knew she should trace over them with permanent ink, but
then they wouldn’t really be her mother’s anymore.

Don’t be lazy, shred your own mozz!

She grinned at that note, remembering the year she used pre-shredded
cheese. Everyone else swore they couldn’t tell, but Piper never made that
mistake again.

“Almost done, sweetie? The troops are getting restless.”

“About to go in the oven,” she called back to her father who had appeared
silently in the doorway to the kitchen. “Try to hold off a mutiny, it’ll only
be an hour more.”

He lingered there a moment like he might say something else, but then he
just nodded and returned to the den.

She set to the assembly quicker, arranging noodles in the massive pans and
splattering sauce all over the counter when one cousin chased another into
the kitchen armed with wrapping paper tubes. The dog only tripped her
twice after that, and then Uncle Russ came in searching for snacks, the last
obstacle between her and the oven. With a timer set, there was only cleanup
left, but the dirty pots would still be waiting for her if she took a breather,
so she pulled on the extra pair of mud boots sitting by the sliding door and
sneaked outside.

In just her sweater, the evening air was exceptionally brisk, but stepping out
onto the small side deck off the kitchen was a reprieve from the heat of the
stove. The sun had already dipped behind the trees, and a halo of light rose
over the forest, painting the sky golden. Light filtered out from the kitchen
behind her, warm and yellow as it spread across the deck, the chatter of her
family and the music muffled behind the glass door. She wiped snow off
the railing to lean against it and took a deep breath of crisp winter air.

Piper was no stranger to sneaking moments of peace, though her brain

never really quieted. There weren’t going to be enough beds now that all of
Russ’s boys were there, and she needed to add a trip to the airport to her
planner for the twenty-sixth. She took another breath and tried to let
tranquility settle in, shaking away those thoughts. It didn’t really work, but
then a new thought layered itself atop the others: she was standing out on
the deck all alone.

“Hey, Piper, where are the keys?” Presley’s voice cut into the quiet, and the
sudden hollow feeling was swept away. He hung out the slider like he had
been frozen mid-action, ready to slingshot himself right back inside when
he got his answer.

“On the table by the front door.”

“No, I already looked—”

“Beside the bear statue and under your gloves, right next to the yellow
bowl that we put all the other keys in.”

“Oh, I didn’t check there. Thanks!” He yanked himself back inside just as a
black and red ball of fluff sprinted out between his legs. The terrier
bounded down the steps, plaid sweater catching the last of the light before
disappearing between the trees.

“Oops.” Presley’s face creased with apology. “You want me to...”

“No, it’s fine.” Piper waved him off then trudged down the stairs herself.
Doc never went far, and she was the only person who could get him to
come when she called anyway.

She hustled across the snowy side lawn to the dark edge of the wood. There
was no underbrush, so wading into the forest wasn’t difficult, but beneath
the trees, everything was grey-blue and dim. She followed the terrier’s
deepening tracks as she stumbled over an unseen tree root, but as luck and
plot would have it, his stubby legs couldn’t outmaneuver hers.

“There you are.” Piper snatched the dog by his long middle and hoisted him
up into her arms. “You can’t run off like that, you’re going to get yourself
eaten by a...moose?”
 image image
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3
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Three Funny Words
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“But what if someone wakes up? There are a lot of humans in that house.”

The fehszar tipped its antlered head.

“I know I have to,” Kol grumbled then huffed.

The fehszar huffed right back, a fine time to be mocking him, but he
probably deserved it. What kind of EPA employee loses a tree?

Kol was frazzled, a feeling both foreign and overwhelming, so he didn’t

sense any other presence in the wood nor did he hear approaching paws or
a chastising voice. Instead, he busied himself with pulling off a glove and
grabbing the nearest branch, muttering all the while about impossibilities
and how they really should stay that way. In his frustrated state, opening a
connection between himself and the forest took greater concentration, the
threads of magic knotted and frayed, but he could still find them as he
searched the root systems for something, anything, that might help.

The fehszar’s second huff broke through his focus, and he grunted back.
“What?”

She dipped her massive head, black eyes gleaming in exactly the way he
hoped they wouldn’t.

“Shit.”
Humans were bad with magic. Just awful, really. They had ridiculous
assumptions and ridiculouser inclinations, and when they came face-to-face
with the arcane arts, it was almost always a disaster. And there in front of
Kol stood a disaster waiting to happen in a sweater two sizes too big.

He’d seen her while peeking through the windows, trying to decipher how
he would rescue the defiled alcyon spruce from the clutches of an entire
gaggle of humans. She hurried around the immense house too quickly to
track, one of the sixteen humans he’d counted—and he had counted,
meticulously, twice. She posed a unique problem with her speed and size,
too stealthy and small to be properly tracked, but he didn’t expect her to
end up standing right in front of him out in the freezing forest. In the
house? Sure! But out here? This was supposed to be his domain.

Sort of.

“Moose,” she repeated, mouth falling open.

Kol glanced at the fehszar behind him. With antlers sprawling to either side
of her sleek head, long tapered legs that led to the snow, and coarse fur that
matched the whiteness on the ground, she was more like an elk than
anything but so large she looked prehistoric. “Not exactly.”

“Albino moose?” The young woman tightened her grip on the dog, its hind
end dangling, but otherwise, she barely moved, her feet still firmly planted
only about three feet away which was way too close. “And you’re...talking
to it?”

Kol groaned in the back of his throat. Fehszar were brilliant enough to
understand most speech, though it took an elf to parse out the other half of
a conversation with one, but plenty of humans talked to animals, so that
could be explained away. His hat was still pulled down over his ears, which
meant that maybe things were still salvageable until her eyes darted away
from the huge creature and to his outstretched arm.

Kol released the branch and stuffed his hand away, but the glow refused to
die off quickly enough, lighting up the darkness of his pocket. “You didn’t
see that,” he said, turning to her fully and squaring his shoulders.
Behind him, the fehszar huffed again but lacked all the intimidation a
creature her size should have had.

“I didn’t?” The woman’s voice was hollow, eyes rimmed with purple
circles but held wide open.

“No,” he said with a firmness.

Her face went ashen. “I slipped off the deck and hit my head, didn’t I?”

Kol arched a brow. He had no powers of suggestion like a vampire or siren,

yet this was an angle he hadn’t considered. Maybe there had been some
phruwebore in the wood, and he’d unknowingly set off spores into the air,
but her pupils didn’t have a delirious sheen to them, just that tired
sunkenness.

“And now I’m going to die of hypothermia out in the snow because no
one’s going to check on me, and the dog’s going to eat my face.” She
continued to not blink, looking past him and the fehszar into the forest. “I
had a feeling it was going to end like this. Better than the alternative, I
guess.”

Kol let the frown that creased his lips tick upward. She was amusing, at
least, even when she was slowly slipping into shock, and he may as well
use that to his advantage. “That’s right,” he said as he took a step closer,
boots crunching in the snow. The lights of the cabin shone behind her in the
deepening darkness beyond the trees. “You’re hallucinating the fehszar, and
you’re hallucinating the elf.”

“Hallucinating?” There was longing in that word like she wished it really
were true.

Kol closed the gap, only the squirming dog between them. He was at least a
foot taller but held her gaze, and when he nodded, she inadvertently
mimicked him. Was she really going to make this so easy? “Yes, you’re
hallucinating.”
The woman’s mouth went completely slack. Drowning in boots that came
up to her knees and a shapeless sweater covered in a garish pattern of
snowmen and candy canes, she was the very definition of mousy right up to
her messy knot of dull brown hair. As far as humans went, she was just
plain enough for this to work.

Elves were purported to have a certain charm that came with being fae, and
though Kol was only half imbued with whatever the truth of that ability
was, he knew humans were three times more gullible than the average
creature. And this human? She was practically begging to be charmed.
“Now, what you’re going to do is turn yourself around, go back into that
house like nothing happened out here, and then when everyone’s asleep,
you’re going to drag that tree you hacked within an inch of its life back out
to me.”

“I’m gonna...” She swallowed, and then she blinked. “Did you say elf?”

The word came crashing down on Kol like a heap of snow shaken off a
branch overhead. Maybe he had pushed his commands a little too hard, but
no one else ever complained. Snapped out of his attempted trance by the
accusation in her voice, his own cracked. “Uh, well, only half actually.”

“Half?” Eyes that were no longer pliable set on him. Still wide, their dull
brown sheen went sharp. She tipped her head with a slowness, gaze
traveling down to his boots. “Shouldn’t you be shorter then?”

Kol was short, for an elf. “By human standards, I’m significantly above
average.”

“So, is he, like, a giant?” She pursed her lips, and while Kol tried to parse
out what in the nether she meant, she gasped. “Oh, and this is a reindeer?”

The fehszar snorted, and Kol translated. “What the fuck are you talking
about?”

“You know, lives at the North Pole, makes a list, checks it twice,” she said,
clicking her tongue. “You’d think my elf hallucination would know Santa
Claus.”
Kol scoffed at how ridiculous things were suddenly going, though it
shouldn’t have been a surprise, not when a human was involved. “None of
that’s real, especially the idea that someone could live at the North Pole—
it’s full of frost dragons.”

“But you said you’re a Christmas elf.” She readjusted the dog in her arms,
tucking a hand under its hind end. “Though you’re the weirdest looking—”

“I’m an elucidai elf.” He pulled off his hat and pointed at his ears. “A being
descended from the fae of the Transcendental Plane, a millennia-old species
from a dimension beyond your comprehension. There’s no such thing as
Christmas elves, and frankly, I find the concept more than a little
degrading.”

Her face filled up with awe again all at once, and her mouth clamped shut.

Kol tugged his hat back on and grimaced, annoyed that she had gotten him
so angry, but there was no use in beating around the spruce. “Anyway, I’m
here for your tree.”

“My-my Christmas tree?”

“Yes. I need it, so hand it over.”

“Oh, no, you’re not getting that.” And then she turned away as if the
conversation hadn’t even happened which is probably exactly what one
deserves when insisting one is a hallucination.

Kol watched her plod through the snow in her too-big boots, momentarily
stunned. Humans did not react like that to the revelation the world was
deeply different from everything they knew—she didn’t even question the
frost dragon thing! Except, Kol supposed, at least one human did have that
reaction, and he had the awful luck of having to barter with her.

“But I need it!” he called after, cringing at how whiny that had come out—
Kol might have been the cause of some whining, but he did not whine
himself. So he shook out his limbs and caught up, cutting her off.
She faltered backward when he stepped into her path. “I’m sorry, but I
don’t have space on the schedule to go get another tree. You’ll have to get
your own.” Then she sidestepped him and just kept going.

“You don’t understand.” Kol pivoted quicker than she could track and
stopped her just at the forest’s border before the light from the house
reached them. “I’m not asking you.” Rarely did he use that edge in his
voice for true intimidation, but it worked because she recoiled, hugging the
dog closer.

“Well, I’m still not giving it to you.” Her voice shook, but a little crease
formed between her dark brows. Bold considering how small she was. In
fact, her aggression would have been cute if it wasn’t the only thing
standing in the way of finished paperwork and the start of his vacation.

“You saw the reindeer—er, fehszar, right? And my ears? How are you not
freaking out?”

“I have lasagna in the oven,” she said matter-of-factly and sidestepped him
once again. “I don’t have time to freak out because of my overactive
imagination.”

He reached out to stop her, but the dog bared its teeth and told him without
words to back off. “But she’s being unreasonable,” he said right back, and
the terrier’s fluffy brows furrowed over crossing eyes as was the usual
reaction the first time something domesticated actually understood spoken
language.

“I’m being unreasonable?” She scowled fully and stomped off into the
light. “This is crazy!”

“Yes, you’re right, the fact that you cut down a seven-thousand-year-old
alcyon spruce and propped it up in your living room as a tinsel holder is
crazy.” He stomped alongside her, gaze flicking up to the cabin that
harbored so many other humans. “Before it wreaks havoc on your family,
or worse, you kill it, you need to give it back to the forest where it
belongs.”
The woman came to an abrupt halt on the first step up to the porch. “But
the forest...” The warm, yellow lights from inside fell on her face as it
tipped upward in thought, round features going slack once again. Kol could
see it as it washed over her, the understanding of what she had done and the
relief that everything would be all right when she finally agreed to return
the tree.

“No!” She shook her head hard and shot him another scowl. “We don’t
even hang tinsel on it—Doc eats the stuff, and you don’t want to know how
we have to get it out. Now, quit following me, you’re not coming inside.”

Kol wasn’t proud of what he was about to do, but what was the point of all
those years struggling to learn magic if he wasn’t going to put it to use
when needed? As she trampled up the steps, her boots made a racket, but he
focused instead on the evergreen shrubs in the planters along the deck and
the wreath hanging from under the porch light. They were harmless on their
own, tame things that didn’t even know they were already dead. Kol
reached out to the threads in the frigid air, finding the ones that would
connect him to the plants, and he sent along a reminder that they were not
meant to be well-pruned, domesticated things at their cores. He conjured
the image of ancient, gnarled tree roots and hulking branches capable of
blotting out the sun, and then there was a crack.

The greenery twisted and grew as pot after pot shattered. The woman
stopped short as the needly branches crawled toward her, growling dog in
her arms. She backed to the edge of the deck, foot slipping off, but Kol
pressed a hand into her back to keep her there, eliciting a squeak of abject
fear.

“You have a choice,” he growled into her ear. “You give me the tree and
nothing bad happens to you and your family, or—”

“Piper, something’s boiling over on the stove, and—oh, hello!”

Kol stood straight, and his adversary would have tumbled right off the
porch if he weren’t gripping onto the back of her sweater. A woman stood
in the patio doorway looking absolutely delighted as an infinite second
passed in silence. Kol raised a hand and gave her a wave, putting on his
most docile tone, “Hey.”

Piper smacked his arm out of the air, then just as quickly pulled her hand
back and wrapped it around the dog again. He released her, and she shied
away, but at least she was no longer on the verge of falling down the steps.

“I didn’t think anyone else was joining us.” The woman’s bright eyes
darted between the two, red-painted smile widening as she stepped fully
onto the porch. “Oh, my god. Piper.”

“What?” Her eyes went as wide as saucers.

“You finally brought a man to Christmas!”

The young woman, Piper apparently, muttered something, her face falling
into equal confusion with the dog’s.

“Well, come on inside! I’m Deb, and you must be Piper’s boyfriend.”

“No, Aunt Deb, this is—”

“That’d be me!” Kol thrust his hand into the stranger’s outstretched one,
thought and reason obliterated. “I’m Kol, and it’s a pleasure.”

“It certainly is!” She clasped his hand in both of hers, positively beaming.
“I guess I understand now why it took you so long to pick one out, Pippy—
you were waiting for him to look like this.”

As the woman tugged him toward the door, he glanced over his shoulder
and gave his tiny nemesis a smirk. His stomach knotted, though, when he
caught her eye—the woman called Piper looked like she was about to rip
his ears right off. But his savior didn’t see, pulling him over the threshold
and into the warmth of the kitchen.

Well, that was one way to get into the house.

 image image
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4
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Forewarned ‘Bout Birds
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“Oh, Piper, Mom’s going to be thrilled you’re finally seeing someone!”

Aunt Deb pulled the tall stranger into the kind of hug that might have made
Piper jealous if he really were her boyfriend, and he stood stiffly under it.
“I can’t believe Jim didn’t tell us about this.”

“Dad doesn’t know,” Piper sputtered, voice shaking from the lie, but what
else could she say? He was in the house.

“Really?” The fire behind her aunt’s eyes blazed as she released the man—
elf—whatever, and grabbed onto either side of Piper’s face. “Please let me
break the news to my brother, as a gift, to me, for Christmas.”

With her cheeks dangerously close to being impaled under her aunt’s nails,
a stranger who wasn’t a figment of her exhausted imagination poking
around the pots on the stove, and a very squirmy dog trying to escape her
arms, Piper let the defeat win. “Yeah, okay.”

Deb shrieked in that thrilled way of hers and snatched her half-full wine
glass from the counter. “Everyone’s in the basement digging out
decorations. I’ll be back!”

As she disappeared, all the air compressed out of Piper’s lungs. “Ask them
to bring up the Christmas village,” she whispered, but Deb was already
gone.
Doc finally scrambled free, sliding to the floor and into the puddle forming
around her mud boots. He darted out of the kitchen, wet paw prints left in
his wake. Piper tripped over herself as she kicked the boots off and grabbed
a towel to clean up the snowy mess until she spied the other set of boots
headed for the depths of the house.

“Absolutely not!” Piper lunged for the asshole’s collar—because regardless

of species, anyone could be an asshole, and that’s exactly what he was.

When he turned, icy blue eyes found hers, and it was just like being out in
the forest again facing down someone—something—terrifying and alluring
all at once. Aunt Deb wasn’t exaggerating, he was...attractive, but in a way
that set Piper’s teeth on edge. There was something wrong about him, but
he’d made things that shouldn’t move at all reach for her like a scene from
some campy holiday horror movie, so of course there was something
wrong! He did that—the asshole elf looming in the doorway to her kitchen,
glaring down at her with narrowed, black brows—he threatened her with
magic.

“You...you can’t be here,” she said, throat thick as it wobbled, and she
released his jacket.

“Why not?” Blue eyes gave her a dismissive look up and down. “Is your
real boyfriend going to show up?”

Piper’s whole body flushed, fear quickly replaced with indignation that left
her speechless, and she wished she could disappear into the knit of her old
sweater.

“Didn’t think so.” The asshole—no, elfhole—smirked, which was quite a

bit less frightening but quite a bit more enraging. “Now, where’s my tree?”

“My tree,” she snarled. “And don’t track snow in on my clean floors.”

“You want me to take my boots off? So that’s an invitation to stay?” He

ducked down before she could think to swing at him.
As he unlaced his boots, Piper’s heartbeat quickened, eyes darting to the
hall where the basement door would be. If she ran downstairs and declared
there was a deranged intruder in the kitchen, she was sure her uncle and
cousins would be thrilled to throw him out into the snow, but her aunt
would probably be equally argumentative—oh, just let him stay, Pippy,
fake boyfriend or not, he’s hot and god knows you need to get laid. But
he’d threatened them—all of them—and she had no idea what he was
capable of.

Plus, up until only a few moments prior, she was sure she was imagining
the whole thing, and all the little Christmas elves in the toyshop of her
brain hadn’t quite made it back to the assembly line yet, so any reason that
would have brought this plot to a screeching halt went right out the
window.

She crossed her arms and glared down at the beanie hiding the pointed ears
she’d only got a quick glimpse of in the darkened forest. From this angle,
everything about him was simply human, and she could take care of one,
disgruntled human herself—that was how she handled everything else
anyway. “What exactly is your plan here? Infiltrate my family and convince
them to help you carry the tree back into the national forest? Believe me,
they wouldn’t do that for someone who actually belongs here, so they’re
not going to go out of their way for an outsider like you.”

His head tipped up slowly but fingers didn’t pause on his laces. For a brief
moment, something passed over his features, ones that had been twisted up
in a frustrated rage since they’d met, and it was oddly solemn. She faltered
at the softness of his mouth as he frowned, but once he stood, all that was
swallowed up by disdain once again. Piper knocked into the wall as she
backed away from his looming form.

He threw her another painfully flippant look up and down as if she weren’t
even worth threatening this time and turned away. Out into the house’s
main hall he went, but at least his boots were off.

“What do you think you’re doing?” She hurried after him and darted
around the far side of the ascending staircase to swing back down the hall
from its other end and cut him off. “I said, you have to leave.”
He faltered momentarily at her sudden appearance then reverted right back
to glowering. “If you keep that tree, magic shit’s going to happen—bad
magic shit. Do you understand? You’re gonna get birds.”

“Birds?” Piper held her hands up but continued to back down the hall.

“And you’ll probably kill it.”

“Uh,”—Piper swallowed—“we didn’t exactly dig it up with the roots

intact.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s magic, dummy, it can still be replanted.”

“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. “Seven thousand years,
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 be maybe eight 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
just knew it belonged right where it was. “It can’t really be 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 a tree.”

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 hell that meant—to Piper’s father which would
certainly set the holidays off to an even better start than all this.

“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.
Maybe she 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 gets Stalkhome Syndrome. 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 bonded to you, so you did something. 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.
Magically linked.

Something lit up inside her chest, something that blotted out the irritation in
her temple and in her mind, something just as warm as what she felt out in
the forest.

“It wants to be here.” She gave the nearest branch a light pat, the needles
still sharp.

“It doesn’t know what it wants, it’s a tree.” He snapped the device shut
which would have been quite a bit more dramatic if he didn’t have to fold it
over two more times after. “It could change its mind tomorrow and want to
die, or maybe it turns on you and fights back. Whatever the case, it has to
go home—to its real home.”

He made it all sound so dire though it should have been silly, a man
claiming to be an elf, a tree older than Methuselah, the threat of birds, but
there was a strumming in Piper’s chest that told her it wasn’t silly at all.
That experience in the forest, it had been different than all the others, and if
this was all real, if he was an elf, if trees could feel, and there actually was
magic in the world, then maybe...

She backed away from him, somehow knowing he was right about
everything and yet he was wrong too. “But it’s our Christmas tree,” she
said with a weakness that made her feel infinitesimally small.

“You can just get another one,”—he gestured wildly to it, and she winced
—“a non-magical one.”

Piper shook her head, jaw clenched, heart racing. “I don’t want another
one.”

“Why in the nether not?” His next step closed the space between them.

The seat of the couch hit Piper’s calves, and she fell backward. “Because
my mom picked it out.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she covered her face,
feeling it go hot and red at the admittance as she sank into the sofa.
The voices in the basement were getting louder, but his drowned them out.
“Well, where is she? I’ll convince her instead.”

“She’s dead!” Piper took several deep breaths through her nose, the
crushing truth bearing down on her like it was new all over again. There
was a stinging in her eyes as she shook her head, but she blinked it away,
and when she opened them again, she found he had taken a huge step back.

“What, like...”—a visible lump traveled down his throat—“she died

today?”

An awkward laugh burst past the sob that was threatening to ruin her at the
horror on his face. Maybe he was human after all if he could look as
reproachful as that. Piper wiped at her cheeks and fidgeted uncomfortably
on the seat. “No, it’s been a little over five years.”

“Then how did she pick out...”

She dropped her gaze to her lap along with a deep sigh. The hardwoods
were slick under her socks, and she rubbed the ball of her foot against
them. “She didn’t, not really, but it felt that way when I was out in the
woods. I know it’s dumb, but she was always the one who found the perfect
tree when she was alive, and it’s like there’s a little part of her left out in the
forest waiting for me every year.” Piper picked at a stray thread on the
couch, hands hidden in the excess of her sleeves. “And this year she—er,
that feeling led me right to this tree, so—”

“Fine.”

Piper inhaled sharply, gaze lifting. “Fine?”

His jaw was clenched as he focused on anything but her. “I can’t sever the
tree’s bond with you tonight anyway. For that I’m going to need someone
highly skilled and more familiar with enchanted flora and...oh, gods, I’m
going to have to talk to my mother.” He rubbed a hand down his face and
already looked exhausted at the thought. “Regardless, the spruce will have
to stay here for at least a little while, and too much of you being sad might
depress the tree into an early compost bin through your connection. How
long do you need the thing?”

“Christmas is in twelve days,” she said quietly.

“Ugh, gods, twelve days.” He pinched the bridge of a long nose. “I can
probably figure out how to safely separate you two by then, but that’s a
long time to be out of the grove and away from its roots. I know you don’t
want me here, but I’m going to have to stick around to keep it alive.”

She studied his face as he gave the tree another look, this one much more
worried than irate. He had a chiseled profile full of sculpted angles which
would have been much nicer if he didn’t consistently hold his features in
that irked way. But his jaw was sharp, his lips were full, and those eyes—
well, it was going to be a hard enough sell to her family that she was dating
anyone at all, let alone someone who looked like him. Then again, apart
from her father, all the rest of her family ever wanted was for her to date
again, and wouldn’t it be a nice change to not be constantly questioned
about her lack of a love life?

“I guess I sort of need you to stay now, otherwise it’ll look like I got
dumped on Christmas.” There were footsteps coming up from the
basement, and Piper dropped her voice low as she stood from the couch.
“That might be the only thing more pathetic than having a fake boyfriend
for the holidays in the first place.”

This time when he snorted there was less disdain, and when he flashed his
teeth in a rueful grin, she guiltily thought that faking it with him might not
be the worst thing in the world. Don’t kid yourself, Piper, this is just
another responsibility heaped onto all the rest, and it’s going to suck.

“So, we have a deal?” He extended a hand. “You get the tree, I get to play
gardener, and we both get...each other’s company, I guess?”

When his eyes trailed down her body, it didn’t feel as awful as the time
before, and somehow that was even worse. But the basement door was
creaking open, and voices were calling for her, so she clasped onto his
offered hand and shook. “Deal. But you better be convincing because my
dad is not going to be cool with this.”

The whirlwind of MacLeans that ascended the stairs swept the shock right
off Kol’s face—Kol, that was his name, which thankfully Deb was still
announcing to everyone, including Piper’s father who looked utterly
bewildered. That made sense considering they lived together and she had
failed to ever mention seeing someone, let alone someone who was worthy
of an invite to their family’s holiday.

Questions poured in, pressure mounted, and Piper blurted out loud enough
for the whole family to hear, “He’s from Canada!” And despite that no one
should have believed in the significant-other-from-another-country excuse,
everything was smoothed over, like magic.
 image image
image

5
image
Fuuuuuckiiiiing Aaaaannoooooyed
image

Piper watched Kol unravel his scarf and shrug off his coat, utterly
dumbfounded at what in Saint Nick’s nightmare had just transpired. He had
really laid on the charm with her family, a much better effort than he’d put
in with her, she noted, and as he shook hands, grinned sincerely, and
injected “eh” into all the right places, the MacLeans immediately warmed.
She didn’t even have to say much, and in the end, convincing them she’d
been dating this stranger was just one less task she had to take on herself,
so she accepted the ease with which it came.

He hung his things on a hook beside the kitchen slider, which was better
than leaving them in a heap on the floor like so many of the others did, but
the two were alone again, and all that charm melted away as he turned
narrowed eyes on her. In his blue knit sweater and jeans, he looked almost
normal, but he left his hat on, black hair tucked up under it with just a few
wavy strands falling free, and then there was, well...the rest of him. And the
rest of him was sort of pretty.

Piper busied herself with gathering salad ingredients from the refrigerator,
filling her arms and then dumping everything on the counter that separated
the two. All right, he was pretty, but what did that matter? He’d also
threatened to do god knows what to her with the back porch shrubbery.

She stood and listened for a moment, but there was no one else anywhere
near the kitchen. “So, magic?”
His black brows raised, and he sauntered toward his side of the counter.
“Yeah, magic.”

He made it sound utterly boring, but her brain was still reeling. She slid a
chopping board in front of her, eyes darting between it and his face. “It’s
real?”

He spread open hands and then laid them flat on the counter, the best
answer she was getting. Well, if he was going to stand there saying nothing,
he could at least help. She stacked a few tomatoes on the board and pushed
it toward him. “And elves...”

“Exist. Yes. Amongst lots of other kinds of peoples and creatures that I
refuse to divulge since this is already probably the biggest mistake of my
life and telling you people about us always leads to some kind of huge
mess.”

Piper twisted up her lips. If it was such a mistake, he could just go, but
instead, he sat on the stool across from her. She placed a knife beside the
cutting board and gave him a pointed look.

He groaned and picked it up.

“I know you said you’re not one of Santa’s little helpers. You’re more like
Legol—”

“Don’t.” He pointed the knife right at her, and regret strangled the rest of
the name in her throat. He might not like it, but his high cheekbones and
smooth jaw invited the Tolkien comparison all on its own, but then he put
the weapon down and pushed up his sleeves, and Piper’s stomach knotted.
Well, he did mention he was half, didn’t he? Clearly there was a little
Aragorn in him too...

“It’s just hard to believe.” He had a knot of black hair tied up at the back of
his head, and she wanted to snatch his hat off and see those ears again, just
to be sure.
Kol clicked his tongue and held out one of the tomatoes as if in offering. A
ruddy light enveloped his palm, and the fruit’s skin split, tiny, green shoots
erupting all over.

“Oh, my god.” Piper grabbed the tomato and backed away. He just
shrugged and set to slicing as she inspected the fruit, turning it over many
times. It wasn’t some trick, it couldn’t be, the tomato warm in her hands
and the little sprouts squishy to the touch.

Her heart thrashed to escape her chest, and her stomach twisted in the other
direction. Despite the secret belief she’d been harboring, proof of the
supernatural standing right in her kitchen was far too much. How in the
world was she supposed to go on as if everything were normal and—

“Not like that,” she snapped when she saw he was cutting slices. “Do
wedges.”

Kol halted. “Why?”

“Because.” She set up her own chopping station with two heads of romaine,
ignoring the feel of his eyes boring into her until he cleared his throat and
demanded an answer. “Because my boyfriend wants to keep me happy, and
wedges make me happy, okay?”

“Give me strength, fae ancestors,” he groused and went back to work, but
indeed changed up his technique, and soon he was filling a bowl with
tomato wedges that would have made her mother very happy.

Piper watched him wield the knife, quick and skillful. Maybe he had
experience in a kitchen or maybe he just had experience with sharp objects.
More questions batted around up against the impossibility of it all in her
brain: Where are you from? How have your people stayed hidden? Do you
live up in the trees?

Oh, shit. She cringed at herself—had she chopped down the equivalent of
his home? Clearly, he didn’t live in that spruce specifically, but in another
one where trees were big enough to hold taller-than-average men with
pointy ears and shiny, black hair and surprisingly muscular forearms?
Piper bit her lip, wondering about the rest of him, still covered. She had a
mental flash of him running through the forest, though the season was
starkly different in her mind. His skin had been one of the things she found
especially strange in the forest, with a smoothness to it like a stone she
might find at the bottom of the Abenaki River or like the one she kept in
her purse. Was he...was he like that all over?

She watched his long fingers make quick work of the tomatoes and then
cucumbers, though no new sprouts emerged. The two worked in silence
until her timer went off.

Turning her back on him made her spine prickle, but once she set herself to
unloading the oven and collecting utensils, the checklist that ran through
her mind superseded everything else. She scurried from drawer to cabinet,
gathering serving spatulas, forks, napkins, and then plates, but there wasn’t
enough for everyone. Extras were kept on the top shelf of the pantry
cabinet, and Piper pushed up onto her toes, the full length of her reach not
quite enough.

“Watch out, Pipsqueak.”

Piper pressed her stomach right to the counter at the sound of Kol’s voice
just behind her, suddenly crowded by his body stretching up over her own
and plucking the plates off the tallest shelf with hardly any effort. He
reached around her and placed them on the counter, and she felt completely
trapped.

“Hey, I brought back—uh, who’s this?”

Piper swung herself around, knocking Kol away and finding Presley
standing in the doorway.

She stuttered, looking from one doubled-over elf to one rather confused
brother, then blurted out, “That’s my Kol.”

That meant nothing to Presley, and he showed perhaps even less

recognition when Kol righted himself and offered his hand.
“You weren’t there,” she said, remembering the onslaught of introductions
with the rest of the family. “But you remember—I told you my boyfriend
was coming to Christmas this year. We talked about it in the truck this
morning. This is him. That Kol. My boyfriend. Who I invited to Christmas.
From Canada.”

It wasn’t fair, she thought, watching her brother try to recall a conversation
that definitely hadn’t happened, but she was due one, finally using the
forgetfulness that seemed to plague the men in her family against them
instead of the other way around.

Presley gave up before he burst a blood vessel, shrugging and shaking

Kol’s hand, though he didn’t look pleased about it. “Well, good thing I went
overboard at Sonny’s. This isn’t even half of it.”

Piper’s eyes dropped to the greasy paper bags he was carrying. “You got
burgers? But I made mom’s lasagna.”

“Yeah, I thought that was kinda weird since you asked me to make dinner.
Come on, I bet you’re starving.”

“We always have lasagna the first night,” she said to the back of him, but
he was already calling to the others to come and eat. Piper stood in the
doorway listening to her family gather, exclamations of being starved and
already ripping into the bags Presley brought, and then she turned abruptly
to be met with Kol’s form. “Move,” she growled, shouldering past him.

“Whoa, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like? I’m cleaning up. Go have a burger and make my
brother like you.” She banged around with the pots a little harder than she
meant, but it wasn’t like anyone would hear her—they would all share the
takeout in the living room and den, and she would be finding wadded-up
burger wrappers stuffed in the couch cushions for weeks afterward. Kol’s
form flitted at the corner of her eye, not leaving like she’d told him, instead
shuffling through the silverware she’d laid out. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” His tone was mocking as he found a fork, and
before she could shoo him away, proceeded to plunge it into one of the
lasagnas.

She pursed her lips and leaned against the counter, not bothering to warn
him that the inside of the oven had been a lot hotter than the inside of
anybody’s mouth.

“It’s pretty good,” he said around the bite, clearly in pain from the heat and
fanning at his face.

But she couldn’t let him suffer, offering him a paper towel. “Spit it out
before all your taste buds turn to ash.”

He refused it. “No, no. It’s too good to spit out. Really good, actually.” He
took a second bite.

Piper’s face went as warm as the steaming dish looked, and she didn’t even
bother to complain that he shouldn’t double dip. “Okay, well, the rest of it
is off limits. Go be charming to Presley, I got this.” She snatched away his
fork, and she busied herself with the rest of the mess.

Winter in Hiberhaven meant the sun set so early it always felt much later
than it was, and by the time the kitchen was clean and every belly was full,
the weary travelers were ready to turn in. Piper directed everyone to the
rooms she prepared in the previous week, guest beds and blow-up
mattresses and the fold-out couch in the basement all fitted with clean
linens and plenty of extra fuzzy blankets. Uncle Russ’s boys would have to
share the living room as she’d planned for only one of them, but when she
remembered tucking away a few extra blankets and pillows upstairs and
suggested they build themselves a fort with the couch cushions, they were
thrilled.

Piper didn’t feel her own exhaustion until she climbed the stairs a final time
and stretched on the landing to look down at the tree in the living room
below. Still undecorated, it stood healthy and full, perhaps even more
beautifully than in the wood, and for a moment she thought she could see it,
not a shimmery glow of magic, but something deeper that brightened it
from within.

“They aren’t going to fuck with it, are they?”

Piper jumped, somehow forgetting about the elf while so focused on getting
everyone tucked into where they belonged for the night. Kol was frowning
down over the railing at her cousins as they pulled a fitted sheet from the
arm of one chair to another. Too taut, it sprang off and swept a stack of
books off an end table as it went. “They might use the tree as a support
beam, but they probably won’t knock it over.” When he scowled deeper,
she gestured to the floor. “You’re welcome to sleep right here to keep an
eye on them, if you like.”

“I have room in here.” Presley was leaning against the doorway of the first
room off the hall, a small study that only fit a twin.

She grinned, pleased her brother had also somehow been charmed by her
fake partner. “I don’t think it’s fair to subject Kol to your snoring.”

“Well, he’s not going in there.” Presley wore an even deeper scowl than
Kol, gesturing with his chin across the landing. The other side of the
upstairs had a much shorter hall that led to the laundry room, a bathroom,
and Piper’s bedroom.

She crossed her own arms, and all three of them simply stood there,
annoyed. So, Presley hadn’t been charmed at all, but why was he choosing
now to start acting like a concerned brother when there had been a million
better times? “Don’t be weird about this.”

“I’m not being weird,” he said in exactly the same way he used to when he
was eight and was most definitely being weird. “You just shouldn’t...”

“Shouldn’t what? Share a room like you and Holly used to?” When he
mumbled about that being different, she huffed with a firmness. She could
put up with being expected to take care of everything, but she was not
going to simultaneously be treated like a child when it suited someone else.
“This isn’t up for debate. I haven’t been a virgin since that summer Oliver
got hit by a car anyway.”

“Oh, gross.” He screwed up his face, and then his brow went all furrowed.
“Wait, since when?”

Piper turned on her heel and took Kol by the elbow, dragging him away.
The one thing she wouldn’t give up when people came to stay was her own
room, and shutting herself up inside it blocked out the chaos.
Unfortunately, when she fell against the closed door with a sigh, the relief
only lasted a split second as she’d shut Kol inside the room with her.

“Who’s Oliver?”

She pushed off the door and paced over to the laundry bin. A pair of
underwear hung precariously over the edge, and she stuffed them deep
under everything else. “Family cat.” When she turned, Kol was smirking.
Why did it have to be the pink ones?

“And when was Oliver’s accident?”

“A socially acceptable length of time ago.” Her skin itched, and she tried to
rub the feeling away from her arms. The cabin’s gabled roof meant one of
her walls was slanted, but she’d never felt the room was too small, only that
it was perfectly cozy, tucked over the kitchen and away from everything
else in the house, but with Kol standing across from her, breathing wasn’t
quite so easy.

“This was your bedroom when you were a kid?” He reached for a teddy
bear on her dresser.

She snatched the bear away and scowled because that was much better than
flaring with embarrassment anew. “This is my bedroom now.”

He stepped deeper into the space stuffing his hands into his pockets, his
gaze tracing over the bookshelves and the framed national forest posters.
She’d strung up fairy lights on the walls, using them in lieu of a glaring
overhead lamp which had also always felt cozy to her, but as she looked at
the place through Kol’s eyes, she could only see a teenaged version of
herself.

“So you still live at home?”

“I live at home again. And it’s not home,” she said without thinking, gently
placing Mr. Barnabus Brown back in his spot. “Well, it wasn’t supposed to
be, this place was always just for vacations, but mom wanted to come here
when she got sick, and I moved back in to help, and then Dad and I never
left.”

He stopped perusing the spines of the hefty textbooks on her shelf and gave
her a more intrigued look. “Five years ago? Were you still in school or—”

“I didn’t finish my degree, but sometimes life gets put on hold when more
important things happen.” She sliced a hand through the air. “So, give it an
hour until everyone’s asleep, and then you can go.”

“Go? Where?”

“I don’t know, wherever you were going to go before this.” She gestured to
the space between them.

“You’re really going to send me out into the cold? I’m not covered in fur
like a fehszar, and the grove’s cabin is sort of a long way off.”

She pouted, looking down to his chest. He probably wasn’t covered in fur,
but she wouldn’t mind him proving it. Then she shook that thought right
out of her head. “What’s a fehszar?”

“You know, with the antlers? The albino moose? She’s one of those
creatures that needs the protection of the alcyon spruce orchard to keep
existing. And what’s with sending me outside anyway after telling off your
brother? Aren’t you a big girl who’s allowed to have boys in her room?”

Kol’s words burned into Piper, and she fixed her gaze away from him. She
was a big girl, and she could have boys in her room if she wanted, but she’d
never actually brought anyone back to this place, knowing it would make
her father uncomfortable. On occasion, she spent the evening elsewhere,
but mostly she took care of things herself, which reminded her...

Piper sprinted the length of the room, slamming the drawer on her bedside
table shut and pressing her back to it. Maybe guarding the nightstand like a
sentry wasn’t subtle, but it was better than him seeing what she kept inside.
If she only had a few minutes to clean up first, having him stand across
from her in her bedroom would have been a little easier, but her attention
had been pulled in so many different directions that she’d let her own space
fall into utter disarray, but...but it was freezing outside, and it was dark, and
it was freaking Christmas. “I guess you can stay. In here. With me. If you
have to.”

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and the greasy knot in her belly pulled
tighter, and then he just rolled his eyes, heaved a sigh, and started poking
around at the fuzzy rug that ran along the far side of her room. “You can at
least spare a pillow, right?”

“Yeah, but...” She didn’t want to finish the thought that she had no other
blanket, the rest divvied up amongst her visiting family and her surprise
cousins getting the extras she kept in her closet. Piper kept her bed pushed
against the far wall and set under the pitched ceiling and skylight. It was
tight, moonlight pouring in to illuminate the singular pink duvet, but it was
perfect for her.

Her alone.

Great.

“Just get in the bed.”

Kol was kneeling by her bookshelves, inspecting the floor, but he squinted
up at her. “Where are you going to sleep?”

“Next to you, I guess.”

“Now you want me to sleep with you?”

“No! But there’s no more room at the inn, so...” With a jerk of her head, she
gestured to her last bastion of solace in the whole house.

Kol stood, stepping nearer but for once hesitantly. “After you.”

“No, after you.”

He scoffed. “I have to sleep next to the wall?”

“Obviously. You might be an elf, but you’re still clearly male, so I get the
outside,” she snapped. “And I want to know if you get up in the middle of
the night and try to steal my tree like the god damned Grinch.”

Kol glared at her for a long moment then relented with another hefty eye
roll. If they weren’t such a pretty blue, she would have been extra annoyed
by that. “Fine, but I don’t have any pajamas.” And with that, he pulled off
his sweater.

A nonsense sound bubbled up in her throat, but she choked it back before it
spilled out and embarrassed her. Her face was doing enough of that, wide-
eyed, mouth hanging open. More of his stony skin was exposed, pulled taut
over a muscled stomach, the lines defined in the dim lights, but then his
shirt fell back into place, and she realized he wasn’t stripping down
completely in front of her—the tiniest shame but also a relief.

Piper swallowed hard and flicked the light switch, but the new darkness
was filled with the brightness of the moon coming through the skylight.
Kol folded his sweater and laid it on the low bookcase like he was putting
on a show for her, and Piper only grew more annoyed—yes, she liked
things tidy, but that wasn’t a crime, unlike fraud and coercion. He then
gestured awkwardly to the bed, and she also gestured, also awkwardly.
Finally, he gave in and took to crawling across it.

There, a minor triumph, but it wasn’t long-lived as Piper glanced down at

herself. She worried the bottom hem of her sweater, then thought better of
taking anything off except her socks. When she sat on the edge of the bed
to begin the world’s most modest undressing, Kol was making the whole
thing shake as he wiggled under the blanket.
“What are you doing?”

“I’m not sleeping in jeans.” And then he produced them from under the
duvet with a smarmy grin.

“Oh, my god.” There’s a man with no pants on in my bed.

“Don’t worry, I’m still wearing my socks.”

“You sleep with socks on?” She pulled her own off and tossed them across
the room into the laundry basket. “You really are from another dimension.”

“No, my extremely distant ancestors are, and it’s only half of them. I think
it’s weird you’re about to get into this bed with your bare, freezing feet.”
Kol pushed up onto an elbow. “You better not plan to keep them warm by
shoving them up against me.”

She returned his incredulous look from her spot teetering on the bed’s edge,
eyes darting to his lower half graciously still covered by the duvet.

He opened his mouth as if he might say something else cutting, but then he
deflated. “That was supposed to be a joke, but clearly it didn’t land. Look,
there’s no way you’re not exhausted after...everything. I’ll just sleep on the
floor, and—”

“No, it’s fine,” she said because it was—it had to be. Piper carefully slipped
herself under the blanket, keeping to the outer edge of the bed and laying
flat on her back. Through the skylight, a few stars dotted the blackness, the
moon somewhere past the window’s edge but casting a comforting, silvery
glow inside. Piper’s shoulders lost some of their rigidity as she pulled the
blanket up to her chin. It would get warm fast, she assumed, with her
sweater and leggings still on, and she never slept in a bra, but it was good
to be in bed regardless. Sorry about the extended prison sentence, boobs,
but you didn’t make bail.

She closed her eyes, and a list began to form in the darkness behind her
lids, as usual. Everyone would probably sleep in, so that gave her the
opportunity to have a little time to herself in the morning and update her
planner. She could get her father and Deb to make up by bringing out the
box of ornaments from their childhood that Grandma Tilda gave her last
year, and if Presley was still in a weird mood, bringing up his recent
promotion at the gym might cheer him up. At least dinner was already
taken care of, and it wouldn’t take much to patch up the hole Kol had made
in one of the lasagnas.

“Kol?”

He shifted beside her with a small hum of acknowledgment.

“Did you really like the lasagna or were you just being nice?”

“Both, I guess.”

She snorted. “They’ll be careful with the tree tomorrow, I’ll make sure of
it.”

“What happens with the tree tomorrow?”

“Well, we’re going to decorate it.”

Kol grumbled as he turned his back to her and faced the wall. “Of course
you are.”
 6

At Least Six Times A-Lying

When Kol woke, he was alone, which was entirely normal and expected, but
he was in a strange bed that smelled of vanilla, which was exactly the
opposite of normal and expected.
His hip ached as he rolled from his side to survey the darkness of the
room, a scant light from the window above illuminating pink linens. Did I
stay with a woman last ni—oh, right.
Kol hadn’t slept beside someone in...well, never for the whole night, but
a quick nap after an exhausting tumble was nearly the same, wasn’t it?
While he lay staring at the wall the night before, he’d begun counting back
exactly how many days, weeks, months since last he shared someone else’s
bed, hoping that it might put him to sleep, but as the number grew, so did his
frustration. The woman shuffling ever closer to him hadn’t helped, and then
she started making noises that sounded far too much like she’d sneaked
whatever she was hiding in her bedside drawer under the blankets.
Her moaning had disappointingly devolved into the dissatisfaction of a
dream gone bad. She was probably having a nightmare about killer
evergreens or talking dogs or something equally ridiculous like an interloper
on her family vacation. He poked at her face a few times until she snorted
herself half awake and finally fell into a deep and silent sleep. Kol had
returned to face the wall again and pulled the blanket over his head to hide
away from the moonlight.
But day one was done, and day two had to begin before it could end, so
Kol dragged himself from the woman’s bed and dressed. With a moment
alone, he fished his thaumatix out of a pocket and navigated to the alcyon
spruce’s profile. Trees were living things, and while enchanted ones had
more to offer than air purification, shelter, and fuel, this one should have
been much simpler to deal with. The bond that it exuded already was
baffling and was going to be a polar bear to break, but he had a feeling it had
less to do with the tree and more to do with her.
With a few flicks on the screen, he pulled up the information his device
created on Piper MacLean. Thaumati were powerful instruments, only issued
to thoroughly vetted employees. Using one to profile anything outside an
employee’s scope, and for Kol, that included most sapient beings, was
definitely frowned upon, and with a quick glance at what the thaumatix
produced, he could see why.
General human facts came first, a genealogical history branching off of a
little person-shaped figure, and some basic anatomical information that
would have probably helped him when he was a teenager followed, but then
he came across a list of oddly specific strengths and weaknesses that didn’t
seem universal. He’d met plenty of humans who weren’t hardworking or
detail-oriented, his father included, and not all of them were terrified of
change or as good at repressing their feelings as the thaumatix was insisting
Piper was.
Kol’s finger hesitated before it scrolled on, revealing her birthday—a
Virgo, shocking—her height—pipsqueak might be too generous—her weight
—where’s she keeping that?—and then he scrolled more quickly past some
pet peeves and fears, but when he reached erogenous zones, he quickly
snapped the tablet shut. Most of what it cobbled together probably wasn’t
accurate—a thaumatix was made for trees and flowers and the occasional
cursed amulet, definitely not humans—but behind the left knee had
unfortunately etched itself into his brain.
The smell of something baking drew him downstairs, but he sought out
the spruce first. He picked his way around the children sprawled out in a
mess of blankets all over the living room, pillows propping up the last
defenses of their fort, but the tree remained. With no one awake, he covertly
touched one of the boughs. It was chilly up against the massive, picture
windows, the world outside dark under the early lights of winter’s morning,
but the tree told him without words that it was still hale. He gave it a jolt of
life, just in case, but it seemed rather pleased with its new predicament. In
fact, it was...humming?
Kol peered across the living room to the main hall. Another silent
maneuver took him to the kitchen where he found the humming’s actual
source. The smell of simmering butter clung to the warmth in the air, the
lights dimmed low and orange. Piper stood with her back to him, hips
cocked to one side as she worked, but she’d finally forgone that awful
sweater, and the tank top she wore clung to her as tightly as her leggings.
Kol had apparently overlooked quite a lot about Piper, not least of all the
fullness of her thighs, but that had probably been for the best—he’d already
been a complete dick to cover up his anxiety about sharing her bedroom and
had he thought of her as anything more than mousy, he would have been
even worse.
As if it could possibly matter, you absolute ass, he thought and cleared
his throat as he strode into the kitchen, determined to ignore the roundness of
her body. Piper gasped at his arrival, and the little jiggle all the best parts of
her did with her surprised jolt was no help. “What are you making now?
Breakfast lasagna?”
She clicked her tongue, eyes darting across the counter to where she’d
draped her sweater over a chair. “Pancakes. It’s what we do the first
morning.”
“We?” Piper was, of course, alone.
She reached across the island, bending herself over it as she stretched. It
was far too early in the morning for that, and so Kol quickly rounded the
counter himself to face her instead. She was quick to pull on her sweater,
and when her head popped out of the neck hole, she was right back to
scowling.
There was an empty bowl between them and a carton of eggs beside.
Piper pursed her lips with another one of those expectant looks, and since
cracking eggs was simple enough for his still-sleepy brain, Kol silently
accepted the task.
Swathed in baggy clothes yet again, Piper poured a cup of coffee, and to
his surprise, sat it in front of him. “Milk and sugar are over there.” She
pointed to an impressive tray of every option anyone could want then
returned to the stovetop where she buttered the griddle.
 He sniffed the cup but couldn’t discern anything over the dark roast.
Probably not poisoned, but there was certainly some game afoot, so he
watched her even closer. She flitted about the kitchen, collecting utensils and
plates with the same grace and quickness she had the night before.
Sleepiness still plagued her, disheveled hair tied back and circles heavy
under her eyes, but her timing wasn’t affected, flipping the pancakes when
they were perfectly golden. She flicked a page in a notebook propped against
the backsplash, and the corner of her mouth twitched upward with some
thought. As she took a sip from her own mug, he suddenly wanted to ask
about that thought, to know exactly what it was that made someone so intent
on glowering all the time actually smile.
“What?” Her dark eyes were on him, and he didn’t even realize, his own
gaze trained on her lips.
“Ah, why’s your coffee so...white?” It was a stupid question, but it was
better than blurting out any of the other thoughts he was having about her
mouth.
She held up a finger and dug deep into the refrigerator to produce a
brightly-colored bottle. “I keep extra hazelnut creamer stashed back here.”
Without asking, she poured way too much into his mug. “Don’t worry,” she
said as if reading his mind, “you’ll like it.”
Piper returned to the griddle, stacking up pancakes and pouring more
batter. One of her cousins—Kol couldn’t recall to whom the child belonged
or what his name was—came tottering in, eyes half closed. He’d been
especially shitty the night before, running with abandon in circles around the
couch after he’d chugged someone’s soda and sticking out his tongue at
anyone who tried to calm him down.
Kol glared at the maybe eight-year-old, but there was no screaming or
flailing this morning, just a quiet saunter up to Piper.
“You want some pancakes, Noah?” Piper’s voice was lyrical then, her
features softening.
The boy nodded and then put his arms around Piper’s waist and squeezed
her. It took Kol until after Piper patted Noah’s head and handed him a plate
to realize what had happened. That little brat—he hugged her.
Noah lumbered away and took up a stool, absolutely dousing his plate in
syrup, and Kol stared at him in disbelief until another plate was pushed in
front of him. Piper left Kol a perfect stack of pancakes without a word but
returned to cooking with an even wider grin.
 Others funneled in and out of the kitchen, and Piper handed off plates to
each one. Most were more subdued than the evening before, and in their
sleepier state, more gracious too. When her father came in, he threw an arm
around Piper’s shoulders and planted a kiss on her cheek. He was carrying
the dog, and it managed to lick her elbow too before being released to chase
after its stub of a tail on the floor.
Should have said thank you, Kol mused, but at least I kept that poisoning
thought to myself. That lessened his regret, but he wondered if it were too
late now, after his plate and mug were empty and she’d already fed everyone
else in the house. Maybe he could slip in some gratitude as he cleaned up the
plates, but was that sincere enough? Or did he need to hug her too? That
would be nice of him. Just like it would be nice to wrap his arm around her
middle and kiss her cheek and—Kol shook his head. Gods, he must have
still been exceptionally tired.
“Yes, Doc, of course I’ll accompany you to the urology wing,” Piper was
saying in a sing-songy voice as she bent at the waist to talk to the little dog
as it pranced about on its back legs. When she caught Kol’s eye, she faltered.
“That’s Doctor Dog code for go outside.”
“Doctor Dog?” Kol didn’t think any amount of magic in the world could
earn a terrier a medical degree.
“Mom liked to consult him when she got stumped with a diagnosis at
work. She called him her colleague, so the name just stuck.” Piper’s mouth
quirked into a half smile as she scratched under his chin. “But when doctors
don’t have thumbs, they need someone to take them outside, don’t they?
Regardless of if that someone has eaten breakfast yet.”
“I can do that.” Kol stood so abruptly that he knocked over his stool.
“Oh, it’s fine.” Piper sighed as she went for her jacket hanging by the
kitchen’s sliding glass door, Doc trailing her heels. “He needs to go now, and
—”
“No, you should sit and eat.” Perhaps more firmly than he meant, Kol
dropped his hand onto Piper’s wrist before she could get her coat. Her dark
eyes darted up to his, wider than if she’d had a third cup of coffee. “I have to
go out too,” he said, releasing her and lowering his voice. “Not, uh, for the
same reason, but to check on the fehszar and get the bag I left at the cabin. I
might be gone for a while, but the dog can come with me.”
Piper surveyed him for a long moment until she finally nodded with a
reluctance that said she had little faith in his dog-walking capabilities. He
hurried then, not wanting to be under her unblinking stare any longer, and
tromped out into the snow.
The dog took his sweet time, pissing on every other tree trunk and
ignoring Kol’s suggestion that the action was rather rude.
Mine, he simply said with a series of grunts and yips and another tiny
expulsion from his bladder.
Eventually, Kol found the fehszar hidden in the wood behind the house.
She seemed perfectly pleased to be spending time in a new forest and had
even fetched Kol’s bag from the cabin in the Everroot Grove which saved
him a more considerable trek. Though she did stop munching on the nearest
pine’s bark when she watched Doc mark another tree’s roots.
Kol wasn’t in a rush to get back, thoughts made sharper by the blustery
air. It was bad enough he was rushing to gather the last of his numbers, but
The Elven Perennial Assembly would have his ears if they found out he was
abetting the abduction of an alcyon spruce. He supposed he’d exposed magic
to a human too, but that was a different bureaucratic division, and frankly,
the EPA worried him more. Run by some of the most ancient and uptight
elucidai elves in existence, his stomach twisted up into knots at just the
thought of standing in front of the council and explaining.
Well, she was sad about her dead mom, so I had to...
He doubted that would sway his grandfather. Having a half-elf for a
grandson was bad enough when he was the head of the EPA’s council, but at
least Kol’s predilection had always been toward elves. He made an effort to
fit in with the beings who raised him, and sympathy for humans would
be...disappointing even if Kol was known for having feelings that were a bit
too big.
By the time he returned, the house was in a frenzy once again. Green and
red storage tubs had been spread out through the living room and den,
crumpled newspaper was tossed about, and the musty smell of basement
storage permeated the once-pancakey air.
MacLeans were digging out decor and shouting over one another about
where pieces should go. The house probably looked best half an hour ago,
but there was no sign anyone was about to take a step back and announce the
walls and tables were covered in enough plastic garland and glittery, white
cotton balls as if the actual snow outside wouldn’t last through Christmas.
He lingered by the stairs, searching for but not finding Piper, until a
weathered voice called, “Yoohoo, handsome, over here.”
 Piper’s grandmother sat in a big recliner in the room’s corner. She was
every bit of a cliche, dressed in a bright holiday sweater, glasses fallen to the
tip of her nose, and a set of knitting needles in hand with a trail of yarn
ending in a basket at her feet. She curled a bony finger at him, and he had no
choice but to comply.
“What’s your name, honey?”
“Kol,” he told her, though he’d introduced himself the night before, but
someone her age was likely to forget. Maybe she didn’t even remember
meeting him at all.
The old woman shook her head with a weathered laugh from the back of
her throat. “No, hon,” she said, light eyes finding his, “your real name.”
“Kolariel Ven’floria va Tralen,” came out as if he’d been compelled, then
his eyes went wide, and he whipped his head around to make sure no one
else heard.
Piper’s grandmother just nodded, rocking in the recliner as her knitting
needles clacked together, getting back to work.
“I mean, it’s Kolson Stewart,” he sputtered, throat thick and funny,
wondering why in the nether the name he used when he was with his father
hadn’t automatically come out.
“Oh, sure, sure, I got it,” she said and tapped her temple. “That’s all I
needed, you go put yourself to work now.”
Kol checked the living room full of MacLeans again, but they were all
absorbed with their own tasks except for Piper who had appeared at the
room’s far end, arms crossed, glaring right at him. Fuck, what had he done
now?
When she curled her own finger at him, there was none of the warmth of
her grandmother’s beckoning. Hair damp and tied into a long braid, she
looked more awake but much less pleased than she’d been in the kitchen.
Another baggy sweater was covering up most of her again, but this one fell
away to expose one of her shoulders. When he got close, he could smell the
vanillay sweetness of her soap, but there was no sweetness to her words.
“What were you saying to Grams?”
Wouldn’t he like to know? “Nothing. She started it.” Which was true,
sort of.
Piper made a disbelieving sound in the back of her throat. “You better be
nice to her,” she warned.
“Or what?”
 “Just consider yourself threatened, okay?” She jabbed him in the chest
with a finger then pulled it back just as quickly.
Kol felt his jaw tighten, and then he snorted. “I’m sorry, I can’t. Who’s
ever been threatened by someone two feet tall?”
Piper opened her mouth, but one of her relatives descended asking after
ornament hooks, and her rage was immediately covered up by a placid grin
as she left him to help the others.
The morning dragged on into afternoon, and one of the den’s walls was
now covered in Christmas stockings, one for each MacLean in attendance
and a few extras, including one for a Michelle that he had to assume was
Piper’s mother’s from its age. They were all matching, hand knitted with red
and green stripes and each with a unique holiday symbol in its center.
Michelle’s had a pair of bright red cardinals, which made Kol chuckle since
humans so often overlooked that it was only the males that were red, and
Piper’s donned a puppy in a Santa hat, suited more for a young child, but
then that was probably when it was knitted.
Kol’s height was put to work hanging lights and baubles on high. That
allowed him to be close to the tree, which was nice, but not to be close to
Piper, which was also nice since she couldn’t stop scowling at him,
especially when he levied caution at the others to go easy on the spruce’s
needles.
As he reminded one of her aunts for the third time that the tree wasn’t
indestructible, there was a tug at his back, and Piper was there, but this time
she was smiling. “Can I borrow you?” she asked, and if she’d added, pretty
please, with sugar on top, he wouldn’t have been surprised. She hooked her
arm in his and led him out of the room to the ascending staircase, but when
she pulled him around to face her, that glower was plastered back on like it
belonged nowhere else. “What are you doing?”
“This?” He held up the candy cane that hadn’t made it onto the tree
before she took him away from it.
“No, you’re being weird,” she hissed, her back to the others and voice
low.
Kol cringed as he watched one of the toddlers grab onto a hanging
ornament and yank, bending a low bough.
“Are you listening to me?”
“I don’t know how I couldn’t, all you do is yell at me. How much more
is there to do?”
 Her scowl deepened. “We haven’t even gotten the Christmas village out
yet.”
He lifted a finger and poked her in the forehead. “This little crease is
going to end up permanent if you aren’t careful.”
“Stop that!” She swatted his hand away.
Kol laughed, and it felt surprisingly good. He was almost always the
most irritable person in the room, either being picked on by other elves or
dealing with the stress of not meeting expectations, but Piper filled that role
too expertly to be usurped, and if he had to suffer under her complaints, he
might as well have a little fun.
She scrunched up her face as if she might really tell him what was on her
mind and then hefted a sigh, turning to dig through the box at her side.
“Look, doing this is important. It keeps everyone occupied and makes them
feel like a family right away.” From the box, she pulled a length of flocked
greenery dotted with red berries and took it with her as she trudged up the
stairs.
He watched her go, tipping his head, but her too-long sweater blocked
what would have been a nice view. “You’re already a family.”
“Well, sure, but sometimes they need a little help.”
Right on cue, one of the youngest children started crying.
“Damn it, Luke!”
“I didn’t mean to!”
Piper stopped on the mid-stair landing, squeezed her eyes shut, took a
breath, and finally dangled the garland down to him.
Kol made a face at the plastic feel of it in his hands but fed it back up to
her through the spindles in the railing.
“I did ask them to be careful with the tree. Is it doing all right?” she
finally asked, her voice a little softer.
Kol wanted to complain, but trees were a lot hardier than people. “So far,
yes. I checked it this morning, and it’s happy enough.”
“It’s happy?” Her dark brows rose high. “Like, it likes us?”
“I did not say that.” The garland came back down and smacked him in
the nose. “It’s just not dying. Yet.”
That didn’t deter her from smiling, which was as pleasant as it was rare,
and there was a prickling at the back of Kol’s neck similar to when he first
entered Everroot Grove. That was probably good for the tree at the very
least.
 The garland was fed down to him again, but Kol came to a stop, that
magical feeling drained away in an instant. There, jutting out from the edge
of the step, was a...creature. A stuffed creature, a human-shaped creature, but
a creature nonetheless. He picked it up, twiggy limbs covered in red fabric, a
little pointed hat, and a horrifying grin on its plastic face.
“What in the nether is this?”
“What’s wha—oh, put that back! You’re not supposed to touch it, it’s
magic!”
Kol did exactly as Piper said, flooded with bad childhood memories, and
then he realized how absurd it was for a human to say such a thing.
“Magic?”
“Oh, er, no, not like your kind of magic.” She leaned over the railing,
closer to him. “That’s just what they tell the kids to make them behave. He’s
one of Santa’s scouts or something. We call him Buddy the elf...”
Kol clicked his tongue, realizing then what it was meant to be. In the
same moment, so did Piper, and their eyes met. “This is extraordinarily
offensive.”
She looked stricken, but even he couldn’t keep up the grimace he’d
pasted on, and he started laughing again. Gods, it really did feel good to be
the one doing the prodding for once.
Piper grimaced. “Look, I don’t have anything to do with it.” She reached
the last step and tied off the garland.
“You mean there’s something going on around here that you’re not
entirely responsible for?”
“That’s the one thing I refuse to touch.”
Now that he believed as one of her aunts swept over to request Piper’s
help lighting the fireplace.
A few hours later, the tree was covered in glittering baubles but remained
unharmed. Piper’s heavily pregnant cousin was working to even out a
section that the kids had overburdened, and her father and uncle were
untangling an unruly ball of string lights, arguing about who put them away
so poorly.
Kol thoughtlessly picked up an ornament from the coffee table as an
excuse to go over and inspect the branches. Needles littered the hardwoods,
and the bucket could use a little more water, but when he sought out the
threads of magic that would let him check in on the tree, they remained
sound. The alcyon spruce was maybe a little irritated, feeding off the being it
had bound itself to in lieu of its enchanted grove, but was coping well
enough.
Out past the window, the MacLean cabin’s back deck was covered in a
thick dusting of snow, and a downy woodpecker was perched on the railing.
Its head twitched, beady eyes finding Kol’s, and he saw a flash of red in
them. Not a downy one then, despite looking so similar. What are you doing
out of the grove?
“Hey, don’t.”
Piper’s brother stepped in front of Kol. He’d avoided the man most of
the day, failing to befriend him but not for lack of trying. Kol tightened his
jaw and stood straighter, meeting the combative gaze.
“What’s wrong?” called Piper, dodging one of her cousin’s toys flying
through the air and hopping over the tangled string of lights.
Presley snatched the ornament from Kol’s hand so quickly it was like he
had his own magic. He handed it off to Piper.
“Oh.” Her worried brow softened as she cupped her hands around the
ceramic piece, a cardinal in flight on a red ribbon.
“Piper hangs that one,” grunted Presley.
Kol thought he should be annoyed at yet another tradition that somehow
fell on the woman’s shoulders, but he was too taken with how Piper’s eyes
had gone glassy.
“It’s all right, he didn’t know,” she said in quiet defense of Kol, and then
she pushed between the both of them and stepped up to the tree. Piper stood
under where she hung the ornament for a long moment, eyes wide and
round, then quickly turned to the rest of the room. “Who wants leftover
lasagna?”
 image image
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7
image
Seven Seconds in The
Transcendental Plane
image

There were enough MacLeans that diverting them off whatever topic they’d
chosen wasn’t a challenge. Aunt Deb was the only holdout when Kol was
that topic, but Piper diabolically used her own father to throw in her aunt’s
crosshairs, and once she reminded them of the Great Ham Versus Turkey
Debate, the two defended their positions on the best Christmas meat and
couldn’t be distracted.

With her lasagnas finally eaten and the house looking positively festive,
Piper took a break in the kitchen to scrub the soaking pans.

“When does it end?” Kol leaned against the island like he’d been doing a
week’s worth of back-breaking work.

“After today, there are just ten more.” When he rolled his eyes, she huffed,
drying off her hands. “What, do you not like Christmas or something?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, my boyfriend would like Christmas because I love Christmas, so

you do now.” She plucked her planner off the counter and unfolded the
hand-drawn calendar stuck to the inside. “It’s not so bad as long as we stick
to the schedule.”
“You have a schedule?” Kol fell onto a stool, squinting at the script all over
the pages.

“How else would anybody have any fun? It’s simple; most of the events are
a given, like setting up the decorations today or the night we go to A
Christmas Carol or when Michaela comes to visit, and then I just plan
everything else around those dates and work in some time for prep and
clean up and normal chores too—those don’t stop just because everyone is
visiting. In fact, they’re usually worse with everyone here.”

She braced the book on the counter and braced herself as he reached for the
page to flip it. The next few pages were her mother’s, but he was gentle
enough with the corners of the crumpled and stained recipes. “You sure like
to cook, huh? Oh, and not just that, you’re like a stalker.”

Piper clicked her tongue when he flipped the next pages with more aplomb,
looking far too amused at what she’d written.

“You’ve got details on everybody—this might be even better than my

thaumatix. Holden’s allergic to peanuts, Aunt Mindy doesn’t do shellfish or
pineapple, Aunt Susan and Uncle Russ can’t be allowed to talk politics—
yeah, no shit, I could have told you that—and no one’s supposed to bring
up Formula One with Luis?”

“That’s not what it says.” She pointed. “If you have at least an hour to
spare, then you can bring it up. He can talk your ear off about circuit maps,
so be forewarned since you especially have a lot to lose.”

Kol smirked, and she thought it was at her joke, but then he tapped the next
page. “When did you do this?” He’d found the new page she added with his
own name. Though it really wasn’t drawn out neater or more decorative
than any of her other pages, she still felt a little heat in her face at the care
she’d taken to make it look nice. Beneath, she’d jotted: elf, dangerous,
sleeps in his socks, lives in a tree? And then a few blanks to be filled in
about his favorite things.

“This morning.” She snapped the whole planner shut and squeezed it to her
chest. “I mean, you’re here, so I need to keep track of you too.”
“Well, my name’s not spelled with a C, and only one of those things is
completely true.” He crossed his arms looking particularly sure of himself.
“And who has a favorite smell?”

“Most people,” she snapped, hating that he was making her feel
embarrassed for being thorough. “Look, I only wrote those things out of
habit because I do it for everybody else—it’s how I get them gifts and keep
them from being total menaces while they’re here—but you’re more than
welcome to keep your preferences to yourself because I don’t really care, I
just need to pretend like I do.”

“Well, you’re doing a great job, Pipsqueak.” Despite dripping with

sarcasm, Kol’s grin made Piper’s heart flutter like she was sixteen and he’d
just asked her to homecoming.

Oh, damn it, you stop that, she thought, not sure if she meant him or
herself, and she grimaced, tucking away her planner in its special drawer.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and start taking the empty totes back
to the basement?”

He eyed her, and she hoped he might tell her to fuck off so she could be
properly angry with him, but then he stood, saluted her, and sauntered back
out to the hall where the work was waiting for him. Piper made her way
back to the living room to sit on an ottoman beside her grandmother. The
fireplace crackled in the room’s corner, and soft, jazzy music was playing
on the old turntable, probably Aunt Mindy’s doing since she had the best
taste of the lot of them, but it figured since she had married in.

In the cabin’s hollow, the setting sun was already blotted out by the trees,
but the room would be awash in rainbow lights as soon as her father and
Uncle Russ finished replacing the rogue broken bulb.

“How are you doing, honey?” Her grandmother pressed a soft hand to her
arm.

“Great!”
Grams chuckled in that knowing way of hers and then pointed to the
Baby’s First Christmas ornament hanging closest to them. “You know,
when Presley was born, your Uncle Russ called him ugly, and you punched
him right in the knee.”

Piper giggled. “Did I?” She knew, of course, because she’d been told many
times about how she’d defended her infant brother’s honor at just three
years old, but she loved to hear anything her grandmother had to say. They
chatted about more benign things until she was asked about her job. “Oh,
it’s nice to have a seasonal break, you know? Hey, you’re out of tea, want
me to go get you some more?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever said no to a cup of tea, honey.”

Another thing Piper knew for a fact, and she jumped up to trot off to the
kitchen.

Kol was coming from the opposite way, just leaving the basement stairwell.
“What else I can do for you, Pipsqueak?” he whispered, a brow cocked.
“Need a mountain moved or a river diverted?”

Piper clicked her tongue as she slid to the side to get around him.
“Speaking of rivers, you could jump into the Abenaki if you want. I don’t
think it’s frozen over yet, but if it has, even better.”

Kol leaned in close. “Anything for my wonderful girlfriend.”

“Hold it, you two!”

They both came to a halt as Aunt Mindy jumped up from the ground where
she’d been playing with her daughter. She pointed to just above their heads.

Piper’s gaze slid up to the arch she and Kol were standing under. Mistletoe.
Damn it.

Kol’s frosty eyes had found the plastic bit of winter lore too, but he was
grinning viciously.
“Well, go on,” Aunt Mindy urged. Piper took back every kind thought
she’d ever had about the woman—she had bad taste and even worse timing.

Kol’s wide grin shifted, lips coming together, brow cocking even higher.

Any fight Piper might have had left was tied up in a big, red ribbon and
stuffed under the tree much earlier in the day. Squashing their closed
mouths together was all just part of the ruse anyway.

Kol was still bent toward her, so even with his height and constant poking
at the lack of hers, it was easy to push up onto her toes and get close, just
not quite close enough. She took him by the collar, squeezed her eyes shut,
and tugged him down so that their lips met.

It was meant to be a chaste peck and barely one at that—a nothing touch of
one face to another, hopefully obscured just enough to hide that their noses
made more contact than anything else—but Kol had apparently been
surprised, and his mouth fell open.

Before Piper could pull away, Kol’s mouth closed over her bottom lip, and
there was a soft pull, urging her to stay. She meant to release him, but her
fingers curled tighter around his collar and held him there.

It had been a long time since Piper had been kissed, so that was probably it.
It wasn’t that Kol was an exceptional kisser, and it definitely wasn’t
because both of them were much more eager than either realized, but hell,
that had been good.

So good, that Piper did it again.

She didn’t tug on him the second time—she didn’t have to, because he
stayed right there and tipped his head just enough. Their lips met again, and
Kol returned the kiss she gave him, gently raking teeth over her lip when
they finally pulled apart.

Like when he had taken her by the wrist that morning, her body tingled
with the intimacy of a touch she hadn’t felt in so long—maybe not ever like
that. He was a stranger, sure, but when his fingertips slid over her pulse, it
was like he knew exactly how to light up her skin, and his mouth did the
same, passion deeply seated in his kiss but with a familiarity, as if he’d
been giving them to her for a lifetime.

Aunt Mindy squealed, Aunt Deb hollered, and then the lights for the tree
came to life all at once, strobing furiously on their repaired string between
her father and uncle. In the frenzy of the broken moment, Kol straightened
and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Heat prickled along the back of Piper’s
neck, and she remembered suddenly that she had tea to make and swept
away from him. Thank God for Grams.

The evening carried itself on, dinner was a simpler spread of meats and
cheeses Piper put together, and she would have relaxed if she could keep
herself from being caught in Kol’s gaze. She could have stopped looking at
him, of course, but she had to keep track lest they find themselves under the
mistletoe at the same time again.

It didn’t help that when she licked her lips, she could still feel the softness
and heat of his. Relief should have come with shuffling off to sleep, but that
only meant a shared bed awaited them. Silently climbing the stairs together,
eyes averted, they finally settled beneath the duvet, even more room
between them than the night before.

Piper stared at the skylight, willing herself to not look at him, the kiss
replaying in her mind. He hadn’t said a word to her since, so maybe he was
angry about it, but what little she knew about Kol told her that, if he were
mad, he’d just say so. It was much more likely she had done such a poor
job she’d given him secondhand embarrassment.

Piper flushed all over again and squeezed her eyes shut, no longer capable
of standing the silence. “Thank you for your help today,” she croaked out.

“Oh, I didn’t...do much.” Kol’s voice was a throaty rumble.

She dared to peek at him, but he was staring intensely upward, those lips
she missed the taste of drawn into a frown. “But you did,” she said. “You
carried boxes and you,”—kept up the ruse? Faked it for me? Suffered
through kissing me?—“you helped with my family.”
He moved his head in a barely perceptible way, but the frown didn’t go
away. “Well, that’s part of the deal.”

“Right, the deal.” Of course, because it was all fake anyway, and it would
be over in ten more days.
 8

Already Ate Crow

“I don’t know, ask her why.” Kol gestured wildly behind him toward the
cabin beyond the trees. “She kissed me.”
The fehszar chuffed back, great antlered head shaking, and then she
gobbled up the last carrot he’d brought to her.
“It was just because of the mistletoe,” Kol admitted as he paced the
distance between one fir and another, the terrier trying to keep up on his
stubby legs. “But it was so...”
Doc yapped at his feet in a way that vaguely translated to Treat! The
purer the breed, the more stilted their communication, Kol found, but, yes,
that kiss certainly had been a treat. Piper’s lips were small and soft and
round, just like he imagined the rest of her body would feel under his mouth,
but he’d never find out, so he really needed to stop imagining it every time
she scowled at him so he could coax out a smile.
Another night spent hugging the wall beside her left Kol’s whole body
stiff. His next sigh made his lungs ache with the cold, and his fingers were
going numb from pulling out and then stuffing away his thaumatix over and
over. He had no idea what kind of answer about Piper he’d find inside it,
especially when he wasn’t even sure what question he wanted to ask, but he
doubted there was anything that could get her to slow down.
 Piper was always running around, answering questions, cleaning dishes,
fetching things for everyone else, and it made him positively mad. Why
couldn’t she just sit? Not only did it put her in a foul mood that she insisted
on taking out on him, it clearly wasn’t bringing her any of the satisfaction
she was expecting.
I bet I could satisfy her.
Kol pulled off his hat and ran frozen fingers through his hair, pulling it
from its knot and tying it back up. “At least the tree’s still handling things,
which makes one of us.” The spruce was a little more ragged and worn when
he’d checked on it that morning, but with another jolt of his magic, it would
remain alive.
The cabin was buzzing by the time he returned. Piper met him in the
kitchen with a crumbly bone-shaped treat for Doc, already dressed and with
her dark hair pulled back in a snug bun, de facto director of the MacLean
commotion. One of the toddlers came up to her with their coat in hand and
silently asked for her help, so she began buttoning them up as she explained
to Kol that they’d all be heading into town for the day. It was on the
schedule, so why did he look so surprised?
Kol considered pleading that he needed to remain with the tree, but as he
watched Piper be inundated with requests and empty oatmeal bowls, he
realized she might not make it back whole if she went without him. And if
she fell apart, he had a sneaking suspicion the tree would follow soon after.
The MacLeans took an additional hour before they were all finally ready
to leave during which the toddler’s coat came off, was lost, found, and put
back on several times. Why it had buttons and not a zipper, Kol would never
understand. Piper didn’t sit once, proclaiming she could do all the sitting she
wanted in the truck, and scrubbed bowls instead. When the last of the family
was finally filing out the door, Presley lumbered down the stairs.
“Look who almost got Kevin McCallistered.” Piper eyed him as she
dried off her hands.
He held up a set of keys. “You couldn’t go without me—these were in
my pocket.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said with a sigh.
The toaster popped, and her brother pilfered one of the two pieces she’d
made for herself before heading out. Piper took the final one, and they
followed to an old pickup truck with rust under the wheel wells and a faded
stripe painted along its side. Her brother got in the driver’s seat, and just
before she hopped up on the other side, one of her younger cousins came
barreling around the hood and ran right into her. She fell backward into a
pile of dirty snow, and while Kol pulled her back up to her feet, her toast
couldn’t be saved.
“Leave it for the birds,” she said as she climbed into the cab.
This should have endeared her to the many beady eyes gazing out from
the crossing branches overhead, but one piece of toast didn’t make up for a
whole tree.
It was a snug ride, Piper pinching her knees together in the middle of the
truck’s single, long seat. Kol tried to not think about how her thigh rubbed
against his with every bump or how warm that thigh was even with the
thickness of the layers between their skin—not quite as warm as she was
under the shared blanket in her bed but much warmer than the wall. He
lamented her discomfort, but the only place Kol could think to put her would
probably be even worse. Worse for both of them, of course, and her brother
would not be happy to see his sister in Kol’s lap, he was absolutely sure of
that.
Hiberhaven was every bit of a postcard, the pharmacy and library and
community center blending in with the colonial houses that lined the
sidewalks, every door adorned with a wreath, every lamppost a bow. Kol had
done his research before taking to the woods to do his counting and knew
that while the closest human village was small, it attracted an unfair amount
of tourists, especially during the holidays, so it would be overburdened and
under duress. He pulled his beanie down a little tighter as Presley parked,
making sure his ears were tucked away.
The street was just as festive as the interior of the MacLean home.
Leafless trees were strung with lights, and windows were filled with
wrapped packages too pretty to open. Pine permeated the crispness of the air,
and every shop was piping carols through their doors. Few cars drove
through, diverted away from Main Street where pedestrians filled up the
road instead.
Piper’s family was a loud bunch, and they took up the sidewalk en
masse. Piper’s pregnant cousin began complaining of nausea and one of the
younger boy’s nose was running, so she ran up between them and produced
gum and tissues from her purse. She fell behind shortly after, digging
through her bag with her head down. Kol caught her by the elbow and pulled
her out of the way before she wandered diagonally into a pole.
 She shot him a tight glare. “What?”
He gestured to the garland-encircled lamppost inches from her face.
“I saw it.” She went back to searching through her purse and announced
to the group ahead, “Reservations are for five at The Henhouse.” That
seemed to be their cue, and most of the group disbanded.
Piper finally produced a pen from her bag, her planner already tucked
into the crook of her arm, and she started flipping through the pages. She
landed on a massive list, gift ideas written in beside each family member’s
name. When Kol looked up from reading over her shoulder, Presley was
glaring back at him as he walked ahead with their father. “You want the
keys, sis?”
“The weather’s fine, we can just put everything in the bed,” she said, still
absently staring down at her list.
Presley made a pointed effort to scowl a little harder at Kol before
turning around. Difficult, that one, almost as bad as his sister. Kol reached
out and plucked the pen away from Piper, taking her free hand in his.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, brown eyes finally snapping up to
him.
“Holding your hand. Isn’t that what couples do?” When she came to a
full stop in the middle of the sidewalk, his guts went mushy. “It is, uh...it is
what couples do, right?”
“Yeah, holding hands is what couples do.”
Relieved, Kol started down the sidewalk again, and she was forced to
keep up, only stumbling a little as she snapped her planner shut. “Your
brother keeps giving me dirty looks, so I don’t think this will hurt.”
“He can probably just sense the animosity.” She kept her voice low, but
Presley still shot another I-don’t-like-you-and-I-want-you-to-know-it glance
over his shoulder.
“What animosity?” Kol asked through teeth grit in an idiotic grin as he
tugged Piper right up against him. Though he didn’t think he’d pulled her
that hard, she still tripped. “Whoa, careful there, Pipsqueak.”
Piper steadied herself on his arm then quickly corrected, putting space
between them again, but at least she didn’t let go. Hand-in-hand, they
continued down the sidewalk, and it might have felt normal if Kol knew
what normally holding someone’s hand felt like, but instead it just
felt...tingly? That couldn’t be right, but elucidai elves didn’t do very much
touching outside of the bedroom, so he wasn’t sure how public intimacy was
meant to go.
It wasn’t like when she’d kissed him and instinct took over. Kol was
good with his mouth, and he was supposed to be good with his hands too,
but this? With the tiniest bit of effort, he could give her palm a squeeze that
somehow registered as much more intimate than squeezing any of her other
parts.
He didn’t have to worry for long, though, as Piper maneuvered them into
a shop and broke away. Kol was left to follow along, hands stuffed back in
his pockets until after she made a few purchases and he was designated her
official pack mule.
With Kol’s hands occupied, he could only nudge her with an elbow in
warning when she came dangerously close to wandering into another
lamppost, and she didn’t even have her planner out that time. “You want to
maybe take a break?”
“Lunchtime counts as a break and it’s not scheduled for another two and
a half hours—stopping would slow me down now,” she said, voice sounding
far away as she guided them into another store. “This is the best time I’ve
ever made with someone else to carry all the stuff.” Even with her features
weary, she shot him a satisfied smirk, and then she bumped into a blowup
snowman and apologized to it.
After a few more shops, Piper was checking off her list as she drove
them ever onward when her boot caught on the curb. Kol dropped
everything in favor of catching her around the waist before she went
headfirst into a mailbox. “What in the nether, Pipsqueak? You’re clumsier
than a newborn fehszar today.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted, but she didn’t immediately push away from him
like before. Piper leaned into his hold and pressed a hand to her stomach,
and he noted how much darker her eyes appeared, pupils huge.
“You’re not fine.” Kol glanced up and down the road, but none of her
family was about. Grumbling, he hauled her to the nearest bench and
plopped her down. She was so stunned, she didn’t move, and he was quick
enough to pile the bags around her, hemming her in before she could pop
back up to her feet and demand the things she had to do were more
important than her own wellbeing. “Stay.”
Piper’s face squashed up with indignation. “I’m not Doc.”
 “Stay,” he growled, and the look was wiped off her face. Kol stalked off
to the bakery just behind her bench, and when he returned, was pleasantly
surprised to find her unmoved. It was a little less pleasant that she was
drooping backward, eyes half closed, but the moment she noticed he was
shoving something into her face, she sat up.
“What’s this?” Piper took the wrapped cinnamon bun from him like she
was afraid it might explode.
“Gods, are you really so woozy you don’t recognize food?”
“I know it’s food.” Her brow furrowed, which was another small relief if
only for its familiarity, and she pulled back the sticky paper. “But it’s for
me?”
Kol gestured vaguely to the nobody else around. “Obviously.”
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t eat,” he barked then cleared his throat. “And if you
get too run down, I can only imagine the tree will start to feel it too.”
Piper stared back, bewilderment run through her features.
“Eat.”
She stuffed the bun into her mouth like he’d crammed it there himself.
The whole thing didn’t fit, but she filled up her cheeks with a massive bite.
A brief thought of what else she could fit in her mouth passed through his
mind at the sight of icing smeared on her nose and chin, and then he busied
himself with gathering up all the bags again.
“I’m taking these to the truck. You stay here until I get back.”
Piper’s mouth was too full to protest, but he was confident in how
focused she’d suddenly become on the pastry that it would keep her in place.
It wasn’t a long trek to the truck, and when he returned, she was dutifully
still seated. All the hostility had gone from her face, but so had the
wooziness, and as she gazed out at the people passing on the street, she
actually did look, for the briefest of moments, relaxed.
I guess I really can satisfy her.
Kol slowed his steps, knowing the moment she noticed him, she’d lose
that faraway, thoughtful look, the one he’d caught a glimpse of in the kitchen
when she was making pancakes. She swallowed the last bit of cinnamon roll
and stuck a finger in her mouth. Watching her absently lick at the icing, Kol
could feel her lips all over again and lamented he hadn’t gotten the feel of
her tongue—the tongue that was now lapping at her thumb.
 His fingers flexed in the pockets of his coat just like when she kissed
him. He wanted then to take her around the waist and pull her close, to give
her exactly what she needed, a thing she was far too afraid to ask for let
alone to demand. He knew it was only because it had been so long, and it
was inevitable his libido would someday make a not-so-gallant return, but
why the fuck now? And why was it inspired by someone who clearly loathed
him?
As if she could feel the intensity of his gaze and the circles his tongue
made on her skin in his mind, Piper turned. He expected anger, for her to
taunt him about staring like a creep or to snipe at him about hurrying up
because she had things to do, but instead she just held up the empty
wrapping triumphantly, and she smiled. “Can I get up now?”
Kol bit his cheek, liking too much the hidden sweetness in how
sardonically she asked for a permission she didn’t really need. He nodded
but followed close behind when she swept to the nearest trashcan. She was
much surer on her feet though, and he carried on behind her as they took a
different road.
Piper walked with a purpose once she was fueled, planner out again,
crossing off names, and this time she avoided every pole and sign with
precision that was impressive for a human. Soon Kol found his hands full of
her purchases again, but she was chatting to him about what stores she was
planning to go to next as if she didn’t despise his company. Then she slowed,
lifting her eyes from the lists to the nearest shop’s window, odd since she
hadn’t hesitated going inside anywhere else.
“Are you malfunctioning, Pipsqueak? Don’t tell me the food’s already
worn off.”
Piper rolled her eyes, but she cracked a grin. “No, it’s just that we have
the same one.” She stepped right up to the display and pointed out the
miniature buildings nestled into white felt behind the glass. The village was
set aglow from inside its windows, each piece an expertly crafted moment
trapped in ceramic. “It usually goes right on the mantle, but nobody’s
brought it out of the basement yet. It probably got buried last year.” The
window fogged up with her breath. “It’s so pretty, isn’t it? Mom would move
the little people around every couple of days and tell us they came alive at
night. I guess it’s kinda like that shelf-elf thing, huh?”
“Did they snitch on you to Santa too?”
 Piper shook her head, smile growing. “No, no, they had their own drama
to deal with. Like that couple lost their dog once, and those two kids were
long lost cousins but didn’t know it. Oh, look, there’s my favorite carousel
horse, the one painted like a zebra.”
Kol watched the minuscule horses slowly spin, but only long enough to
see what she pointed out, captivated instead by the glee on her face. “I bet
you named every one of those.”
“Oh, no I didn’t. We don’t actually have the carousel. It’s not practical.”
Kol snorted. “Nothing about a tiny village that you set out at Christmas
time for no other reason but to be dusted and stared at is practical.”
“Well, I know that.” She shook herself of the dreamy gaze she’d been
giving the whole display and began to trot off. “It’s just that a town doesn’t
need a carousel to function. They need a bakery and a school and a post
office—”
“And they need a little fun.”
“Well, fun isn’t always in the budget. But lunch is, so come on.”
There was a deli a few roads over, and while Kol thought at first she was
crazy for wanting to sit outside with their soup, he eventually saw why. Off
the back of the restaurant was a deck overlooking a massive lake. Behind,
mountainous rock climbed up and away, dotted with pines. Skaters carved
their way across the shallower, frozen parts of the lake, and the sun glinted
off the ice.
“I never get sick of this view,” she said, sighing into her soup. “I’m here
all summer, and every day is more beautiful than the last.”
“I can’t really imagine you laying out on the beach all day.” Kol could,
however, imagine her stripped down to a bikini.
“Well, I definitely don’t do that! I’m a park interpreter during the warm
months, but it’s just a part-time position. There might be something full-time
when Sheila retires, but I don’t know if they’ll hire me.” She snorted. “I
mean, I cut down a seven-thousand-year-old tree, so clearly I’m not
qualified.”
Kol frowned, chasing around a piece of broccoli with his spoon. He
didn’t like that he’d put that thought into her head. “There wasn’t really a
way for you to tell how old it was,” he mumbled.
Piper just sipped at her soup, both hands wrapped around the bowl as she
held it under her nose. Her dark eyes had lightened, held open wide as she
watched the ice, and a breeze caught at strands that had come loose from her
bun. “Skating was Dad’s favorite, but he says he’s too old now. He’s only
fifty-five.” She laughed quietly to herself. “I guess it does hurt when you
fall, but it’s worth it when you get going fast, and the wind is in your face
like you’re flying.”
Kol blinked—was that...was that fun she was referring to? He put down
his soup and nudged her. “Let’s go.”
“What, out there?” Piper balked and shook away that lovely, inspired
look from her face. “There’s already a day set aside for ice skating:
Christmas Eve-Eve.” She pulled out her planner again and showed him the
schedule.
“Come on, Pipsqueak. I saw how much of your list you already crossed
off. There can’t be anything else that important on it.”
“Everything on the list is important. And you don’t know, there might be
even more pages you haven’t seen yet.”
“Great Transcendental Gods, strike me down now if she’s got more
pages.”
But Piper was intent, only giving them five more minutes to finish off
their soup before hustling to the other side of town, the lake and fun
forgotten.
The warmth from lunch lingered in Kol’s belly as he walked at Piper’s
side, and it only intensified when she shared with him more details about the
shops they passed. One time Presley stole a candy bar from A Thing or Two
and their father made him return it and apologize—he’d never gone back in
since. And there was the dentist who fixed Piper’s tooth that summer she
went over the handlebars of her bike on the mountain trails. She laughed
about that, and the sound was as surprising as the fact she was laughing at
all.
Piper brought him to another store, the front window littered with balls
of yarn and bolts of fabric, the sign above the door reading Sewin’ Love.
Instead of heading in, she came to an abrupt stop and turned to him. “Can
you, um...leave me alone for a little bit?”
Whatever flame she’d lit in his center was immediately snuffed out, and
he held up the bags she’d been making him carry. “I’ll just take these back to
the truck then?”
“Great idea.” She nodded. “And don’t hurry back.”
Kol grunted in agreement and stalked away. There was no use in being
annoyed with her for sending him off, he knew, since the ruse didn’t need to
be kept up when her family wasn’t around, but disappointment still twisted
inside him, squirming around like the funny feeling that came with hearing
her laugh and seeing her smile, and his annoyance only grew at all the
foreign nonsense jumbling up his guts.
With the bags secured in the truck’s bed, Kol couldn’t just turn back
around—she’d asked to be left alone, and since she was no longer in danger
of passing out, he’d oblige. So Kol trudged away from the busy part of town
to find someplace to be alone.
 image image
image

9
image
Seemingly Benign Bargains
image

“Of course I can’t get a hold of him! Elves probably don’t even have cell
phones.” Piper stuffed her own back into her bag and stomped up the road.
She’d finished her shopping and delivered everything to the truck, but Kol
was nowhere to be found. Maybe he would show up at The Henhouse, and
maybe he would even be on time, but without her reminders? No one else
ever managed that, and why Kol would be any different—

She came to a stop and raked fingers down her face. I shouldn’t be mad at
him, she thought, it’s my fault he doesn’t know. And maybe...maybe Kol
was a little different. He wasn’t entirely human, so at least he had that
going for him.

Piper spotted Luis wrangling his toddler down the road and knew more
family members would be following just behind, so she bolted into a
narrow alley between two of the shops. If she was spotted on the street
alone, she didn’t know how she’d explain away losing her boyfriend. Well,
he’s not actually real, so if I don’t think about him, he just sort
of...disappears?

No, that wouldn’t work, especially since she had been thinking about Kol
even when she’d sent him away which was almost as embarrassing as
admitting she’d misplaced him. It was just that she didn’t know his favorite
color or what kind of pattern he would prefer, so she had to guess as she
perused the shop, and that took time. It took even more time when her mind
wandered back to being pushed down onto a bench and force-fed a pastry.
It was a lot of sugar for first thing in the morning, but Piper couldn’t fault
the sweetness.

The alley spilled out onto a service way filled with dumpsters and back
doors, significantly less charming than the cheerful decor of Hiberhaven’s
main thoroughfare. She hurried away from the direction she’d seen her
family and came out at an empty crossroads, a row of townhouses across
the way and a quiet street snaking off between them toward the trees.

Yup, that’s almost definitely where he went. Or, it’s where I would go, at
least. She squinted, and she could see the oversized bootprints in the light
dusting of snow.

A sparse forest sloped gently downward at the dead-end street past the
townhouses. She hadn’t realized how perpetual the holiday music had been
until she stood alone in the new quiet of late afternoon. A brisk breeze
nudged at her back like Kol had done so many times that day, guiding her
out of harm’s way when she’d been queasy and distracted by hunger. She
hadn’t meant to go so dumb when he’d ordered her to sit, but no one ever
really told Piper what to do, and she was stumped to not have to make a
decision. It was nice to have someone bring something to her for a change.

The wind picked up, and the bare trunks creaked. These trees weren’t
magic, not like the one back home, but they still gave her a shiver. She
could feel the spruce’s magic the moment they left the house, or the lack of
it really, and she missed the calming vibration it gave off in the cabin. But
now there was something else that prickled up the back of her neck in its
place. Only this wasn’t as joyful, and it definitely wasn’t as soothing. In
fact, it was sort of...angry?

Piper turned around because even if one isn’t explicitly told to look out,
sometimes one just knows. That’s Magic, it just doesn’t have a voice to
speak, so it does other things like make the hair on the back of one’s neck
raise or stab one’s mind with seemingly unfounded anxiety.

So Piper turned, anxiety completely founded, and while looking only gave
her a brief head start, that was much better than no head start at all.
Teeth and wings and necks charged from on high. Piper shrieked and
bolted, boots taking her into the forest with abandon. She dodged trees with
the expertise that only a woman eluding a gaggle of geese could muster.
Well, they weren’t a gaggle, not when they were in the air—then geese
were called a skein—but that knowledge was absolutely no help when
being chased. Their ability to fly really only made things worse as she
maneuvered between the trees and glanced back to see the damn things roll
and twist to avoid the branches just as easily.

Geese! What the hell were geese doing chasing her? Grey feathered, the
tips of their wings glistened white, but there was no way snow could hang
on at their speeds. And while geese did have serrated bills that looked a bit
like teeth, these were sporting elongated, sharpened fangs that she wouldn’t
have believed she was seeing clearly if one wasn’t right behind her,
chomping down on the tail of her scarf.

Piper surged forward with another scream. She knew she was supposed to
stand her ground against geese, they were mostly hiss and very little hit, but
never had one come at her so intensely, nor had she been so overwhelmed
with the fear these ones inspired, so she just kept running over rocks,
through brambles, and finally right over the edge of an embankment.

The only upside of Piper tumbling onto her backside was that the flock lost
her, disappearing over the trees as she slid deeper into the forest. She
clawed at the earth, but there was no stopping until she reached the bottom
of the small gorge. Relief burst in her chest when she landed even with pain
shooting up her back until there was a honk. It was distant, echoing out
somewhere above the trees, and then there was a second in response,
followed by a third, and if she thought she knew what angry honking
sounded like before, she was profoundly corrected with the sound of a
mounting attack.

Piper scrambled to her feet, the setting sun blinding through the leafless
branches overhead, shadows swooping through the brightness. She turned
and tried to climb, but her feet wouldn’t find purchase in the softness of the
snow on the embankment. She grabbed onto the nearest root and hoisted
herself upward, but it snapped, and she went careening flat onto her back.
Left with half a root in hand, she groaned. The trees have turned on me!

A mass of grey feathers descended, and Piper wrapped arms over her face,
pulling her knees to her chest. Her jacket tore as bills—no, fangs—bit at
her. Piper thrashed, but despite hearing a distressed honk, her fist didn’t
connect with anything, and all the light was blotted out by shadow. “Oh,
my god, fuck off!”

“But I’m trying to save you!”

Piper sucked in a shocked breath and opened her eyes.

There Kol stood above her, a fallen branch wound back over his shoulder,
feathers plastered to it, and horror painted on his face. “That’s going to piss
them off,” he murmured then reached down and grabbed the front of her
coat.

Piper was hoisted to her feet, and Kol gripped her hand, breaking into a
sprint. Though he was significantly faster, she managed to keep up with
only a quick look back at the rallying geese, beady eyes flashing red.

“What...is...happening?” she huffed through lost breath.

“I told you: birds!” Kol took a sharp turn and yanked her along.

“Birds don’t have teeth,” she shrieked, dragged to the ground as Kol
dropped to his knees behind a fallen tree.

He ripped off a glove, slapped his palm on the massive log, and the earth
beneath them rumbled. The log cracked under his hand, and Piper threw
herself against Kol at the sight of gnarled tendrils springing out of dead
wood. There was heat and static as what Piper was coming to learn was
magic filled the very air. The sounds of their pursuers still echoed in the
wood, and the world around them darkened as branches thickened in every
direction. She threw both arms around Kol’s middle and squeezed,
shrieking in terror into his shoulder.
And then, everything stopped—the sounds of creaking limbs and beating
wings, and the prickly feel of magic sizzling over her skin—but Piper
remained clinging to Kol, face buried against him, holding her breath. He
was the source of every terrible thing, she knew that, and yet the thought of
being separated from him filled her with utter dread.

Kol was taking deep, hard breaths, each one rising and falling against her
body, but she didn’t let go. His arm came around to gently press itself to her
back, and Piper eased her head away from his shoulder to take in what had
happened.

An arch of earthen branches twisted and coiled tightly around one another
in a dome only a few inches overhead. Light peeked in through small
slivers like stars ripping across a deeply brown-black sky. “Whoa,” she
heard herself say, gaze traveling along the dome to where it met the earth in
every direction.

Piper’s wonder was chased away by a thump against their protective

barrier. She shrieked and tightened her grip on Kol’s sweater, her arms
finding their way inside his coat, pulling herself against him once again.
“What are they?”

“Hmm?” Despite how close Kol was, his voice sounded far away, barely a
rumble in his chest.

“The birds,” she whispered, shaking his middle. “They’re not birds.”

Kol groaned and pulled away, raising a hand to the wall of the dome.
“They’re stymphalian geese.” A glow from his fingers made the knotted
limbs spread just enough to see through. “And they are not happy.”

An eye appeared in the opening and was swiftly replaced by a hissing bill,
the tongue inside protruding and covered in spines. Piper wished he hadn’t
let go, pressing her back against the dome. “What the hell?”

“Close—they’re from the nether, and there are lots of guys with horns
down there.” Kol twisted further away from her in the cramped space to
peer out the hole he’d made. “Wait, are those...pixies?”
As the honking died off, the muffled shouting of tiny, high-pitched voices
sounded from the other side of the branches. Piper sat forward on instinct
and craned her neck to see out the miniature window as well. “You mean
like fairies?”

A blur of violet zipped up to the hole. Broad and flat, the purple face was
fifty percent mouth, wide and filled with dozens of pointed teeth at jagged
angles. Six eyes peered back, each wholly black and blinking all in
succession. The rest of its egg-shaped head was covered in spikes or maybe
scales, it was hard to tell because Piper gasped and threw herself backward
in the cramped space.

“No, I mean pixies. They aren’t faeries, but they’re more reasonable than
stymphalians.”

The pixie screeched, followed by a series of nonsense sounds.

“Well, slightly more reasonable.”

Piper’s heart was finally slowing, realizing that the things outside couldn’t
reach where they were. “What’s it saying?”

“I’m not entirely sure. Pixinese evolves so rapidly, no one can ever keep up
well enough to translate, but I get the feeling it’s angry.” Kol pulled his
device from the inside pocket of his coat, and Piper squashed up against
him to see the screen. Symbols and images flew over the display as he
swiped until a picture of a pixie showed up, this one closer to blue in skin,
its smile a little sweeter if still full of terrifying choppers.

He scrolled upward, muttering to himself as he read, and Piper tried to

follow along, but got caught on the words charlatanism and abduction.
Then another pixie slammed into the first, and the two squawked into their
sanctuary.

“Yeah, all right, all right.” Kol tucked away his device and sat forward on
his knees, awkward in the tight space. “Look, we’re coming out, okay?”

“We are?” Piper gripped his arm with both hands.

Kol turned, his face close. He tipped his head down, gaze traveling over his
arm and how she clung onto him. “This shelter isn’t going to last much
longer,” he murmured, heat from his breath falling over her face. “Don’t
worry, I’ll take care of them.”

Piper was still going to worry because she was one of those humans who
couldn’t really exist without worrying at least a little, but she also trusted
that Kol would do as he said, so she nodded and eased off of his arm.

Kol’s fingers traced over the weaving tendrils, and the bark receded into the
fallen log at their backs. Blustery cold swept over the two, their warm
bubble popped, but then Kol was quick to shove Piper behind him as they
stood, holding firmly onto her arm.

Before them were assembled six geese, each more menacing than the last.
Their bills were hemmed with fangs, and their feathers were indeed tipped
with something metallic and shiny. Heads bobbed on snake-like necks, and
they eyed the two as if they might attack at any moment.

Riding on the backs of four of the nightmare geese were what Kol had
called pixies. Varying shades of purple and only about six inches tall, they
glared with all three sets of their eyes. Two more were hovering before Kol,
iridescent wings beating furiously at their backs. One wore a tattered vest
made from some kind of leather-looking material and the other was covered
in pieces of spiked armor. Both immediately started in, pointing with four-
fingered hands as they blathered, and too often those tiny fingers pointed
right at Piper.

“What do they want?” she asked as she peeked around Kol.

“Well, they know you took the tree, so I’m guessing they want you in
trade.”

“Me? You said they’re from hell—I don’t want to go there! Can’t you tell
them it’s Christmas and they’re supposed to be forgiving?”

Kol chuckled. “I said they’re from the nether, but they do live here now.
Well, in the Everroot Grove, which is where they’d probably take you and
do gods know what. You’ll get your tree back,” Kol told them, “it’s just
going to take some time.”

The pixies didn’t seem pleased, even more tiny teeth bared as they shouted
back, hovering closer to his face. The grip he had on Piper’s arm tightened.

“I’m sorry,” she said even as she hid behind Kol. “But can’t I just borrow it
for a little while?”

The volume on the pixie shouting turned way up and sounded a lot like a
No.

“They want collateral, something of great importance.” Kol dug into his
pockets but only revealed a wallet, his thauma-thing, and his gloves. “Can I
owe you one?”

This time when the pixies expressed their unintelligible displeasure, Kol’s
brow narrowed, but his attention had diverted to the hell-geese. He tugged
Piper with him as he walked closer to the birds, and she leaned backward
but allowed herself to be towed along.

Kol knelt before one of the creatures. Its bill was held open in a hiss, head
serpentining and prepared to strike, but Kol just reached out and gently
lifted one of its wings. “Sorry about this,” he said, running fingers over the
feathers as he spread them out.

Piper remained on her feet, looming over Kol’s back with her arms tucked
in. She knew enough about wildlife to understand something was wrong,
but she doubted even the county rehabilitators would know what to do with
a goose from the underworld.

But Kol seemed to, once again pulling out his magic tablet and placing it
directly on the ground. He swiped around on the screen, and lineaments lit
up in the snow, snaking away into the forest. “Stay here,” he said to Piper
as he stood, and then to the pixies, “if you take her, I will find you, and I
will bring a much bigger stick.”
Piper’s objection caught in her throat when he made eye contact before
walking off. His gaze pierced hers just like when she’d been sat on the
bench, but instead of some obscure threat, she was reassured. Oh, all right,
things will be fine then, her own voice said into her head, and though she
didn’t entirely believe it, it was said all the same.

As Kol disappeared, following one of the green, glowy lines his device
magically conjured, Piper took stock of the pixies and Hades’ personal
geese surrounding her. Remember the stick, she wanted to say, but instead
just smiled awkwardly as one of the pixies zipped around her like the
world’s tiniest flying shark. Another came to hover before her face.

Six eyes looked her up and down—or, she assumed, it was hard to tell
without pupils—and then its massive mouth said something indiscernible.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, but if it matters, I really am sorry about
the tree.”

More blabbering, angrier blabbering.

“We are taking good care of it. Well, Kol is. He’s good at that, apparently.”
She looked after where he had disappeared, a slight ache forming in her
chest. “We’ll make sure it gets back where it belongs, but for now it’s
happy, and it looks really pretty with all the ornaments and lights—”

A little finger was shoved in her face, and the blabbering turned to snarls.

“Yup, you’re probably right, it’s not for decoration.” She pressed the tips of
her gloved fingers together and squinted. “But it does look really pretty
anyway!”

As the pixie grumped, another one buzzed up to her and began poking
around at her jacket.

“Um, excuse me?” She leaned away but kept her boots firmly planted. Two
more pixies darted toward her as the first dug into one of her pockets, and
then there was just a blur of violet and iridescence swirling around her as
she felt herself be tugged in every direction. “Remember the big stick!” she
finally shouted, covering her face and squeezing her arms into her sides.

The whirlwind stopped, and when she peeked between her fingers, one of
the pixies was hovering before her and holding up a polished piece of
brown agate.

“You stole that out of my bag!” Piper pulled open her purse but already
knew exactly where it came from. There was only one like it, and she and
her mother had found it together two decades ago on a hike in the very
same woods. She snatched at the stone, but it was pulled out of her reach
and then tossed from one pixie to another.

Piper whirled around, jumping to the height the agate was thrown, but the
pixies were so much quicker than she could follow, and she only managed
to lose her balance as the hell geese hissed with more mirth than malice.

Piper got back to her feet, balling up her fists and glaring at the one she’d
decided was their leader. “Okay, look, I really am sorry about the tree, but
can you please give that back? It’s really important to...” Piper took in a
slow breath and then let it out. “It’s important, just like your tree. Right.
That’s what you want, isn’t it? Collateral until the tree’s returned.”

The pixie tipped its head and nodded, catching the agate when it was tossed
to him and clutching it to his chest.

Piper didn’t think it terribly fair, but there was no other way, and it was
probably a little better than going to that nether place. “I understand,” she
said, swallowing. “Just please be careful with it.”

The pixie eyed her, something like appreciation on its face, and then held
out the polished stone and dropped it.

Piper squeaked in horror, but before it could plummet to the ground, the
agate disappeared in a puff of glitter.

“Did you send it to hell?” she asked weakly.

“I told you they’re originally from the nether.” Kol walked out of the
depths of the forest, hands full of some sort of pulpy goop. The glowy lines
had disappeared from the snow, the ingredients he’d gone out to find
presumably squashed up in his hands. He knelt at the goose’s side again,
and it extended its wing willingly this time as he applied the poultice.

She watched Kol’s long fingers move carefully along the feathers as he
spread the mixture, adept and measured. She felt them around her hand
again, the surprise at being touched at all, and then how quickly it became
familiar and welcome to have him so close, which was ludicrous! But as
her gaze lingered on the way his fingers slid through the poultice, her hands
warmed with the memory of his touch, and then so did everything else, just
like when she’d pressed up against him under the branches.

“Give it an hour, and you should be able to fly again,” Kol said, breaking
Piper of a daydream where they might have been pressed against one
another with fewer layers on. “Now, let’s get to negotiating. You can’t have
the tree, but I’ve had this hat for years, and—”

“I took care of it,” Piper cut in, and the pixies nodded, looking almost as
friendly as the one depicted in Kol’s tablet.

The half-elf’s gaze darted between them. “You bartered with the pixies?”

Piper shrugged. “Well, yeah. I mean, it’s not my first deal with a little
magic guy.”

Kol snorted. “You didn’t accidentally give something intangible away, did
you? Like your voice or your firstborn?”

They remained locked in a staring contest of sorts until Piper felt compelled
to shout, “Of course not!”

Finally, Kol dropped another one of those heavy sighs. “Well, if we leave
now, I think we’ll get back in time to meet your family for dinner.”

Piper swallowed. “Oh, my god, I actually forgot about that.” To be fair,

she’d forgotten about a lot of things when she thought she was going to be
murdered by fanged geese.

“Well, you’re welcome for remembering.”

Piper should have scowled at him again, but instead, her brain lit up and
she grinned stupidly. He remembered all on his own.
 image image
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10
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Too Much Attention
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Alcyon spruces were much better at dealing with stymphalian-goose-riding

pixies than humans were, but Kol expected both to turn into weeping
willows after Piper’s near abduction. She surprised him though, bright and
cheery with her family at dinner and then giddy while the two of them
stuffed her purchases into her closet for wrapping later.

When he returned from showering, he anticipated the day’s trauma would

really sink in, and she would berate him with an endless string of questions
as she searched for comfort amongst the madness into which she’d been
flung. Maybe she would even sit close to him and want him
to...perhaps...hold her hand again? But instead, he just found her passed out
on the bed, snoring quietly into her pillow. He’d carefully crawled over her,
but she didn’t stir. So much for her Grinch-detection system.

Kol should have been relieved for the silent night, body still sore and
drained from the poultice he’d made to heal the injury he’d given that
goose, but he lay awake, dwelling on the memory of Piper wrapping herself
around him. She’d done it solely for protection, of course, instinctively
glomming on like a baby emerald-horned opossum, but she’d sure gotten
over that need quickly, and he wasn’t...he wasn’t disappointed about it or
anything, just...just confused.

You have very big feelings, he heard in his mind by too many stoic, elven
voices, and he did his best then to shrink them. Huh, yeah, weird, whatever.
The tree too was in relatively good shape considering the strength of their
bond, but Kol reasoned that since Piper’s near breakdown happened outside
the house, the spruce was largely unaware. Unfortunately, Piper didn’t plan
on spending much time away from the house, so her big feelings needed
even closer management. There was agitation in the spruce’s limbs the next
morning, a sort of stiffening that would lead to splinters if he wasn’t
careful, so Kol pumped the tree full of a photosynthetic spell and refilled
the water in its base.

When he went to the kitchen, he found Piper with her brows knit and lips
pursed, just as agitated and stiff. She had apparently exhausted her allotted
merriment the night before and was back to her grumpy old self, cleaning
up after her breakfast casseroles were devoured.

“Good morning, Pipsqueak,” he lilted, watching her stiffen further at the

playfulness in his voice.

She grunted back. Bad morning, then.

Kol gathered up the abandoned plates from breakfast and started filling the
dishwasher at her side, gaze flicking to the window over the sink and the
darting forms of her younger cousins in the yard. “Is everyone out back?”

“Yeah, the snow that fell last night is apparently good for balls.”

Kol blinked. “For what?”

“Balls. For fighting?” She dumped out a pan that had been soaking and
clicked her tongue at the caked-on eggs then caught his unwavering gaze.
“Oh, my god, Kol, for snowball fights. You’re just the worst Christmas elf,
aren’t you?”

Kol shushed her, pulling his hat down, but not even Grandma Tilda was
tottering around inside to hear. He went up behind Piper anyway, keeping
his voice low. “I’m not a Christmas elf.”

She chuckled as she scrubbed at the crusty bits on the pan, and the sound
vibrated right through him as he inched even closer to her back. “Sure
you’re not, Buddy.” She tossed a grin over her shoulder, dark eyes honing
in on him, and for a split second she was as cheerful as she’d been the night
before.

Piper’s bare arms worked at the pan as she returned to cleaning. She was
wearing loose pajama pants low on her hips and another tight tank top, but
there was no way she was cold after all the work she’d been doing at the
oven. He could feel the residual heat himself as his gaze fell over her
shoulder to the valley between her breasts.

He caught himself returning her laughter then, having gotten dangerously

close. Given another inch, he would have pressed her right to the counter
and himself against her, and then what?

Get told to fuck off, probably.

“Oh, you’re doing it wrong,” she groused, nudging him away to rearrange
the bowls he’d put in the dishwasher, reverting once again to Pissed-Off-
Piper.

Kol left her and crossed the kitchen to the little eat-in area in its corner.
Hung on the wall were a number of photographs, improving in quality as
the years went by, each depicting a Christmas gone past. He could identify
Piper in all of them by her massive, dark eyes and genuine smile. She was
usually squashed up against her mother with whom she shared olive skin
and dark hair unlike the other MacLeans who were pale and freckled. “You
know for someone who loves Christmas so much, you sure are a Scrooge.”

“Excuse me?” She stood straight and whirled around to glare at him all
Scroogily. “Ebenezer Scrooge is a stingy, capitalist pig who has to be
threatened with his own mortality just to give health care to his single
employee. How am I anything like that?”

“He’s a pig? I thought he was a duck.”

She just stared at him, blinked, and then threw her hands up. “He’s a
fictional character! Sometimes he’s Michael Caine and sometimes he’s Bill
Murray, but he’s never me! I love feeding people.”
“All right, all right, give me a break, Pipsqueak, I haven’t seen it since I
was a kid. The point is that you’re so cranky now, but you used to not be.
Look how happy you are in this picture. You need to be ghost-of-
Christmas-past-ed.”

“Do I?” She crossed her arms and leaned back against the sink, eyes
narrowed under heavy, angry brows. “Maybe my dead mom can play that
role.”

“Oh, damn it.” Kol cleared his throat and scoured the last five photos. “No,
you’re smiling in these too, and they happened...after—hey, where were
you in this one?” He moved a chair to get close to the photo in question,
counting the MacLeans and identifying each one, her mother included, but
Piper was nowhere to be found.

Piper’s whole demeanor changed, her anger gone as she fidgeted near the
sink. “That was an off year. Only one I ever missed.”

The next photo did have Piper in it, but not her mother. Her mother wasn’t
in any of the other photos, in fact. Shit, this conversation is not going to
smooth things over. “You know what? We should go outside too and fight
with balls.”

“Don’t have time.” Piper bent over the dishwasher again to do more
reorganizing.

“Bullshit.” Kol hurried to the counter and snatched her planner, flipping to
the current day. “Wrap presents, do laundry, shovel the driveway, make a
grocery list—other people can do all this.”

She scoffed. “I’d like to see them try. And I have to add do the dishes now.”

Kol grunted, abandoning her planner and rounding to the other side of the
dishwasher. He grabbed her arms, and she fell still. Eyes popped up to find
his, wide and alarmed. He wanted to tell her to stop, march herself outside,
and have at least a little mandatory fun, but he could feel the anxiety from
the undone chores coursing through her as plainly as he knew he would feel
it in the spruce.
“I’ll make you another deal, Pipsqueak. You get ten minutes to show me
exactly how you want the dishwasher loaded, and I’ll commit it to memory,
but in trade, you come outside with me.”

Piper glanced to the window, apprehension carved into every one of her
features, suddenly so much softer than they’d been all morning. One of her
older cousins fled by carrying his daughter on his shoulders, and the corner
of Piper’s mouth twitched before falling back into a frown. She started to
shake her head, and he could see the excuses building themselves behind
her eyes.

“And you can throw as many balls at my face as you want.”

When Piper finally gave in, it was like someone had plugged in the string
lights wrapped around Kol’s innards, and everything lit up. She sank, and
she snorted out a giggle, and she said, “Fiiiiiine,” and it didn’t matter that
she’d been angry with him or that he’d made her think about her dead
mother again, all that mattered was that he’d gotten her to smile, and the
world was a tiny bit brighter.

Piper packed and rounded snow even more skillfully than she loaded a
dishwasher. Cartoonishly perfect spheres were stacked at her knees in a
lethal pyramid of weaponized snow, and she crouched behind a log at the
edge of the wood, waiting. It turned out that she had no interest in belting
Kol with her ammunition, instead directing him to follow along behind her
and covertly modify her hiding places. He wasn’t particularly good with the
snow anyway, it was water after all, and he wasn’t a lorelei—he was an elf,
and only half of one at that. His magically-assisted aim was true when she
offered him one of her well-formed missiles, but he pretended to be much
worse, preferring to assist her instead, and not needing the bad blood that
nailing Presley in the back of the head would harbor.

But it didn’t really matter how terrible Kol was at making snowballs or how
embarrassing it was to get pelted by her cousins, because Piper was
laughing. He watched her face go pink from the cold and then red from
breathlessness as she ran and shouted and managed to sneak attack just
about every MacLean in the yard.
And the MacLeans took the whole thing rather seriously. Presley remarked
how she “apparently hadn’t forgotten” after sitting out of the games for so
many years right after he got bashed three times in a row. Kol had trouble
keeping up as she darted from tree to tree, replenished her pile, and went
right back to lobbing snow in a flash. When she unloaded the last of her
ammunition on her uncle, she fled with Kol on her heels, around the copses
and deeper into the forest where it was quiet and they were alone.

“All right, lieutenant, pay attention, because I have a plan.” Piper fell to her
knees again and packed snowballs at a dizzying rate. “We haven’t nailed
Noah, Luke, or Holden yet, so you’re going to boost me up into this tree,
and I’ll be lying in wait while you lead them out here. You’re probably
going to end up hit a bunch of times, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to
make.”

If Kol had a sword, he would have gladly fallen on it at her command.

Instead, he immediately clasped his gloved hands and offered them up for
her boot. With little effort, he shot her up into the tree, then watched as she
scrabbled one-handed along a limb, frozen bombs tucked into her other
arm. The view was especially nice from his spot at the tree’s base where he
could watch her ass as she shimmied along a branch.

“What are you waiting for?” she called down to him. “Take your wonky
balls and go get yourself attacked.”

He bit his cheek and saluted her before doing exactly as she demanded. If
only she would let him return the favor—she would certainly like it if she
did.

Piper’s plan went off without a hitch with no small thanks to Kol’s genuine
helplessness as he fled from an ambush of her young cousins. The three
siblings were doused from on high, snow raining over their heads and down
the backs of their jackets, their shock at being outdone well worth Kol face-
planting in a bank of snow when he ran. Their attempt to pelt Piper back
was ill-aimed, and she was too high for it to matter, so by the time she was
out of ammunition, the kids were just flinging snow upward for it to rain
back down on them.
Piper sat up on her branch like a kingfisher and shrieked with laughter,
taunting them with her tongue out, and Kol could not have been prouder.
By the time her brother and older cousin came around, they too had turned
on the kids and chased them off back into the woods.

Triumphant, Piper wiggled herself out of the tree, and Kol ran to catch her,
but she landed with the grace she usually reserved for the kitchen. “God,
that was so good!” She threw herself at him, nearly knocking him back into
the snow.

Not sure what to do, Kol stood awkwardly under her embrace. It then hit
him harder than a ball of ice to the crotch just how much he’d been craving
her touch since the enchanted shelter. She was squeezing him and squealing
in his ear and hopping in place, and it was just so human. Kol sighed and
grinned and finally squeezed her back, and the forest whispered softly to
him once more, Home.

The last time someone wrapped themselves around him, though, that elf
was naked, and his thoughts turned to his cock. Thankfully, Piper darted off
again, disappearing amongst the trees.

“Did that happen?” he asked the dog as it trotted up.

Doc confirmed by turning the snow yellow at Kol’s feet.

Kol followed the sound of Piper’s laughter, a bright spark in the dreary
whites and browns of the wood. He admired how the sun’s dappled light
fell in patches over her face as it too tried to keep up. Her lips burned red in
the cold, lips that he longed to warm with his mouth, and snow glittered in
the strands that fell loose from her hair. He tracked that sparkle as she
slipped between the trees until she was nailed with a snowball as hard as
she’d been hitting everyone else and fell backward right onto her ass,
allowing Kol to finally catch up.

The MacLeans were troopers at taking balls to the face, but Piper did not
hop back up onto her feet as usual. “Finally tuckered out, Pipsqueak?” Kol
tromped over to pull her up, but she didn’t take his offered hand, her own
gloves folded over her face as she slowly sat up out of her imprint.
A drop of red fell onto the snow, brilliant against its whiteness, and Kol
dropped to his knees before her, heart jolting up into his throat. Crimson
spread out over the ice between them. Piper didn’t blink, a glassy sheen to
her eyes, the rest of her face obscured until he tugged her hands away. A
thin trail of blood leaked from her nostril, and a splotch of ruddy skin was
painted over her already wind-burnt pink nose.

Beside her, the offending ball of snow had broken open, and Kol plucked
the frozen rock that had been encased inside. He turned over his shoulder,
and the three cousins he expected were looking smug and satisfied, but
only for a minute. Dread splashed over their faces as Kol contemplated
which of them he would tie up with roots and have dragged below the earth
first, and then they scattered.

He would have bolted after them if a noise didn’t shatter his festively fatal
thoughts. Piper had covered her face again, tears pooling at the corners of
her eyes. She sucked in a hiccupping breath, shoulders rounded as she
fought with everything she had to keep herself still and silent.

Burial under the earth was too good for those little shits—he was going to
turn them into onions first, then bury them, then dig them up, and then chop
them into tiny pieces. But only after he made sure she was all right.
“Piper,” he said softly, “let me see.”

“I’m not crying!” she blurted, and that broke the gate, a sob following
quickly after.

“Well, actually, you are.” He ran a hand along her arm as gently as he
could, prying her fingers away once more.

“No, I’m not,” she insisted, taking another blubbering breath. She wiped at
her face, a mistake as blood and tears were both smeared across her cheek.
“And if I am, it’s only because eyes water when you get hit in the nose.
These are just reflex tears! They’re not because I’m actually upset or
anything.”

“Okay, sure.” Kol took her by the elbow as he stood. “But maybe you can
not cry inside where we can stop the bleeding.”
She sniffled and winced, standing along with him. “Yeah, maybe.”

Kol tucked his arm around her waist, and she leaned into him, head bent,
but when they broke free of the trees, she pulled herself out of his hold.

“I’m fine.” Her voice was muffled behind a glove, but it was hollow and
hard.

“Let me just—”

“No. I shouldn’t have come out here in the first place.” Piper made a
beeline for the far side of the porch, away from where her older relatives
were gathered, and she slipped inside completely unseen.

Kol stood in the yard looking after where she’d gone. She didn’t want his
help now, not like she had before, but he wanted to give it. He wanted to
march inside, make her sit, wash her face, tell her exactly how he would get
revenge on her behalf, but...but it was his fault this had happened, and there
would probably be no warmth waiting for him when he got to where she
was.

Cold paws pressed against his shin, and then there was a bark that
translated to Inside!

“You’re already outside,” he told the dog, knowing it was too dumb to
understand the difference between the words.

Big ouch! Doc declared through yaps and grunts. Sister, big ouch!

Kol snorted. “Yes, your sister did get a big ouch, but she doesn’t want my
help.”

Sister inside! Big ouch! Mate help sister!

“Who?”

Sister mate! Doc scrambled his paws against Kol’s shin. Mate help!
Kol decided in that moment he’d been making it all up and never really
understood a single animal’s language, but he did sprint inside the house to
help. No, Piper would not be warm and inviting when he showed up, but
that didn’t matter, it wasn’t about him.

He abandoned his coat and gloves just where he found hers on the banister
and went straight to the second floor, knowing just where she would be,
tucked as far from anyone else as possible and alone. She stood in the
bathroom across from her bedroom, head tilted back, pinching her nose,
bloody tissues littering the sink.

“Piper, sit.”

“Wha—”

“Sit.” He shifted her around and pushed her onto the toilet lid, the only seat
in the room.

“Kol, I’m fi—”

“Stop talking.” He went for her hands, but she swatted at him. He swatted
back, and the two engaged in the most ridiculously gentle slapping match
until Kol growled and bared his teeth. “Damn it, Piper, let me help you!”

Piper’s arms fell to either side, and her eyes went so baleful he was sure she
would start sobbing, but then that tiny indent formed between her brows.
“There’s no helping this, it just has to stop. I’m sure the tree will be fine in
the meantime.”

“The tree?” He leaned back, the fact hitting him that the spruce might also
suffer from her injury. “The tree will survive,” he said, opening the
medicine cabinet and glaring at its very human innards full of words he
couldn’t pronounce.

“So will I,” she groused, tipping her head back again and stuffing toilet
paper up her nostrils.
“Oh, thank the gods, at least you have aloe.” He grabbed the bottle full of
clear gel and then eyed the bundle of dried eucalyptus hanging beside the
mirror. “Guess this’ll have to do.”

Piper sniffled, wariness to her voice. “You’re not using your thauma-thingy
to find the right stuff.”

“Doesn’t matter—magic is seventy-eight percent intention, as a Rule, and

my mother always says...ah, see?” He showed her the sludge he’d made by
squashing the two ingredients together, and even he had to admit it didn’t
look helpful.

“What if that makes it worse?”

“Piper, I am an elf—preserving the longevity of life is what we do, and that

includes healing human bumps and bruises. It’s not like you’ve got a
broken wing or anything, I’m just trying to reduce inflammation and take
away the pain.”

“There’s ibuprofen in the cabinet that does the same thing.”

“Well, you can have that too if you want, but would you please let me
smear my goop on your face?”

Her nose had gotten much redder, and her entire face followed suit. “Okay,
yes, fine.”

Kol was even more careful than with the stymphalian goose—Piper may
not have had fangs or a cloaca capable of shooting out fire, but he knew
hurting her would be much more consequential. Her eyes crossed, watching
his hands as they cupped her nose, the puffiness rimming them lit up by the
glow from his palms.

Tender, irritated flesh calmed under his hands, not because he had the right
ingredients, and not because he was anything like an expert healer, but
solely because he willed it to. Piper was holding her breath, he could tell,
but her posture had softened, and when her dark eyes lifted to look up from
under her lashes, they were again glassy.
“Am I hurting you?” he murmured, easing off.

“No,” she whispered, and then, “Don’t stop. It’s getting better.”

So Kol didn’t stop, and he would have kept touching her if he thought she
would have let him—and if his hands weren’t so sticky. But he had done all
he could, and when he pulled away, her skin was shiny with aloe and dotted
with crusty bits of eucalyptus, but it wasn’t swollen, and it was no pinker
than if he had told her how pretty she’d looked laughing out in the snow.
With a satisfied nod, he turned to the sink, collected the bloody tissues for
the trash, and started to wash his hands.

“What does your mom always say?” Piper asked quietly as she touched the
tip of her nose. “About magic?”

Kol balked at his reflection. Oh, you idiot, you can’t just tell her. But he
could, actually, because the lyrical language of the elucidai came out of his
mouth in response.

Piper was staring at him, he could feel it, and he turned up the hot water as
a distraction. “What does that mean?” she finally asked.

“There really isn’t a translation for it.” Which was true, in a way, since the
Elvish language was so old. The closest meaning, Love and intention must
both come with action or neither matter, was far too much for Kol to say, so
instead he just shoved a washcloth under the warm water and grinned at
her. “Now, let’s get that junk off your face.”
 image image
image

11
image
Pipers Piping
image

“Don’t come in!”

Kol halted just outside Piper’s bedroom, doorknob in hand. She’d been out
of the shower for a while, but the thought of her still standing there, naked
and wet, filled up his mind and made his fist on the knob tighten.

She’d recovered from the rock to the face, though whether it was due to his
enchanted help or her own unbreakable will, he didn’t know, and by that
evening she was serving dinner and running up and down the stairs to
launder and dry everyone else’s clothes. At least Uncle Russ had been
convinced to send his kids out to shovel the driveway, though it wasn’t
anywhere near enough of a punishment in Kol’s opinion.

Piper’s voice allowing him entry cut through another vengeful, plant-based
fantasy, and he steeled himself before finally opening the door. Shopping
bags, wrapping paper, three kinds of tape, and a whole nether of a lot of
things were strewn all over her bedroom, and worst of all, she wasn’t even
a little naked. Piper sat on the ground in the middle of the present
paraphernalia with a pair of glinting scissors in hand. “Shut the door behind
you,” she said and snipped through a length of red ribbon.

He did, but only because the cartoon reindeer patterned all over her pajama
pants made her slightly less intimidating. “You know, I’m surprised,” he
said. “I would have guessed you’re the kind of person who finishes her
Christmas shopping in June, and yet—all this.”
“Oh, no, I do.” Piper flipped up the edge of the duvet and pointed to a
number of wrapped boxes under the bed. “This is mostly everyone else’s
stuff.”

Kol maneuvered around bows and ribbons strategically organized by color

and size. “But what about all that shopping we did?”

Piper pushed up onto her knees and stretched to retrieve a neon-colored

squirt gun, the length of her body going taut and t-shirt rising up to reveal a
sliver of stomach. “This is Uncle Russ’s stuff for his kids. He says he’s a
terrible wrapper, which he is, so I do it for him.”

Kol had tipped his head, sitting across from her to take advantage of the
view, but his thoughts of dipping his tongue into her bellybutton were
chased away by the mention of the children who hurt her. “You’re still
doing that for those little fuckers?”

“Yes, of course, because I’m not a Scrooge.” She rolled out more paper and
measured how much she would need with the meticulousness of an elf, but
she was grinning in her very human way, and when she began to snip with
the scissors, her eyes lit up. Strange as it was, she actually did seem to be
enjoying herself.

“And which one of your assailants is getting this stuffed kao?”

“That’s a bison,” she said, nose wrinkling with a suppressed chuckle, “and
it’s for Dad from Aunt Deb. There’s some paperwork with it from a wildlife
foundation about symbolically adopting a real one out in the planes, which
he’s going to love. And she’s getting a subscription to a seasonal wine box
from him, which she will also love, not that either of them know it.”

Kol watched her gracefully glide her scissors along the paper. “I don’t
understand.”

“Well, ever since the great debacle of Christmas 2009, they refuse to get
one another anything, but that doesn’t stop them from getting into an
argument about how they suck for forgetting about each other on purpose,
so I just pick things out, wrap them up, and write out the tags to keep
everyone happy. It’s worked three years in a row, and this will be the
fourth.”

He said nothing, but he did stare at her, hard.

“I use Dad’s credit card to buy everything,” she said with a huff, smoothing
over the last edge of her package and taping it shut. “And that’s how I paid
for lunch the other day too, so you’re complicit.”

Kol rolled his eyes. One broccoli cheddar soup did not, a personal
shopper’s salary, make. “And who’s getting who boring old socks?” He
picked up a pink pair covered in silvery snowflakes. “Must be someone you
don’t like.”

“Those are for me from Presley.” She bit her lip as she measured out more
paper and then went on without looking at him—he expected she could feel
the extended disdainful look he was giving her and didn’t need to see it
again to be convinced to explain. “Look, I’m the oldest cousin, and in our
family, Presley is the baby, you know? So he just never really did the gift-
giving part of Christmas, which was fine until Grams called him out one
year. He tried to hand me cash then, which was really awkward, so I just go
into his wallet now, take a few bucks ahead of time, and buy myself
something that I pretend to be surprised about and he pretends to not be
surprised about on Christmas morning. He expects it at this point, and I
don’t have to feel weird about my brother trying to give me a twenty
because he forgot about me.”

Kol stared at the top of her head while she kept it bent, focusing so hard on
curling a ribbon against her scissors, he was sure it would rip right to
shreds. The sounds of flattening paper and ripping tape filled up the silence
of the room until she finally snorted and sat back, meeting his eye.

“What?” she bit out.

“You’re telling me that you go to the trouble of pickpocketing your little

brother, secretly shopping for yourself, and sneaking your own gift under
the tree all to protect him from being embarrassed, and you choose to get
yourself socks?”
Piper snatched them away from him. “They’re practical!”

“Practically offensive to the gift-giving gods.”

She hugged them to her chest and put on those sad eyes again like he was
healing more than just her nose. “But they’re made with merino wool and
they’re hand knit right here in Hiberhaven, and, you know...I like them.”

Kol studied her as she worried the heels, looking truly uneasy for perhaps
the first time.

“Do you really think they’re a bad present?” she asked as if questioning
everything she knew.

He reached out quicker than she could track and snatched them back. “No,
they’re fine, but at least let me wrap them—it’s a little less sad that way.”

Kol was easily convinced then to help her finish wrapping since he was
already holding scissors and, as she pointed out, he was amazing at lining
up the patterns on the paper. Elven precision, he told her, and when she
laughed, that lightness in his chest returned. He would have endured a
thousand paper cuts to listen to her keep making such a joyful sound.

A few hours later, the closet was filled with tagged packages to be carried
downstairs under the cover of night on the twenty-fourth because of course
Piper insisted on playing Santa too. At the very least, a lot of people would
be surprised come Christmas morning.

Yawning, they climbed into bed as if it were totally normal and were both
under the duvet before the awkwardness of sleeping beside one another
could settle in. The feeling of ill ease only began to creep across Kol’s skin
when Piper’s voice broke into his concerns about shuffling around too
much. “I take it back.”

Kol waited, staring up at the skylight, then bit. “Take what back?”

“You did a good job helping me, so you’re actually not a bad Christmas elf
at all.”
His chuckle overrode the annoyed growl that threatened in his throat.
“Well, I didn’t enjoy it,” he lied. “But you would have been there all night
otherwise, and I can’t sleep with the lights on.”

“Of course you can’t.” She snickered, the bed shook slightly, and then that
pleasant sound died away. “It’s been nice to have help with a lot of things,
the presents and the dishes and...everything. So thank you.”

I bet, he thought, then frowned. “I’m sorry I called you a Scrooge.”

“Well, you might not be entirely wrong. I said I love Christmas, but now
I’m just sort of obsessed with not screwing it up again.”

Kol shifted to his side and pushed up on an elbow, smirking. “I doubt

you’ve ever screwed up anybody’s Christmas in the—”

“I missed Mom’s last one.” Piper was peering upward, moonlight washing
over her face. She gripped the edge of the blanket tightly, knuckles white.
“My boyfriend invited me to spend the holidays with his family down south
that year. I didn’t think it was a big deal because it was just one year, but I
should have known something was wrong because Mom and I argued about
it—fought about it really—and we never fought about anything.”

It wasn’t a surprise, not after seeing the photos in the kitchen, but heaviness
still settled in Kol’s chest. “She knew she didn’t have much longer?”

Piper nodded. “She didn’t tell us, though, not until February, said she didn’t
want to ruin the holidays. Instead, I ruined them by calling her
unreasonable and selfish and running off to the beach and then not talking
to her for a whole month afterward like an ungrateful bit—”

“Don’t.” Kol’s voice was sharp enough to snap her out of the broken gaze
she was giving the window. “You didn’t know.”

Piper swallowed thickly, but her grip relented on the blanket. “Believe it or
not, I went to therapy about the whole thing—we all did, when Mom died
—but this time of year all the big feelings come back.”
Kol’s jaw tightened. “Have you thought about taking a break from this time
of year?”

“That’s what got me into this mess.” When she laughed then, it was a sad,
weary sound.

He hummed. “That and your boyfriend.”

“Well, ex-boyfriend, obviously. We met at college, but I left to help out

here when I finally realized what was going on with Mom. Long distance
was hard, and then I got pretty sad when mom died.”

“No shit you got sad.”

She shrugged against her pillow. “Well, sad people aren’t any fun, and he
only liked me when I was fun. But whatever—he was growing out a stupid-
looking chinstrap beard thing, and I’m pretty sure he was seeing someone
else before he dumped me anyway.”

Of all the things she should have actually cared about, the flippancy with
which she told him made his blood absolutely boil, but he bit back the
anger, not wanting it to become infectious.

Piper lay there, and it was clear she was burdened. Moonlight outlined her
features, and he wanted to place his hands on either side of her face and tell
her to stop thinking, if only for a few moments.

“Kol?”

His stomach tightened at the timbre of her voice. “Yes?”

“Am I keeping you from your family?” She finally turned to him, eyes
wide. “You’ll miss Christmas with them if you’re stuck here with me.”

“Elves don’t celebrate Christmas,” he said quickly. “I don’t want to get into
a whole theological discussion that I barely understand myself, but there’s
nothing to miss.”

“But what about other winter holidays?”

He laid himself back, staring up at the skylight, the brightness of the stars
telling him the winter solstice was coming soon. “Elves don’t usually
celebrate anything annually—that’s way too frequent when you can live
into the quadruple digits.”

Piper made a strangled, shocked sound and sat straight up.

Kol smirked. “Yeah, so I know what you’re getting at, but you don’t have
to worry about me missing my mother’s last Christmas anytime soon. Even
if she did celebrate, she’s got, like, six hundred more ahead of her.”

“Six hundred?” The blanket was suddenly lifted, and Piper stuck her head
under it. “How the hell old are you?”

Surprised at her sudden boldness, he was only a little disappointed to be

wearing his own pajamas that covered him fully. “Care to hazard a guess?”

Piper popped back out from under the cover, lips pressed together. “You
said you were only half.”

“And half of one thousand is?”

He could see her face blanch even in the low light. “Don’t tell me I’ve been
sharing a bed with someone who could be my great, great, great, gr—uh,
grandfather.”

“What’s it matter? We’re just lying here.”

“Yeah, but I—” Piper cut herself off, scrunching up her features, and Kol’s
confidence melted away. Even if he just meant to have a little fun, it wasn’t
worth her being disgusted by whatever thought she was having.

“There are very few of us cross-bloods, and none of the others inherited an
elven lifespan. At best, I might get an extra decade on human men, and so
far I’ve been aging just like one, much to my elven family’s bewilderment.”

She slowly processed what he told her, then tipped her head. “But after
you’re gone, your mother’s going to keep on living for...for a long time?”
“Yeah, but she’ll be fine,” Kol assured her, wanting to take away the shaky
strain to her voice, and it was true anyway: elucidai elves were some of the
most stoic beings in existence on this plane or any other. “Elves usually
have just one child, but I assume she’ll have another in a century or two to
replace me. A real one.”

“Oh, that must be...weird for you.”

Yes, very. He swallowed that down and shrugged again, folding his hands
behind his head. “Nah.”

“What about your dad?”

Maybe even weirder. “Don’t worry, I’ve had enough Christmases with him
for a lifetime.”

“Wait, so you have celebrated Christmas before? You’ve had a tree and
presents and you know about Santa Claus?”

He rocked his head toward her and finally met her gaze, his own eyes held
wide. “No, strange creature, teach me of your mysterious human ways.”

She clicked her tongue and fell back onto her pillow. “I’m just saying,
you’re weird about stuff sometimes. Like you didn’t know about the shelf
elf guy or snowball fights.” She inadvertently rubbed her nose, and he
noted she didn’t wince, the swelling gone.

That wasn’t true—he knew plenty—he just hadn’t experienced most of it,
not for quite a while anyway. He stared back up at the skylight and squinted
at what might have been the corner of Gemini. “My mother raised me
around elves, but because I aged so differently it was difficult to take part
in their culture. I visited my dad a lot when I was young, but I didn’t really
have an established life with him either, so there are...things,” he said
carefully, “that I’m not as familiar with as I should be, human and elven
both.”

Piper made a thoughtful noise, and then the quiet stretched between them
until she gasped. “Is that why you didn’t know how to hold hands?”
His palm itched under his head like he could feel the squeeze of her gloved
hand in his again. “What are you talking about, Pipsqueak?”

“When we were out shopping, you asked me if couples hold hands.” She
sat up again, but he avoided her, focusing harder on the stars and wishing
clouds would blot out their brightness. “Do elves not hold hands?”

Kol muttered a few words about complication and semantics. It was too
late in the night to discuss all the elven branches and their eccentricities,
how elucidai were reserved and sylvidai were sentimental, and that all of
that was replaced with animalism when mating was concerned, not that
anyone ever talked about it.

“Kol,” she said, and the gravity she used on his name struck him right in
the gut, “have you never held hands with someone before?”

He turned his head ever so slightly, eyed her, and grunted.

“Oh, my god.” She leaned in and poked his elbow, the lilt to her voice both
infuriating and intoxicating. “Was I your first?”

His eyes flicked back up to the window, and he sighed though it sounded
more like a groan.

“I was!” Piper giggled, a dangerous sound to make while lying so close to

him. “I would have never guessed in however many years you’ve been
alive that you’ve never held a girl’s hand. That’s so sweet!”

“I’m only one hundred and eleven, thank you very much.” When she
stopped poking him and gasped again, he smirked. “That’s in seasons, not
years.”

“That’s a...a normal amount of years?”

“Divide by four.”

She chewed her lip then shook her head. “Regardless, it’s an awful long
time to be celibate.”
He pushed up onto his elbows and glared at her. “Who said anything about
celibacy?”

“Oh, no, Kol,”—she leaned in close, and even in the scant light, the horror
on her face was convincing—“don’t tell me I stole your first kiss too!”

Kol snorted out a laugh because that’s all he could do at how ridiculous that
claim was. He knew her antics were to cover up for how vulnerable she had
been, but why did it have to be at his expense?

“I’m sorry,” she went on, her hands falling on his forearm, and the warmth
of her touch rushed through all of him. “That should have been special for
you, not me grabbing your head and brute forcing you to appease my
family.”

He snorted again—as if she could brute force him into anything. “No
apology needed.”

“You can be honest with me.” She gave his arm a shake, grip tightening in
a way he liked far too much. “I won’t make fun of you for being a virgin, I
promise.”

“Piper, stop talking.”

“But I feel bad.” She injected a whine into her voice that sent a jolt right to
his cock. “I took away so many of your firsts without knowing!”

“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to shut you up.”

Playfulness danced dangerously on her lips. “Those are some ferocious

words for someone so innocent.”

It had taken many years for Kol to hone his elven precision and speed, and
when his intention was true, he always hit his target. Kol’s targets were
Piper’s wrists, hands snatched away from his skin in less than a blink and
thrust up over her head as he rolled her onto her back. His next target was
her mouth, and he followed through on the promise to shut her up, but she
still managed to squeak out a noise of surprise against his lips.
That sweet sound died away into an even sweeter moan as he coaxed her
mouth open. Finally, the tongue he wished he’d gotten a taste of before was
his, and he swept his along the inside of her mouth. Knowing she would
stay put, he released one wrist and slid his arm beneath her, pulling her
body to meet his and deepened their kiss.

Piper was softer than the down in her comforter, warmer than the oven she
insisted on laboring over, sweeter than the creamer she poured in his coffee.
She arched her back, lips answering his as he covered her with himself and
squeezed her tighter. He could have kept her like that forever, living off of
nothing but her tongue and her sighs, content, safe, finally at home.

But Kol pulled back, leaving her breathless and wide-eyed beneath him.
“Did that feel like my first time?”

Piper gave her head a quick shake, gasping shallowly, gaze locked onto his.

“Because it’s not.” He pressed the wrist he kept into the pillow and dipped
his face down beside hers, breathing her in. “In fact, I’m an expert at giving
nosy, little creatures just like you exactly what they need.”

She shuddered when he nipped at her earlobe and inhaled a sharp breath
when his arm slid out from beneath her and trailed her side, over the swell
of her hip, and down to her thigh.

“Elves may not hold hands, but I’ve pinned enough wrists and hips to know
what I’m doing.”

Her breath finally caught, mouth falling still, but her eyes changed, a
flicker in them that wanted to ask him to show her just what he meant. And
fuck did he want to rip off every stitch of her clothing and rut into her like
an animal, but she wasn’t going to ask—she never asked for any of the
things she needed.

So Kol let her go. “Now stop asking questions you don’t really want the
answers to and go to sleep.”
 12

My True Elf Said To Me

Piper lay awake all night, knowing that if she fell asleep too deeply, she
would never live down the humiliation of what she feared would be losing
all control in her sleep. Falling too deeply was, of course, exactly what she
was meant to do, but Piper had been the one in control for so long that she
couldn’t take orders from anyone else, the author included.
Kol never stirred, the asshole, but that was probably for the best—she
would have been tempted to pick on him again and rile up the beast she’d
unfairly only gotten the tiniest taste of, and if that didn’t work, she might
have even convinced herself to flat out tell him, You know what would really
shut me up for good? If you did all of that again but lower.
Groggy even after showering, she stumbled downstairs much later than
normal to a kitchen already full of her family and a mess that was worsening
by the minute. The milk and creamer were room temperature but were also
so low they probably wouldn’t last until tomorrow anyway. No one had
unloaded the dishwasher, the sink was full of newly dirty dishes, leftover
containers were strewn on the counters, and the garbage was overflowing.
They’d be out of bowls if someone didn’t do something, so something she
did.
Cleaning should have been a better distraction, but as Piper put away her
favorite blue mug, her mind still wandered to how Kol had stared at her,
eyes no longer cold and contemptuous but hungry. Splashing dishwater
barely doused the lingering heat of his grip on her wrists, and a sip of stale
coffee quashed his taste on her tongue for only as long as it took her to
swallow.
Was it not bad enough she’d been repressing increasingly wanton
thoughts about him since being caught beneath the mistletoe together? Or
that his insistence on caring for her injury almost tricked her into thinking he
actually cared? Now she had to deal with a pulsing between her legs at the
very thought of his forearms tensing, and she couldn’t even vibrate it away
because he was lying beside her every night!
“Ask Pippy, she knows about the outside and stuff.”
Presley and Aunt Deb’s husband entered the kitchen together, Luis
holding up a pinecone. Both of their perplexed gazes shifted from the cone
to Piper as she dried her hands.
“Do you know why the Christmas tree would be dropping these all of a
sudden?”
Piper took the cone, shaking her head. She turned it over, examining the
slight shimmer hiding between the seed scales, not at all natural, but then
neither was the tree. “It was probably already on a branch and fell off, but
—” A prickling climbed over Piper’s skin, and she looked back up to see
Kol leaning against the kitchen archway and grinning like he’d absolutely
won the lottery, and her utter embarrassment was the prize.
“No idea,” she choked out and pushed passed them all. She hurried to the
living room and right up to the tree. It was true that she had no idea, but she
could fucking guess. “You have got to chill,” she whispered through grit
teeth and held up the pinecone as if it could see.
The tree stared back as if to say, No, you.
“What was that, honey?”
Piper peeked around the boughs to see Grams sitting near the window,
her latest knitting project well on its way to being finished—at least
someone was getting something productive done. “Oh, nothing. Is there
anything you need from the grocery store?”
Grams assured her that, no, she didn’t, but Piper already knew they were
low on Grape Nuts and the two bags left of Earl Grey would never last the
next seven days. Oh, god, I have to sleep next to him for another week! I
have to get out of this house and calm down. Maybe dive crotch-first into a
snowdrift. But when she turned, Kol was right there yet again.
“You’re going shopping?” He was standing in front of her so casually—
as if the previous night hadn’t even happened! Oh, what a bastard.
 “We need all three kinds of milk, and someone ate all the veggies I saved
for dinner tonight. I’ll be back in a couple hours.” A shopping trip shouldn’t
take that long, but she planned to draw it out, meticulously scouring every
aisle for everything on her list, her own common sense included. Hopefully
she might find it hiding in the dairy freezer, and it would say, Hey, remember
this elf-man lied his way into your house and is, for all intents and purposes,
holding you hostage under threat of evisceration by evergreen. She slipped
past him and headed for the front door.
“I’ll help.” He followed right behind.
“That’s okay.” She grabbed her canvas totes from the hall closet, but Kol
remained at her side. Piper groaned, pulling on her coat and checking her
bag then watched him lace his boots with deft fingers that she could think of
twenty better uses for—fingers and laces both. “Don’t you want to tree sit?”
“You’ve ended up in more peril than the tree, Pipsqueak.”
Her guts twisted, but there was no shaking him, and before she could
come up with a better excuse, they were both sitting in her hatchback. Just as
she went to start it, her stomach growled, loudly—another breakfast skipped.
A fruit bar was thrust under her nose. “Last one,” he said and gave her a
grin he probably didn’t even know was so adorable. “I’ll add them to your
list.”
She devoured the snack before he could say anything else—she didn’t
think her heart could take any more of his demands or his helpfulness.
The drive into Hiberhaven was silent. Kol rested his head on his fist as
he gazed out the window, and she white-knuckled the wheel, frustration
mounting, but from his aloofness or her own awareness, she didn’t know.
You kissed me, she screamed into her brain. Please at least make fun of me
for it!
But Kol just kept smiling out the window like all was right with the
world.
They were approaching the grocery store in the village’s center, and she
took a breath, focusing on the task at hand. “Do you mind if we go to the
shop on the other side of town?”
Kol raised thin, black brows. “Why would I?”
“Well, Dad hates the extra ten minutes in the car, and Presley always
complains that the deli there isn’t as good even though it’s actually better
because Angie works there, and she’s the best sandwich maker this side of
the Green Mountains. Parking’s better there too, and they have way more
options for everything.” Piper snorted, eyes narrowing on the road. “And it’s
funny because both of them complain when I use anything except San
Marzano tomatoes, but you can’t get San Marzanos at the store they insist is
just fine. Plus, the other one has a sushi counter and they carry Doc’s
favorite treats and they’re the only place in town that has the brand of
tampons that I like, not that either of them would ever go get those for me,
and...uh, well, they just have better stuff.” Piper drummed her fingers on the
wheel, eyes fixed ahead, wishing she’d shut up three complaints earlier.
God, she sounded so picky, so annoying, so high maintenance.
“Whatever you want, Pipsqueak.”
She didn’t have to look at him to know he was grinning at her, she could
hear it in his voice and feel the warmth of it over the heater in her car.
Whatever I want, she thought, sitting back into the seat, and so she drove
past the first shop and headed for the second.
It was easier to relax behind the cart with her planner opened to the list
she’d made—this was her territory, she had her tools, and the terrain was
mapped out in her mind. Kol shadowed her, close enough to feel, though she
was sure she could sense him from three aisles over, so when he did finally
fall behind, she stopped.
Halfway back along the aisle, Kol was holding a box of cereal, lips
drawn into a frown as he studied it. He looked at a lot of things intensely,
Piper notwithstanding, but this was more like when he had seen The Tree
propped up in her living room for the first time, solemn and resigned.
With careful steps, she backtracked the length of the aisle and stood
beside him. “That’s cereal,” she said, dragging out the words. “It’s sort of a
human tradition to start the day with as much sugar as possible.”
Kol snorted. “Yeah, I remember. Just haven’t seen this kind in about two
decades. We don’t have it in Bexley.” The corner of his mouth quirked up,
and not with a knowing smirk that called her nipples to attention, but
something that touched her deeper.
“Do you remember liking it?”
“Well, I sort of had to—my dad didn’t do a lot of cooking, but he always
had Choco-Crunchy Bits when I went to stay with him. Good for breakfast
or dinner. Well, maybe not good.” He laughed a little, and the sound
wrapped around Piper’s insides, coaxing out her own smile at his memory. “I
think the last time I had it was when I was eight and made a bowl for my
brother for the first time. I thought three-year-olds could handle spoons, but
he ended up spilling it all over himself. His mom was pissed.”
Piper tipped her head up to him. “You have a brother?”
“Three of them—half-siblings. Well, they’re whole actually, whole
human, but they belong to my father and his wife. I’ve never actually met
the youngest one, and I do not know why I’m telling you this.” He blinked
and scratched at his beanie then moved to put the box back on the shelf.
Piper picked the Choco-Crunchy Bits right back up and dropped them
into the cart.
“You don’t want that.” Kol followed behind again as she pushed the cart
down the aisle.
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s not on your list—it’ll screw your whole plan up.”
Piper waved a hand behind her, trying her best to be flippant despite that
it felt unnatural. “What else haven’t you had since you were eight?”
He let out a long breath. “Soup from a can, bubblegum, a hug, ravioli—”
Piper spun. “A hug?”
“I’m kidding, Pipsqueak.” He dropped a hand onto the top of her head
and turned her back around. “Get back to your list.”
“My list just expanded,” she said and took them down the canned soup
aisle.
Piper knew how to be convincing when she needed to be, but it didn’t
take that much, not after she insisted they hunt down every prepackaged and
preservative-pumped meal he could remember from childhood. Kol was a
little more reluctant to tell her about the weekends he spent with his father
and how they stopped not too long after that fateful morning of spilled
cereal, but they the truth was eventually coaxed out when she asked sweetly
enough. As his brothers got older and asked about Kol’s ears, his stepmother
insisted hiding his identity was too dangerous for them. He had his own
mother, though, and a whole life with her and her tribe. The long holidays
and weekends with his father devolved into sporadic visits, a few hours here
and there, separate from the normal, human family he was raising elsewhere.
Piper was careful to not ask too many questions, Kol only willing to give
up information seemingly by accident. She would pick up a cup of pudding
and ask, “When was the last time you had this?”
“I was eleven,” he would respond with a wistful smile. “Got in a lot of
trouble for getting it all over my shirt, but my dad bought me a new one with
these anthropomorphic turtle warriors on it. I still have that, I think, not that
it fits.”
The details weren’t quite enough to help her fill in the Kol page of her
favorite-things cheat sheet in her planner, but by the time they reached the
checkout counter, Piper was grinning like an idiot, the cart full of things he’d
sheepishly asked her not to get and a little, bittersweet story attached to each
one. “You’re gonna have a tummy ache after all this.”
“Oh, I’m sure if I complain enough, you’ll find a way to fix it.”
“Careful, I just might rub it for you,” she said and then sprinted to the
front of the cart to begin unloading before he could comment further.
When they returned, Piper began putting the groceries away. She could
hear the rest of the family playing board games in the dining room, the roll
of dice and Aunt Deb shouting about cheaters.
“I got this, you go play with the others,” Kol said, pulling a box of mac
and cheese out of her hands. “I’ll even put everything on shelves low enough
for you to reach.”
She let him take the box but just unpacked more from the totes. “Aunt
Deb’s way too competitive. It makes me too anxious to be on her team, and
it’s even worse to play against her.”
“At least sit then,” he urged, tugging a can of ravioli away from her.
“Take a break.”
“Can’t.” She crossed the kitchen to the uppermost cabinet and tucked
away the paper towels.
“Won’t,” he corrected from just behind her.
“Same difference.” She turned, but his chest blocked her from retrieving
more groceries.
Kol boxed her into the counter. “You need someone to force you to stay
still, don’t you?”
She pressed back but wanted to press forward into him. “That actually
sounds wonderful,” came tumbling out before she could catch herself.
The iciness in Kol’s eyes darkened, his hands fall to the counter on either
side of her. His body just grazed hers as he leaned in. “Is that what it’s going
to take? Pinning you down so you can’t move?”
Piper’s heart skipped at the prospect of not having to choose, not having
to think. “I’d fight you,” she said, not sure if she meant it.
He dropped his lips to her ear, and his hands circled her waist. “I’m sure
you would,” he rumbled, vibrations tickling her skin. “But not once I start
licking your—”
“That’s another win for Deb!” Her aunt’s voice jolted into Piper’s brain
as the woman bustled into the kitchen, wrecking the fantasy of Kol kneeling
between her legs.
“Take Doc out,” she said, pushing his chest so hard he stumbled
backward, then added, “Please,” before turning back to the counter and
hiding her red face away.
 image image
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13
image
Well, The Song Doesn’t Go This
High, So...
image

What in the nether was I thinking?

Well, Kol wasn’t thinking, he was just acting—acting like a brainless,

horny elf. He was quite good at the brainless and horny parts, or at least he
had plenty of practice. So much, in fact, he’d sworn off of that life a year
ago, and it had worked until he met Piper.

Kol had been surprised with how easy it was to just not answer a call,
especially when they came in the middle of the night. It was really only
difficult when he sprawled out flat on his back and felt the full brunt of the
emptiness that was his bed, but burying his face in a pillow and curling into
a ball helped just enough to wait out the ringing until it stopped. After a
season of letting his voicemail fill up and avoiding Sylvan Park where the
elves in Bexley congregated, the calls finally stopped, and the temptation to
fill the void he sank into when it was quiet and dark with the body of
someone who didn’t care was fully removed.

But now? Piper flashed him that smile of hers or offered even the slightest
kindness, and everything in him opened up like petals searching for the sun.
He never forgot he was two halves of an impossible whole when he was in
an elf’s bed—they never let him—but when he was in Piper’s, it didn’t
matter, and he wasn’t even distracted by someone bouncing on top of him.
Those disparate pieces were always floating at the corner of his eyes,
refusing to come full focus and fit together. But simply walking at her side
while she compared prices on dried pasta made those fuzzy edges smooth
out and click together.

So of course he wanted to touch her, to do all those things he’d been told he
was so good at, but not because he felt he needed to prove himself. Being
with her made him feel...gods, what was it?

Home! At Kol’s side, the terrier plowed through the snow, tenacious and
energetic. Its stubby legs weren’t made for snow, but he pushed on anyway.
Kol thought to pick him up, but the dog’s point of a tail was wagging
ferociously. How it could be so happy out of its element, he didn’t know.

“Okay, okay, we’ll head back,” he said to the dog then gave the fehszar a
goodbye nod.

She’d found an aspen and was ripping at its bark, chewing lazily. Another
creature, out of its element yet complaintless. Perhaps it was easier, lacking
complex thought. He lacked plenty of it when he wanted to rub himself
against Piper, and just a second more and he would have given in. That was
where his elven sensibilities stopped and the human ones took over. But
Kol supposed he wasn’t very good at being a human either as it came with
a whole different host of feelings and complexities that no one ever taught
him to manage.

Rarely are most humans taught to manage their feelings, complex or

otherwise—usually humans shelled out big bucks to sit in quiet, little
rooms with white noise machines and at least one set of kind but expensive
ears to start learning such things, but Kol didn’t really know that. All he did
know was that his feelings were always too big, everyone always said.

And those big feelings made him want to grab Piper, to hold her in place, to
beg her to let him fuck her so she would just relax for once and he could
finally...gods, he didn’t know. Just hold her? It would have to be tight
because tightness meant safety, and that was the point, wasn’t it? It was the
point of the EPA and the trees and everything Kol existed for, when it came
right down to it—his job and his life may have been a handed-down,
bastardization of what he wanted, but he did want to preserve wonder in the
world, and Piper needed preserving as much as any enchanted grove.

The cabin came into view, but even after a long walk in the frigidness, he
could still feel the heat from her hips calling to attention everything from
his navel to his knees. If it weren’t so damn cold out in the woods, and he
could get a few minutes alone, he’d consider taking care of things to make
the rest of the day and especially the night more bearable, but—

Home! Doc yapped, and he picked up speed before plowing into a drift,
only his tail left sticking out.

Kol rescued the dog and tucked him under his arm. “Almost there,” he said,
and Doc slobbered all over Kol’s chin.

Piper was keeping herself so busy in the kitchen that she didn’t even glance
at Kol when he came in, but her grandmother called him out to the den to
help watch the toddlers anyway. He was hesitant, but it turned out babies
enjoyed fetch as much as dogs did, they were just significantly slower at it.
He sat on the floor and kept the children occupied until there was a
commotion at the front door, shrieks of “Daddy!” and “Piper!” filling the
hall.

“That sounds like Michaela,” Grandma Tilda chuckled, and then whispered
to where Kol sat on the floor, “Piper is her favorite cousin, and I think the
feeling’s mutual.”

Kol gave the littlest children a nervous look, but they were so worn out
from chasing Doc’s ball that they’d fallen asleep against the couch.
Grandma Tilda went on to explain how Michaela was Russ’s only daughter
—to which Kol held his tongue despite wanting to blurt out, What god
allowed him to procreate again?—and how Michaela’s mother dropped her
off for only one or two nights every holiday. A short while later, a blonde
girl of maybe seven came out into the den and brightly greeted Grandma
Tilda before turning to Kol.

Her mouth drew down and her eyes narrowed on him from his spot on the
floor.
“Piper says you’re her boyfriend.”

That brought a grin right to Kol’s face. “That’s me.”

She continued to assess him with painful scrutiny until he felt about two
feet tall, and then she shrugged and pulled her rolling suitcase around to lay
flat on the floor. “Who do you want to be?” From her messy pile of clothes,
she produced four dolls, each dressed in mismatching clothing with hair in
varying states of disarray.

He glanced sidelong into her bag and eyed a purple-colored pony. “Can I be
the horse?”

“Horses don’t talk.”

“I assure you—”

“They don’t. You need to be one of the sisters.”

Kol sighed and picked out the doll with bangs that Michaela herself had
clearly cut, and for the next few hours took on the role of Princess Tiffany
Bananafish which was a bit of a relief since he was more than a little
exhausted with being himself.

When everyone was finally called to dinner, Kol sat at the massive table,
and relief crept into his veins when Piper finally slipped into the chair at his
side. She flicked a quick look at him, her lips quirked up, and fireworks
burst inside his chest. At least she’s not mad.

There were two steaming pots of herby-smelling stew on the table being
ladled out for the youngest by their parents. Kol relaxed back into his chair
as a wave of something like sleepiness hit him, gaze wandering over to
Piper again. On her other side, Michaela was hugging her arm and telling
her how good everything smelled, and Piper’s dark eyes had softened, her
lips had softened, everything about her had gone so soft. He wanted to
reach out and wrap his arms around that softness and keep her like that, but
Michaela was doing a better job than he probably could have.
Piper went to stand, reaching for the abandoned ladle, but Kol saw his
chance, quickly superseding her and snatching up the utensil and her bowl.
“Sit,” he said with much less bite than he usually mustered, and served her
first.

She stayed where she was, anchored by her young cousin, and she gave
him a wide smile that made him wish he had so much more to give her than
just soup.

“I want to know how Piper and Kol met.”

Kol placed Piper’s full bowl before her and then fell still, gaze pinging
across the table in hopes no one else heard, but of course they did, Aunt
Deb was the loudest of the bunch.

“Oh, yes!” Aunt Mindy chimed in. “I bet it was so romantic.”

Piper coughed out a laugh and shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that!”

Aunt Deb scoffed. “You haven’t ever brought a man to a single family
gathering, so this one’s got to be special. Fess up!”

“Yeah, I’d like to know too,” said Presley, frowning deeply and taking the
ladle from Kol with way more force than needed, “considering she’s never
mentioned you before.”

“We just met in the forest, no biggie.” Piper waved her hand as she told a
technical truth albeit the most simplified, boring version. “He saved me
from a moose.”

Okay, that was a lot less boring.

Various sputtering and exclamations filled up the dining room, but Presley
was quick to rebut, “No one gets saved from a moose—moose always
win.”

“It wasn’t a moose,” Kol said just as quickly. “She’s just kidding. It was a
—” Don’t say fehszar, that would be bad. “A chipmunk.” Well, shit, that
might have been worse.
“A what?” asked a voice from the table, and all went quiet, waiting.

“The sun was low, shadows were long, you know.” Piper stuffed a spoonful
of stew into her mouth and glared at Kol. Oh, damn it, not more glaring.

“I thought you were in the woods?” asked someone who remembered

things far too well.

“Yeah, well, you know how things get confusing in liminal spaces.”

“Lim-what-now?”

Kol also shoved a spoonful of stew into his mouth. That was right, humans
didn’t have those, or they rarely acknowledged them for what they were.

“It’s one of the trail names.” Piper swallowed behind her napkin and then
went on with more gusto. “I was at work, and he was out hiking, and then
we got into a huge argument about trees, so, no, it wasn’t romantic at all.”

As chuckles rose from the MacLeans, Kol watched Piper take another bite,
this one with a finality to it. She might have just been adding in fictional
bits, but there was enough truth in what she said, and he suddenly didn’t
want her to remember their meeting that way at all.

“I didn’t know where I was,” he told the table. “Went for a hike, lost the
trail, ended up near here. I wouldn’t admit it and argued with her, but she
was right.”

“You crossed the border without getting caught?” Luis screwed up his face.
“Did you get arrested?”

“Border? Oh, yeah, no, I missed the...the mounties, eh?”

Piper stifled a chuckle. “Canadians end up in our woods all the time. It
happens more often than you think.”

“The point is,” Kol said a bit louder, “Piper knew just where we were, and
despite my best efforts to be totally incompetent, she helped me anyway.”
“Of course she did,” her father said, voice filled with pride. “That’s what
Pippy’s best at—being helpful.”

Kol caught Piper tense beside him as she stared down at her stew. “It’s
more than that. She’s smart and meticulous and dedicated, and she really
should have just left me out in the cold and let me suffer on my own, but
she’s too thoughtful for that.”

Piper chuckled lightly, gaze still focused on her lap.

“Sounds like something I’d say to get lucky,” laughed Uncle Russ around a
mouthful of food. “You just let her think you were lost so that you could
score some points before you asked her out.”

Kol felt his brow narrow but kept the chill out of his voice. “No, I was
being an ass.”

“You were just stressed,” said Piper quietly. “It was a...tough situation.”

“I was completely out of my element,” he said. “But Piper made me feel

like I belonged. That’s what she does for everyone, even when they don’t
deserve it.”

She glanced up at him from under her lashes, and Kol realized then that
Piper’s eyes weren’t simply brown. They were the color of the earth, of a
hopeful beginning and a comforting end, a better shelter than any tree’s
bark, and more brilliant than amber. He could walk a thousand enchanted
groves and never fine a color that would match just how her eyes looked
then, like the safest, warmest place in this and every other plane of
existence.

“And she’s beautiful too,” he murmured, leaning close.

Piper’s face flared bright red. “Stop it,” she giggled through lips bitten in
bashfulness.

“Gross!” announced Michaela, and laughter erupted from the table, saving
or damning them both, he wasn’t sure.
The MacLeans had a way of harping on things and then quickly pivoting
away which is how the rest of dinner went. After, Kol meticulously loaded
the dishwasher to Piper’s standards while she packed up leftovers, their
glances catching and sending a shock right into his chest every time.

Then Michaela skipped into the kitchen and glommed onto Piper’s waist.
“We’re having a sleepover tonight, right?”

Piper’s eyes went perfectly round and wide, pinging from Kol to her
planner, sitting out on the counter. “That is what’s on the schedule for the
eighteenth, isn’t it?” She brushed Michaela’s hair out of her eyes. “Do you
have your sleeping bag? Kol needs a bed, so maybe you and I can bunk
with Aunt Susan and Aunt Mindy.”

“But I just want to hang out with you,” the little girl whispered. “And the
stars are in your bedroom.”

“I’ll sleep downstairs,” he offered.

“Oh, Kol, you don’t want to sleep down there with her brothers.”

“Yeah, they stink,” Michaela interjected.

“I’ll figure something out.” He smiled at her as reassuringly as possible,

and after a few moments of hesitation, Piper agreed.

Kol ended up on an extra wide chair in the den, far enough away from
Uncle Russ’s other kids for quiet. He found a throw and curled beneath it,
shutting his eyes, and immediately missed Piper, but the thought of her
happy kept him warm enough until he fell asleep.
 14

And My Bow
“Sit.”
Kol wasn’t used to taking orders, but he wandered into the kitchen too
stiff to argue. Piper stood bright-eyed at the counter, her hair tied off with
colorful bands into many uneven braids, clearly Michaela’s doing. He sat on
the stool she pointed to and took note of the two empty bowls already
waiting there.
“No eggs Benedict or Belgian waffles this morning?”
Piper smiled from the side of her mouth as she returned from the
refrigerator carrying a gallon of milk, and then she produced that damn box
of Choco-Crunchy Bits from under the counter.
“Oh, no,” he groaned but reached for the sugary cereal anyway.
Piper pulled it away from his grasp, and in his groggy state, she was
much faster. She gave him a pointed look, then slowly filled his bowl. Her
gaze was soft as she watched the crunchy bits fall and then served herself,
her mouth looking even softer with a gentle, knowing grin. Next came the
milk, another thing she did with ease and grace, and his insides went right to
mush.
Gods, Kol, get it together—it’s just a bowl of cereal.
 “You’ve got a big day ahead of you,” she said, and that mushiness in his
guts solidified. “You need as much fuel as you can get.”
“I don’t love the sound of that.” He accepted the spoon she offered.
Piper just took a bite, dark brows rising playfully. If she didn’t wish to
devolve anything further, that was just fine so long as she kept leaning on the
counter across from him and grinning around her spoon as she ate.
The cereal tasted exactly as he expected, both nauseating and delightful,
and he was immediately transported back to his father’s galley kitchen on an
early, Sunday morning, but the seclusion he was used to never came. Instead,
Piper was there, and for once Kol felt like he was exactly where he was
meant to be.
“Ready to go?”
Kol jumped at the hand that fell onto his shoulder. He’d not even heard
Presley enter the kitchen. “Go where?” He eyed the long, black case Piper’s
brother was holding.
“We’re gonna go shoot shit.”
Piper scoffed. “Don’t be a dick.”
“Don’t call your brother a dick,” said her father as he too came into the
room, “and don’t be a dick, Pres. It’s only target shooting, Kol, nothing
alive.”
Piper’s brother gave Kol’s shoulder a shove that surely looked like a
friendly squeeze to everyone else. “Probably not anyway.”
“That’s what we’re doing today?” Kol didn’t remember seeing that in
Piper’s planner.
“That’s what you’re doing. The rest of us are making cookies.” Piper
cleared away the empty bowls.
“Why can’t I make cookies too?”
Presley tugged him to his feet. “Because men shoot shit.” He shoved the
case into Kol’s hands.
“This feels sexist.” He caught Piper’s eye, awkwardly hugging the gun
case to his chest. “This is sexist, right?”
“Oh, yeah, totally.” Piper shrugged. “But I also don’t want to be around
all the burping and farting, so I am very happy to stay here with the
womenfolk and children.”
Kol wasn’t convinced. “Haven’t I proven how good I am at taking
directions? I can help you measure and mix things.”
 “Come on.” Piper’s father nudged Presley out of the way and put a
friendlier hand on Kol’s back. “It won’t be that bad.”
Kol swallowed, but let the man lead him out of the kitchen, and before
he realized, he was sitting in the back of someone’s van, surrounded by
Piper’s male relatives, six of them in all. He assumed it might be a little
easier with Luis there who was Deb’s husband despite being the same age as
Deb’s son from her first marriage, Cody, but the two of them got along
swimmingly, and Presley was even brave enough to bring up Formula One
and listen to everything Luis had to say. That left crass Uncle Russ, his
oldest son, Holden, and Piper’s father. “Just call me Jim,” he’d said, and Kol
agreed with an uneasy flip in his gut.
Why he should really care was beyond him, but this was Piper’s father,
and if playing at being her boyfriend were to be believable, he should be
slightly nervous shouldn’t he? Especially when the man was carrying a rifle.
It was just target practice, though, and Kol was thankfully not the target.
So, he attempted to make a good impression on his fake girlfriend’s real
father, fitting ear protection over his beanie so he wouldn’t reveal the slight
point to his ears and listening intently as the instructor—who was a woman,
but he didn’t make the quip he wanted to about how they should have
brought Piper and the others along—explained the rules.
Kol had grown to have a firm grasp on magic, overcoming his slow start
and proving he was at least half elucidai, but there were limits regardless.
While the rifle he was handed had a walnut stock, manipulating that wood
wouldn’t affect any of the apparently much more important metal parts. Not
to mention the walnut was long dead and had been lacquered to the nether
and back.
Magic required focus, and apparently so did shooting, but there was a lot
less recoil with casting and a lot more will. Kol soon discovered that simply
intending to hit the center of a target didn’t mean that’s where the bullet
would go.
So he missed. A lot. The sulfurous stench of the gunpowder was as
unhelpful as the lack of a target worth hitting. He held no animosity for a
printed bullseye, no fear a static piece of paper hanging at the end of a line
would attack, and he had no one standing at his back to defend, so even
finding the threads of magic in the air was arduous. The fact that the target
used to be a tree certainly didn’t help either.
 Nor did Presley or Russ or Cody or even Luis. Jim tried, but Kol did
even worse under Piper’s father’s eye, so he took a break from missing and
left the loudness of the range for the attached clubhouse. Kol had never
cared about his masculinity before, one of the few benefits of being elven,
but it was truly being challenged, and it felt bad. He threw himself into a
chair, spread his knees wide, and scowled as he pulled out his thaumatix,
scrolling past the list of severing spells, another failure as he’d only whittled
the ones that might work from three hundred and seven to two hundred and
twenty-eight.
Piper’s information hovered at the bottom of his screen, but his finger
froze. He’d like to prove himself particularly masculine to her, if she were
willing to let him.
“Texting your other girlfriend?”
Kol quickly flipped the device shut then cringed at the cowardly move,
probably only confirming Presley’s suspicions. “Just checking on Piper.” At
least that wasn’t entirely a lie.
Presley fell into the chair beside him—too close, he thought—and made
a disbelieving noise. “Not doing very well in there, huh?”
Kol grunted back.
“So,” said Presley with far too much gravity, “if you’re from Canada,
why don’t you speak French?”
Because that’s an idiotic assumption, would have been a perfectly fine
answer, but instead when Kol opened his mouth, a phrase in Elvish came
tumbling out.
Presley squinted, but it was apparent he knew Elvish as well as he knew
any other language, no idea Kol had just told him, Wisdom has long ears and
a short tongue. “Okay, well what’s your favorite grade of maple syrup
then?”
Kol blinked. “A?”
“Yeah, that’s, uh...right.” Presley looked annoyed, but for once it was
with himself. “And who do you root for in hockey?”
“The...Canadians?”
“The Canadiens,”—Presley clicked his tongue—“yeah, that makes
sense.”
Does it?
“So you met Piper out in the woods?”
 Kol ran a hand over his face, wiping away his mounting frustration. “We
did establish that last night, yes.”
“You said a lot of stuff last night.”
Kol had thought it was all pretty good stuff. “I did.”
“So, what are you getting Piper for her birthday?”
“Whatever she wants.”
“You know when it is?”
“Yeah, do you?”
“August...” he dragged out the word, gaze lifting to the ceiling.
“Twenty-eighth,” Kol spat, knowing Presley probably couldn’t pull any
date out of his ass, let alone the right one. “Which makes her a Virgo, as if
that isn’t painfully obvious. And her favorite color is green, she believes
every cardinal is a sign, and she likes her coffee with so much hazelnut
creamer it’s more sugar than bean, but damn if she isn’t right about it being
good.”
Presley opened his mouth, but Kol cut right back in.
“And she goes to the grocery store on the far side of town to get all of
you special tomatoes which none of you even appreciate, but she may as
well make the longer trip because that’s where parking is better and she gets
Doc’s treats and her tampons which you’d never go pick up for her, would
you?” Well, that would shut him up.
And it did, for a minute—a minute long enough for Kol to wish he
actually knew more about Piper. To wish he knew everything.
“Okay, well, you might be right about all that, but why the hell hasn’t she
mentioned you?”
“Maybe she has,” said Kol, angrier now more than ever, “and you just
weren’t listening.”
Presley’s jaw tightened, and he sat forward. “What’s that supposed to
mean?”
“It means, you think you care about her, but you haven’t been doing any
caring at all until now, and you’re still doing a piss poor job of it.”
Presley was a big man, his sheer presence intimidating. “Look, Piper
hasn’t brought a guy around since before mom died, and that was a shit
show. She’s smart, but she makes stupid decisions—”
“Like letting you push her around and waiting on you hand and foot—”
“She doesn’t let me do anything, she never has.” Presley snorted. “You
only think you love her, but she’s been my sister my entire life—I actually
do love her.”
“Then act like it.” Kol stood, anger pumping through every part of him.
“And would it kill you to find your mother’s Christmas village and bring it
upstairs? It’s the only thing she’s asked for.”
He swept away from Presley and back into the range. The sounds were
muffled even without ear protection on, blood rushing through his head, and
he passed up the shooting stalls for the far wall where other ranged weapons
were stored. In any other state, Kol would have absolutely cringed at himself
for even considering it, but rage could really do a lot to a man and elf both,
and he stomped up to the longbows at the rack’s end.
Before he knew it, he’d let fly five arrows, and each hit its mark,
grouped up and buried into a bag target at the end of the range. It had been
too fast for the others to see the magic he pumped into the wooden bow and
exhausted with the repeated drawing of the string, but he hadn’t thought to
care, he just needed to flush out the anger, and he did.
“Why didn’t you say you were such a wicked shot, son?”
Kol’s grip on the longbow loosened, vision blurring. Son?
Piper’s father slapped his back, jostling him, and he was smiling
crookedly from ear to ear.
Kol mumbled something about his grandfather and then got caught up in
Luis asking to be shown how to use the bow. It was difficult to explain a
thing that had been drilled into him in early childhood, but he managed, and
even Presley came around to watch Kol take another volley of shots.
It was late when they finally left the range, let out onto one of the streets
in the heart of Hiberhaven. They had to make a long trek back to the van
with parking at a minimum, but Kol was glad for it when he spied a familiar
shop, making a quick detour inside and then hurrying to catch up. Presley
was still shooting him disapproving glares, but Jim was going on about how
impressive Kol’s skills were, so things had turned out well, in the end. By
the time the sun was set, he was relieved to be headed back home.
Er, to the MacLeans’.
 15

Much Thicker Than A Candy Cane

“Ooo, is that one for your boyfriend?” Aunt Deb came around the kitchen
island, empty wine glass in one hand and a spoonful of chocolate chip
cookie batter in the other.
Piper bit her lip, grinning down at the shortbread cut out in the shape of a
tree. Frosted green, she was just finishing up piping little red hearts all over
it. No—it wasn’t for Kol, it wasn’t for anybody, really, but her heart skipped
at the thought of giving it to him.
“It is.” Her aunt bumped her hip against Piper’s, her tipsy laugh even
shriller than normal though it grew increasingly endearing as the evening
went on. “I bet it’s good to finally be getting some, huh?”
“Debra,” Aunt Susan snapped, folding hands over Michaela’s ears.
Piper only laughed. If a couple of kisses counted as “some,”—and with
Kol, it certainly felt like it—she had to admit, it really was good.
“Unless you want to spill,” Susan’s wife interjected, reaching around
Deb to grab a piping bag of yellow frosting, “because I am all ears.”
Piper shoved an undecorated cookie into her mouth and shrugged.
The women snickered, and Piper went redder than the bowl of M&Ms on
the counter. She’d been evading their questions all day, but indulged her
aunts and cousins a few times—after all, she had to play the part.
“Yes, I know, his eyes are gorgeous, aren’t they?” which was a safe thing
to say because it was just objectively true, and, “He is supportive, isn’t he?”
which was also safe because she wasn’t the only one who had noticed how
helpful Kol always was to her.
 It was all an act, of course, but with the questions pouring in and the
wine Aunt Deb kept pouring into her glass, it felt all too easy to pretend to
have someone. And it was especially easy when Kol was that someone.
“Do you like Kol?” she eventually asked Michaela while the two pulled
the last tray of cookies from the oven.
The girl thought hard like she did about everything, and then she
shrugged. “He’s okay. He really likes you though—he gets heart eyes when
he looks at you.”
Piper stifled the giddiness that crawled around in her belly. “And what
does that mean?”
“You know, like when Sailor Moon sees Tuxedo Mask? Like that.”
When Doc broke into a barking frenzy and skittered out of the kitchen,
Piper knew that the others had returned. She followed the sounds of boots
stomping off snow, and the exclamations of how good the house smelled into
the hall.
Kol had his coat shucked off already, boots abandoned, and he was quick
to slip around the others and right up to her. “Hi,” he said in a low tone,
smile crawling up his face.
“Hi,” she repeated in a half whisper, and she held out her arms. He
stepped into them, embracing her back, and then his lips touched hers before
either of them realized what they were doing.
Piper had fantasized about kissing Kol all day, how she would surely
have to construct some elaborate ruse to get him under the mistletoe again
after brushing him off the day before, and yet it wasn’t complicated at all.
“So, PJs and Charlie Brown?”
Piper jolted out of Kol’s arms at her father’s question. “Pres, you know
how to set that up right? Kol should be able to help you move some
furniture.” She didn’t wait for an answer before she scurried back into the
kitchen, brain and lips buzzing.
Piper grabbed Michaela to concoct hot cocoa while the others gathered
their blankets and brought extra seats and pillows to the living room. Soon
the kitchen was heady with bubbling chocolate, extra heat Piper probably
didn’t need, but she loaded up a tray full of mugs anyway and delivered
them to the others.
The living room was darkened, the tree’s lights gently glowing over
sleepy cousins piled atop one another on the sofa and sprawled out on the
floor. Michaela jumped atop her half-brothers who cried out with
complaints, and then she cuddled up next to her father. Piper passed the tray
away and stood at the back wall until Kol gestured to her from the corner.
He’d managed to snag one of the bigger armchairs, though it was angled
behind the others and tucked into the shadows. Plunky piano played and
animated snow fell on the television screen as she made her way over to
settle on the thick arm of his seat.
“You’re not going to sit there the whole time,” Kol whispered.
“Oh, sorry, I’ll sit on the floor,” she mumbled, standing again.
“Not what I meant.”
Piper gasped as she was tugged backward onto Kol’s lap. Oh, this can’t
be what he meant either. He kept an arm around her waist, the other pulling
a blanket over them. Or...maybe it is? She sat up stiffly until he nudged her
stomach with his hand.
“Relax for once, Pipsqueak,” he rumbled into her ear, and both her
insides and her spine went right to jelly. Piper sank backward, testing where
she could lay herself as she tried to angle her weight off of him, but Kol had
another idea, scooping her up under the knees and tucking her feet in beside
him. “Is that comfortable?”
Way too fucking comfortable. She looked about, but no one else was
paying them any mind, and then she peeked over at him, the glow of the
television cool over his skin despite how warm he felt. “Uh huh.”
“Really?” He cocked a black brow.
“Last two! And look what I found.” Aunt Deb appeared at their side and
offered them mugs along with a bottle—her father’s best barrel-aged rum.
Piper was quick to accept, measuring with her heart into her mug, though
Kol declined.
The spiked hot chocolate and Charlie Brown’s moping on screen worked
their way into Piper’s veins. There was such a familiar comfort in the
scratchy sound of the voices and music that soon enough she really was
relaxing on Kol’s chest, each of his slow breaths rising and falling against
her back. She was so relaxed that she almost didn’t notice his thumb rubbing
across her thigh as his arm rested around her. That was...that was just
friendly, affectionate maybe, but nothing more. Even though...though he had
called her thoughtful, and smart, and beautiful...and he’d kissed her as soon
as he came home.
Cocoa drained, she pulled her knees in a bit more just to see how cozy he
would let her get. Kol’s gaze fell to hers as she peeked up at him, and he
grinned, his hand squeezing her knee. She turned away quickly but couldn’t
help the giggle that bubbled up out of her.
She focused hard on the movie then, watching Charlie and Linus at the
tree lot tromping around the artificial, pink trees, but her giggle came right
back when they found the little stick of a dying branch. “That’s you,” Piper
whispered into Kol’s ear, pointing out Charlie as he lifted the saddest tree in
the lot and half of its needles fell off.
Kol narrowed icy eyes at her, and then his hands found her waist, fingers
tickling at her sides. Piper squeezed the blanket against her face and muffled
the shriek that wanted to come out. “Stop, please, I take it back,” she hissed.
“You have much nicer hair.” She threw an arm around his shoulders and slid
fingers along the back of his head and up under his hat. “At least I think so
—you never take this off.”
Kol cleared his throat lowly. “Better to not invite questions.” His hands
rested more firmly on her, one around her hips and the other gripping her
thighs.
Somehow her other hand wound up on his chest as she leaned fully
against him, playing with the buttons on his flannel, tracing around one and
then down to the next and the next. Piper’s other set of fingers had slipped
around the back of his head, scratching lightly at his scalp until her touch
discovered his hidden ear. Tracing the lobe, she drew a shiver out of him.
Piper pretended not to notice, but she nuzzled deeper into his lap, hiding her
grin away.
You don’t just touch a man’s ears, she remembered him barking at her,
but this time there was no threat, he didn’t even shy away, his grip only
tightened.
Then every alarm bell in Piper’s body went off as a touch skimmed up
the underside of her thigh to the back of her knee. Breath shortening, her
nipples tightened, and she squeezed her thighs together. Not fair, she thought
but kept her eyes intent on the screen and Charlie Brown berating himself
over “killing” his tree with a single ornament. Piper drew her nails along
Kol’s ear again with increasing pressure, other hand walking itself down his
chest beneath the blankets. She shifted her hips and brushed up against
something hard.
That’s not a candy cane he’s smuggling away in his pocket.
With carefully masked intent, Piper sighed and shifted again, thigh
rubbing against him.
 She grinned, silently thanking whoever invented sweatpants, and let her
hand fall to her own hip, grazing against his length. She never looked away
from the television, watching Linus prop up the tree on screen, and as was
tradition, her whole family recited aloud, “It just needs a little love.”
Kol jolted against her, and she snickered.
“Careful,” his voice rumbled into her ear as his fingers dug into her skin.
“You give that any more love, and you’ll be able to hang whatever you want
off of it, including yourself.”
Piper sucked in a sharp breath, falling perfectly still, and then she
devolved into another fit of giggles that she stifled against his chest. His
body shook with more silent laughter as he pressed his mouth to the top of
her head. The animated children sang, and the credits finally rolled.
“Time for bed,” Piper announced to the room a little louder than she
intended and slid herself off Kol’s lap, grabbing his hand as she went. She
stumbled in the darkness, tugging him along behind her before any of the
others could get up, and made it to the stairs.
“Watch it, Pipsqueak,” Kol cautioned as she missed a step in her mad
scramble upward, but she only laughed more, focusing all of her energy on
getting to the head of the stairs.
The noise of the others rose to meet them over the balcony above, but
Piper quickly diverted into her bedroom and yanked him inside.
“Piper, what are you—”
She didn’t let him finish, shoving Kol up against the closed door and
crushing her mouth to his.
 16

Beating Out A Confession

Piper was maybe the messiest kisser Kol had ever endured, but he didn’t
care—he wanted nothing more than to practice with her for as long as it took
to get her on track, and then longer still.
She was attempting to climb him, another thing he was perfectly fine
with despite its strangeness. He had thought every wiggle and brush during
the movie an accident at first—a torture well deserved for pulling her onto
his lap because he selfishly wanted to be close after a day spent apart—and
surely she had no idea touching the tips of his ears would send a jolt straight
to his cock, but then she hadn’t stopped when he’d whispered a warning
against the back of her head.
As her leg hooked over his hip and she tried to find purchase around his
neck to get their groins level, he needed no more hints. Whatever happened
when he was gone had flipped some switch, turned off her self-imposed
overthinking, reluctant brain, and made her go absolutely wild.
Oh, shit.
“How much,”—he evaded one of her bites—“of that spiked cocoa,”—
she stole a kiss that he gave back before pulling away again—“did you
have?”
 With the strength of a much bigger being, Piper wrenched him away
from the door and tossed him on the bed before throwing herself down atop
him. “Just one mug,” she said breathlessly.
Kol gripped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length for a long
moment. Her dark hair had fallen out of its ponytail to cascade alongside her
reddened cheeks, her lips were swollen and parted, and her eyes shimmered
in the dim twinkle lights of the bedroom. Gods, she was beautiful.
Kol dragged her down and devoured her mouth. She squealed against his
lips, fingers struggling to make sense of the buttons on his flannel. He
suffered under that same eagerness because being away from her had made
him mad too. His touch roved up under her sweater, hands finding lacy
material pulled taut over full breasts.
Then she suddenly sat up, giggling as she straddled his hips. He caught
his breath, lips given a momentary reprieve from her feverish kisses, but she
settled all her weight right onto his cock, and he knew he’d never have relief
again until he was inside her. “You’re awfully ticklish.” He trailed his
fingers down her ribs, reveling in the way she wiggled atop him.
“No, it’s just,”—she snorted—“you were grabbing my boobs.”
Kol’s hands fell still on her waist. “You’re sure you didn’t sneak some
extra rum?”
“Nuh uh,” she said with all the sweetness of unspiked hot chocolate. He
wanted to believe her despite the glassiness of her eyes and the clumsiness
of her pawing, especially when she rolled her hips to grind the heat between
her legs along the length of his cock—the cock he hadn’t touched in six days
while sleeping beside her every night. “I did have a glass of wine though!”
And then she finally found the hem of his shirt and ran her hands along his
bare skin as she sloppily pressed her mouth to his neck.
Even though the feel of Piper’s tongue on his pulse and her soft fingers
on his stomach were so close to exactly what he wanted, they were also
miles away from how he wanted it. Kol regrettably took her by the waist,
and in one quick move, rolled her onto her back. Piper’s breathless gasp as
she hit the bed was another torment, her massive eyes momentarily
frightened like a small creature surprised out in the wood, but then she
devolved into another squealing giggle.
“Just one glass?” he asked, dodging another kiss as he hovered over her.
“Just one.” Piper set her face stony, the lights glinting in her massive,
dark pupils.
 If she was able to hold still, that probably meant she was telling the truth.
He waited, and so did she. This wasn’t how he’d imagined it—he really
thought Piper would need a lot more coaxing to blossom into the writhing,
panting version of herself that he suddenly had pinned beneath him—but
then absolute devilry flashed in her eyes.
She lifted a hand and held up two fingers. “Promise it was just one—
scout’s honor,” she whispered then lifted a third finger. “Or is this how you
do it?”
A growl rumbled up through Kol’s throat. “However many you can
take.” He buried his face into her neck, and she moaned, arching against
him. But as he ran his tongue up to her ear, she snorted again, and her hands
got even clumsier, slapping at his sides. When he pulled back, he took a deep
breath, the boozy smell on her breath unmistakable, and now it was on his
too. “Piper.”
She gasped at the bite in his voice and clamped her mouth shut,
innocence injected into the doe-eyed stare she gave him. He waited because
he knew, and then she sighed with a hefty roll to her eyes. “Aunt Deb mighta
refilled that one glass three or four times.”
“What is that, a whole bottle?”
“Probably with the way Deb pours.”
“Fuck, why didn’t I realize it when you kissed me at the door?” He’d
never felt stupider, throwing his head back and groaning up at the moonlight
through the slanted window. She was tipsy, at the very least, and he was an
asshole. He slid off of her and onto his back. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“What?” She pushed up onto her elbow then slid face-first into the duvet
before properly propping herself up. “Yes, it is! I can tell you think so too.”
She reached downward, but he snatched her wrist before she could grab the
bulge in his sweatpants. “Kol,” she dragged out his name, leaning right up
against the side of his face, his hat lost in the frenzy leaving him totally
exposed. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Please don’t use that voice, Piper.”
But of course she did, whining long and low as her breath brushed over
every crevice and mound of his ear. Her hand floundered in his grip, inches
from his erection. “Come on, lemme see! I just wanna know if your you-
know-what is different, like your ears.”
Different.
 Anger flared in Kol’s chest, searing the edges of his desire. He was
different, and he could hear it being explained to him all over again by the
elf he thought would change everything. He’d finally worked up the courage
to tell her what he wanted, and it was simple: a real partner. But then she
broke it to him, the thing he’d known but never wanted to admit to himself,
that she slept with him because she’d been told by the other elves that he
was doting and attentive and emotional in bed, which was certainly fun for a
short time, but it wasn’t what she wanted in a lifelong partner—not for the
length of her life or even for the much shorter length of his.
That had been the last time, with an elf or with anyone. Though it was
the human part that made elves seek him out and then toss him aside, he’d
sworn off being used like that, and now Piper was straining to grab onto the
cock she imagined was different and licking at the funny-looking point to his
ear.
But Piper didn’t use people, did she? If anything, she was just as worn as
he felt. He could see it in her eyes, behind the drunkenness and the lust—she
shined with the brightness of a beacon and warmth of a sun, but it was only
because she was a star on the verge of burning out.
He let Piper slip out of his grasp when he felt her aim shift away from his
crotch. “I missed you today,” she whispered and tenderly laid her hand on
his chest. “I know it’s dumb, but I’m used to you being around now. I like
it.”
That same sentiment had burned right where her palm pressed. He
couldn’t deny the void he’d been carrying all day, the missing piece that
came with her presence, whatever it was. But he was utterly bewildered by it
too. “I missed you too,” he whispered back.
She drew a leg over his thighs and nuzzled her head into his shoulder.
“It’s just easier for me like this,” she said, misery running through her words,
and then she hiccupped. “I don’t get drunk a lot, but when I do, I don’t think
or worry.”
Of course alcohol helped her relax, but as much as he wanted to ease her
worries, he didn’t want her to not think, and he bet she didn’t actually want
to not think either. What if she woke up in the morning appalled at what
happened? Regretting it all? Hating him?
He sat up, thinking and worrying enough for the both of them. “Is calling
it my you-know-what a drunk thing or just a you thing?”
 Piper looked boozily thoughtful, eyes squinted, lips pursed. “I can say
peeee...nis”
He scoffed. “Penis?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Dick?” He asked, eyeing her. “Cock?”
Piper sucked in a deep breath and then covered her face before she
started laughing again.
“That’s it, we’re definitely not doing this.” He rubbed his forehead and
willed the organ in question to stand down.
“What? No! That’s so unfair,” she moaned, and not in the sexy way
she’d been doing when his teeth skimmed her jaw. “I never get to do what I
want!”
His cock would never relax if she kept that up, but she didn’t relent,
making huffy little noises and mumbling about justice. He shifted back to his
side and took her by the chin, biting out, “I wish you would tell me what you
want when you’re sober.”
When she took advantage of how close he’d brought his mouth and
kissed him then, he kissed her back because what else could he do?
“Not tonight, Piper,” he said up against her mouth. “Please.”
And because she wasn’t an animal like he was, she pulled back with a
sad little frown. She let out a breath that smelled like chocolate and wine and
sounded like disappointment, falling lax into the pillows. “But I like you.”
“I have no idea why,” he mumbled.
She snuggled her head against his arm again and sighed sleepily. “You
don’t? That’s sad. I think you’re great. You’re funny and you’re helpful and
you’re cute and you make my heart horny. I wish you were my boyfriend for
real.” Piper yawned and closed her eyes.
Kol’s blood pumped in his ears, breath held. Her silly words were fueled
by alcohol, by exhaustion, by libido, but they weren’t...they weren’t true,
were they?
“No one cares about me like you do, and you don’t even really know
me,” she mumbled into his shoulder.
“I feel like I know you,” he said quietly. “And when I’m with you, I feel
like I know me too.”
“Then we should...” Piper’s voice petered out, eyes still closed. Her hand
trailed down his stomach coming to rest a pine needle’s width away from
where he both wanted it and didn’t.
 It was an excruciating amount of time later—which was really only
about two minutes but felt like two hundred to a man whose cock was on the
verge of bursting if he shifted a centimeter to the left—that Piper started to
snore, and Kol was finally able to slip out of the bed.
The house had gone silent, everyone else tucked away and asleep, and
Kol sneaked across the hall into Piper’s bathroom. Lights left off, he locked
himself inside and took himself in hand. It would be unimpressive and quick,
Piper’s presence enough to push him to the edge, and then her needy voice
and her soft breasts and the way he knew now that she could be flooding his
senses.
Bracing against the door with one hand, Kol pumped at his cock with the
other, eyes squeezed shut, Piper’s panting face behind his eyelids. She
wanted to be fucked, and he wanted to fuck her, but why did she have to go
about it like that?
He twisted down the length of himself, hand already slick with
anticipation. He wished he had her in the bathroom with him, not to touch,
just to watch, to see what she did to him, to know he didn’t want to refuse
her.
Kol found her name in his throat as he came. Release jerking through
him, he stiffened, hand shaking as he brought himself past the point where it
was pleasurable into that torturous moment after.
It’s just easier for me like this.
His forehead found the door as he went limp. He would find another way
to make it easier for her, to get her to tell him what she really wanted, he had
to, or he would absolutely lose everything trying.
 17
image
Dropped Messages And Other
Unfortunate Miscommunications
Kol slept surprisingly well after squeezing all the icing out of his piping
bag, but it probably had more to do with the limbs wrapped around him.
Piper was cuddled into his side, a leg thrown over his hips and both arms
entwined around one of his. He was still dreaming, he had to be, nothing
this wonderful could ever happen.
But then he caught a whiff of her breath as she snored up against his
face, and he was thrust into full wakefulness.
Piper’s head lolled to the side, a little puddle of drool on the pillow and
messy hair stuck to her forehead. Gods, she really was beautiful. But the
line between silent admiration and creepy staring was as thin as tinsel, and
he had other things to look at.
It was probably an hour or so later when he heard shuffling from the bed
and the telltale groan of a hangover. “Waterya doin’?”
Kol turned over his shoulder and held up the hefty textbook from his
lap. “You were going to be a doctor, like your mom.”
“Hmm?” Piper blinked, sitting up into the sunlight that streamed in on
her disheveled form, dust motes dancing around her droopy, adorable face.
“No, I wasn’t.” She fell back into the bed with a thump.
“But these are your perfectly straight highlighter marks and your itty
bitty, neat handwriting in the margins.” He flipped through another page of
Clinical Pharmacokinetics & Pharmacodynamics. “And look, after this
study where no medicines worked, someone wrote, Maybe they should try
laughter? If that’s not a note that you wrote, I’ll eat my hat.”
Piper groaned long and low as she twisted under the duvet. “Not a
doctor, and definitely not like my mom.”
“People don’t have these kinds of books for fun—I might not spend
much time in the human world, but I know textbooks cost an ear and a nut.”
She chuckled groggily. “I was going after my undergrad in
pharmaceutical science, but I didn’t finish. Mom got sick.”
 Kol swallowed back his next exclamation, about to encourage her to go
back to school. He’d been flipping through all the books on her shelves,
annotated and tabbed with such neatness and care. Besides the medical
books, she had a shelf filled with old, illustrated field guides from all over
the world and another dedicated to fairytales, old, leather-bound copies and
newer retellings with pretty, pastel covers. No wonder she’d been so good
at handling the whole magic-is-real thing. Her bookshelves didn’t tell him
everything he wanted to know, but it had been a start. “I’m sorry, Piper,” he
said as he carefully placed the book back where it belonged.
“I know, everybody is, but don’t be—the only good thing that came
from her getting sick was the excuse to quit school before I failed out.”
Kol scoffed. “I bet you’ve never failed at anything in your—”
“I’m awful at math,” she admitted with the freedom of a woman who
had been keeping it in for far too long. “It doesn’t happen with words, but I
see numbers backwards, and I can barely add without a calculator. I would
have killed someone by giving them too many milligrams of floxuridine or
something, if I ever even made it to an actual patient, which I definitely
wasn’t going to.” She dug the heels of her palms into her eyes as she
flopped fully onto her back, words continuing to tumble out. “Every other
subject was so easy, but I spent all of my free time between twelve and
twenty-two just doing equation after equation, struggling to get it right. I
don’t belong in a school, or in a hospital, or a pharmacy. I wanted to be
good at it, Kol, I really did, and Mom was so proud when I got accepted to
her alma mater, but I never loved it as much as she did, and I just...I
couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it.”
He shifted onto his knees and went over to the bed. Guiding her hand
away from her face, he offered her a gentle smile. “That’s okay, you know.”
“But she was great, and I’m nothing like her.”
He felt the scowl before he could stop it from overtaking his face and
grabbed a framed photo from the nightstand. A much younger Piper and her
mother were squished up against one another in the hollow of a huge tree,
both faces dirt-smudged and beaming in the picture. “Don’t say you’re
nothing alike—she clearly loved being outside as much as you do.”
Piper flopped her arm over the edge of the bed to take the photo. She
had circles under her eyes and her cheeks were red, but at least she wasn’t
crying. A smile made its way back onto her face. “Well, I guess that is true.
Mom was as good at identifying mushrooms as she was at identifying
tumors. Even her own.”
Piper’s heavy words blanketed Kol’s shoulders, but she hadn’t frowned.
“She actually did, ya know. She was forgetting stuff, so she gave herself
a brain scan. She said once, This is what I get for specializing in
dermatological oncology.” When he hesitated, she clarified for him,
“Melanoma has a pretty high survival rate: brain cancer, not so much.”
Piper studied the photo then actually started to laugh. “Well, you can’t
really give yourself an MRI, but she swore the radiologist to secrecy, which
was very like her. If she had the time to teach herself how to do the surgery,
she probably would have tried to remove her own tumor—she always took
care of everything on her own all the time.”
Kol watched her stare sentimentally at the photo for far too long. “That
sounds an awful lot like somebody else I know.”
Eventually, the string of Christmas lights behind Piper’s eyes plugged
in. “Yeah, yeah, maybe we have a few things in common.” She put the
photo back and groaned. “But you don’t have to remind me, my brain’s
already fuzzy enough from last night and—oh, my god.”
Her eyes had gone wide, her body stiff. “What?”
“Nothing,” she squeaked and yanked the blankets up over her head.
“Just remember last night?”
Her groan told him that yes, she did.
Santa’s Village was everything Kol dreaded it would be: overrun with
humans, children especially, and filled with depictions of elves that should
have had Piper laughing and needling him. But she hadn’t really brightened
since that morning. She was embarrassed, sure, but there was something
else making her exceptionally glum, and it didn’t help that Michaela’s
mother came to pick her up, and the little girl hugged Piper for far too long
with a tearful goodbye.
All of the MacLeans loaded up and traveled to Hiberhaven’s downtown
to visit a few streets and a massive farmer’s field that had been transformed
into a makeshift North Pole. Buildings were covered in twinkling lights,
facades converted to look like toy shops and reindeer stables and hot cocoa
stands. Kol asked he if she’d like to get some spiked in hopes that would
coax out Piper’s smile, but it did not.
He tried to hold her hand as they strolled down one of the residential
roads, equally packed with tourists, but she slipped hers into her pocket. He
offered her the extra bag of granola he had taken to carrying around, but she
declined, eyes cast down and sad.
I did that, he thought, but short of taking her behind the reindeer stables
and burying his face between her thighs, he wasn’t sure how he was
supposed to cheer her up. He knew how rejection stung, and they hadn’t
even had a chance to talk about it as she had busied herself with catering to
her family all day, insisting she was fine, no discussion needed.
As they walked down one of the busiest streets, a feminine voice called
Piper’s name from somewhere ahead of them.
She lifted her head, big eyes bewildered, and then they fell like a
homing wyvern on a young woman barreling through the crowd. A smile
finally broke out on Piper’s face. “Lacey!”
The two met in a tight embrace. The stranger was Piper’s age with pin-
straight, blonde hair and a white peacoat, and as she hugged Piper, she
squeezed her eyes shut and shrieked happily.
There was a man who had to dodge the crowd to catch up with Lacey,
and he offered Kol a polite nod which he returned because that was what
the partners of squealing women did, even if they were only playing the
role of said partner.
“I didn’t know you were coming!” Piper pulled back but grinned so
wide her eyes watered.
“Neither did I, but you know how Mom is—she just decided at the last
minute we were making the two-hour drive which my bladder was not
happy about.” She laughed and rubbed her belly.
“I didn’t realize you were so far along!” Piper’s mouth hung open at the
swell of Lacey’s stomach that had been hidden by her thick coat. “You did
this,” she said, scrunching up her nose and shooting a glare at the man.
“Guilty,” he said, and then all three laughed.
“And who’s this?” Lacey had turned her eyes on Kol, friendly and open,
but he wished he could sink into the shadows and be unseen.
Piper’s face blanched, and she made rushed introductions. Lacey was
her friend from high school—“I’m your best friend,” the woman corrected
—and Ethan was Lacey’s husband of three years. “And this is Kol,” said
Piper, touching his arm.
“Your...” Lacey’s gaze drilled into Piper, unblinking.
“Boyfriend.” Piper’s touch turned into a grip, and she tugged him
toward her. He lost balance only for a moment, and even with the strained
way she said it, he grinned like a kid who just found out he was definitively
on Santa’s Nice List despite all the naughty things he’d done.
“Well, hello, Kol, the boyfriend that Piper completely failed to mention
and now I don’t even get to interrogate because we’re about to leave!”
Lacey shook his hand and then dug around in her purse until she pulled out
her phone. “You know, I actually did text you on the way. Ugh, stupid
mountains.” She showed Piper the screen. “It never sent because I have
zero reception here. I’m sorry, but I thought you were just ignoring me.
Again. We gotta hang out, okay? My window of freedom is shrinking!”
Piper laughed guiltily. “Yes, definitely. I’ll actually text you this time.
Promise.”
They hugged again, and Kol keenly watched Piper’s face, the way her
smile moved around with sincerity and solemnity at once, how she sank
into the hug, and how Lacey squeezed her back. It lasted a long time as
crowds passed them on either side, and Lacey said something into Piper’s
ear that made Piper nod and squeeze her eyes shut tight. When they finally
released one another, Lacey reminded her again to call and announced she
needed to use the bathroom before they loaded into the car.
Piper watched her friend walk away, arm linked with Ethan’s, and then
she was quick to turn and hustle the other way.
“Hey, wait up.” Kol hurried after, but Piper was as quick as a jackalope,
surprising when her legs were so much shorter than his. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, a lie if he ever heard one. Head down, she made
her way to the end of the residential street, expertly maneuvering around the
tourists.
“Something is wrong,” he called, catching up. “Did she say something
shitty to you?” He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd, never
considering that he’d want to fight a pregnant lady, but if she’d said
something nasty to Piper—
“No, not at all. Lacey really is my best friend, I just didn’t think I was
hers anymore because I’ve been so...” Piper rubbed at her face. “I’m fine.
Let’s go this way.” She didn’t wait for his answer, diverting off onto a
lighted path that ran into the woods.
There were far fewer people on the trail that snaked through the trees,
but Piper was still moving fast. The sun set early in winter, and despite it
only being late afternoon, it was dark enough for the Christmas lights to be
needed. The snow sparkled under the rainbows they cast, and other couples
passed leisurely arm-in-arm, but Piper kept pace a few steps ahead of Kol
then swerved off the path and into a more thickly wooded area.
“Where are you going?”
“The field,” she said flippantly, and Kol realized he should trust her, but
worry settled like regifted fruitcake in his gut.
“Can you slow down? Please?”
She said nothing, but it was only a few moments until they broke out of
the treeline and were indeed in a field, secluded and private. Untouched
snow stretched for at least an acre, dull and smooth under a sky heavy with
clouds blotting out the last of the sun. All the magic and glittering lights of
Santa’s Village were left behind, and a light fog hovered in the nearest trees.
“All right, Pipsqueak, will you finally tell me what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” She turned swiftly back to him. “What’s wrong is that
I’m a fraud! I’m lying to my entire family, even to my best friend for the
split second I actually got to see her, about you.”
Kol felt that you stab him right in the chest, but how he could be the
source of her problems despite trying to find her solutions, he didn’t know.
Is was every other asshole in her life that caused her misery after misery.
“So, what—you want to break off our deal?”
“I didn’t say that!” Piper’s gloved hands clenched at her sides. “It’s just
going to be harder now because of Lacey. She knows me, and she’s going to
know...”
“She’ll know what?”
Piper glared at the snow around her boots, lip bitten in frustration.
“That you’re faking it?” Kol pushed.
She shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. “She always
knows when I’m not actually fine, and when you’re gone...”
Kol waited, but the rest of the words wouldn’t come. It had seemed so
easy for her the night before, but she might not even remembered any of
that. Or she did, but the clarity of the morning made her realize she felt
differently—that would certainly explain how cold she’d been all day.
Kol sighed. “Well, when all this is over, I’m sure you’ll be able to fake
being sad about a fake breakup as well as you fake being happy about a
fake relationship.”
Her eyes flashed with anger as they snapped up to his. “That’s not what
I mean. I’m not going to...”
He held out his hands. “To what?” Come on, Piper, give it to me.
 “Oh, my god, you’re so...so...so...”
“I’m so what, Pipsqueak?”
Piper shrieked the most frustrated noise he’d ever heard, but she did it
through a mouth shut tight against itself. She couldn’t even allow herself
one moment of true catharsis to scream at him, but there she was, squeezing
her arms around her middle even tighter, refusing to open up at all.
He wasn’t going to let her hold it in. Even if it was vicious and she
ended up enraged with him, he had to coax out whatever she insisted on
holding onto. Kol folded his arms over his chest and gave her his best
condescending look. “You probably won’t even have to deal with any of
this—from the sound of things, you ignore your supposed best friend
anyway. I’m sure you’ll find some task to finish or someone else to cater to
so you can keep avoiding the actual thing you want because you’re afraid of
actually getting it.”
“Excuse me?” She stomped a foot into the snow, no pleasant crunch,
just a mucky mess on her boot. “I’m not afraid of finally getting what I
want!”
Kol waited, watching her grow more red-faced and angry. Something
prickled at the back of his neck, something like magic, but the warning of
one’s intuition was strikingly similar. “Well?” he finally spat. “What do you
want?”
“I just want to be normal!” she shouted, and there was a flutter of wings
from a nearby tree as startled birds took to the sky.
That...hadn’t been exactly what Kol was expecting.
“I don’t want to always feel like this. I don’t want to always be so sad or
so angry or so damn disappointed that I’m not where I’m supposed to be in
life, but I’m so far behind, and I don’t know if I’ll ever catch up! I’m just
not the person who I was supposed to be—the person Mom and Dad
expected. I didn’t get my degree, I don’t have a real job, or my own place to
live, no husband, no baby—the dog isn’t even mine!”
Kol took a breath, heart sinking. “You...you want to have a baby?” This
was going much farther south than he’d anticipated.
“Ugh, no!” She dropped her head back. “Maybe you’re right, maybe I
am a coward. It’s just that pretending with you shines a huge spotlight on
every one of my failures, including the fact that I’m alone.”
I’m not pretending, he wanted to say, and, You’re not alone, but yet
again, Kol was struck by his too-big feelings—those were not things he
could just lay at her feet and expect to be picked up and taken care of. He
breathed in deeply, the cold stinging his lungs. “You’re not a coward,
Piper.”
“But you said—”
“I wasn’t being...fair.”
Her gaze dropped to the snow, and she turned away from him. “I’m
sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have tried to use you like that. If you want
to take the tree and go, I’ll understand.” Her voice was quiet, carried off on
the wind as a shadow fell over Kol and a pit formed in his stomach. He
didn’t want to be right about his darkest thoughts, the ones that proved to
him he was only worth the company he could provide in bed. He could be
more than that for her, if she’d just let him.
He had to tell her that, to say she didn’t have to be alone, that he would
keep up the charade as long as she wanted—forever even, which was
completely insane, but he knew in the deepest part of his heart, he preferred
orbiting her burning star than floating in the void of his own life. He would
rather stand on the outside of her family, under everyone’s suspicion,
holding her hand whenever she felt like she needed it, than never see her
again.
“Piper?” His voice cracked as he watched her back. He wanted her to
turn around so he could see those big eyes of hers to know if he was making
yet another mistake or not. There was a pull at his stomach, and then the
whole world fell out from under him.
 18

One Big Mama Bird

Piper stood in the field and trembled. She was terrified of what Kol might
say, the sound of her name on his lips frightening enough, his ensuing
silence even worse.
She turned slowly back, and then her heart sank right to the bottom of
her boots. I didn’t really mean I wanted you to go...
“Put me the fuck down!”
Head snapping skyward, Piper’s breath caught, and she nearly fell
backward right into the snow. There Kol was, or rather, there he went, being
carried off by a...raving Rudolph, what was that?
The biggest bird Piper had ever seen, but also somehow didn’t see,
streaked straight upward, Kol in its talons, white wings spread as it soared
away and...and flickered?
“Kol!” Piper sprinted across the field, or at least she tried. She raised her
knees and crashed back into the snowy depths, head tracking the absconder
between each deepening step. The way he thrashed around in its talons told
her he hadn’t called it up to come and get him. What the hell she was going
to do, she had no idea, but if she lost him, she could do nothing.
Piper would have thought it an owl if it weren’t so huge, but it might as
well have been—no bird was that big. But geese didn’t have fangs and trees
weren’t seven thousand years old and pixies only existed in fairytales, so it
might as well have been a snowy owl ten times too big tearing away over the
field. She called after Kol again as the beast’s existence continued to flicker
incomprehensibly, and then both were lost over the trees. Piper kept up her
belabored slog until she reached a dent in the otherwise untouched snow just
before the far end of the field. That tablet of Kol’s lay in a divot, fallen
through the sky and caught in the thick powder, so she scooped it up and
darted into the darkened forest.
It only took her a moment to find the bird again, its wings massive when
they fully formed beyond the sticky branches. She trained her eyes on the
sky where she could, stumbling as she went. She only hit the ground once,
pain bursting through her forearms as she caught herself on the frozen earth,
but she was up again in seconds, injury quickly forgotten. Yet try as she
might, the bird was simply faster, and soon Kol was no more.
Panic stabbed at her brain as Kol’s name echoed back at her fruitlessly
when she called it into the cold. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she
squeezed the tablet against it to silence the noise and think.
The tablet!
Piper flipped the thauma-whatsit over in her hands, smooth and black
and giving her absolutely nothing to work with. She ripped off her gloves to
feel the rectangle’s edges. It was warm, but there were no buttons or seams
to turn it on or fold it open. She’d seen Kol do all sorts of things with it
using a glowing touch, but that was it, she supposed—it took magic.
And magic, Piper did not have, especially now that Kol was gone.
She grunted and glanced around, but the world was white and brown,
devoid of the lights and colors she’d seen him produce. What she needed
was someone else with magic, someone who knew everything Kol did, who
was familiar with mythological beasts and enchanted ingredients and forests
teaming with otherworldly fowl. But she knew no one like that, only Kol,
and he was only half because his mother...
His mother!
Piper gripped Kol’s device in two hands, staring down at it, willing it to
turn on. She squinted and huffed and nearly burst a blood vessel, but more
nothing kept happening, or not happening. Then finally she took a deep
breath, put as much bass into her voice as possible, and shouted, “Call
mom!”
The screen lit up. Calling Mother.
“Oh, I can’t believe that worked,” she whispered, but of course it did
because it had to, you know, for the plot.
“Kolariel, this is not our scheduled bi-lunar communion. Is this a
pleasure I should take satisfaction in, or am I to assume disquiet or ailment
has befallen you?”
In Piper’s panic, most of the words didn’t compute, but it hardly
mattered. “Hello, Mrs. Um,”—fuck, she didn’t know his last name or if
elves even had them—“Mrs. Kol’s Mom?”
“Hmm, you do not sound like Kolariel. This truly must be emergent.”
The voice was smooth and calm, and it settled Piper’s nerves enough to take
a full breath.
“Yes, it’s that.” She gripped the...well, she guessed it was phone, and she
spoke into the light it produced. “Kol’s been birdnapped!”
“Bird,” the voice said very slowly, “napped?”
“Well, elfnapped, I guess? A bird stole him, but a big bird, a huge one! I
mean, obviously, how else would it—oh, my god, he said there would be
birds if I kept the tree, and then he was taken by one!” It hit her all at once—
it was all her fault—and she fell back hard against a maple, loosening snow
that fell onto her head.
The voice made a ponderous sound that would have been pleasant if
things weren’t so dire, but as it stood, things were, and frustration mounted
in Piper’s chest at the woman’s lack of urgency. “Troubling,” she finally
said.
“Yeah, that’s one word for it, but they’re gone now, and that thing was so
big it could be miles away!”
“Miles?” She made another sound far too mild for having just learned
her son was dangling by talons a hundred feet off the ground. “This aves,
can you further define it?”
“Basically like an owl but the size of a bus, and it was sort of
disappearing and reappearing over and over.”
“Surely you do not mean a cailleach?”
“No clue, I don’t know anything about magic, I don’t even know how I
got his phone to work, I just really need your help,” she admitted, voice
going raw.
“Oh, dear, well, do you happen to be near a tree?”
“Yes!” Hope flourished in Piper’s chest.
“Allow me a few moments to access your location.”
The small screen of Kol’s tablet whirred, constellations and numbers
spinning over what had simply been a blue screen pulsing with a white dot.
Piper tried to follow the sequences, holding it close to her face, eyes
crossing. The light brightened then, blinding her, and she jerked back into
the tree.
Only there wasn’t a tree behind her anymore, there was a woman.
Piper shrieked and flailed, jumping away from the sudden arrival and the
tree at her back that had opened up, the bark peeled away from its center and
leaving a door through which the woman had apparently come. She was like
a specter, terrifyingly beautiful with dark, arched brows and a smooth, pale
face, reddened lips, flowing black hair, and, oh boy, Piper could see where
Kol got it from. Except the ears, those were significantly longer yet elegantly
tapered toward the back of her head. But she also looked about thirty years
too young to have given birth to Kol.
“Oh, how charming.” Her small mouth turned up, and her eyes sparkled
like they were covered in frost.
Piper caught her breath and swallowed hard, heart still rattling inside her
ribs like a trapped moth. “You’re Kol’s mom?”
She nodded slowly, grin slipping away. “And you are?”
“He’ll be pecked to death before I can possibly explain.”
“Cailleach tend to favor their talons, though they are also known for
swallowing their prey whole.”
Piper’s blood went cold as she took in the woman’s placid face, and then
she threw her hands into the air. “I don’t see how that’s better—he’ll be dead
either way unless we do something!” Her throat went raw as she shouted,
tears pricking at her eyes. “It’s all my fault, and I yelled at him, and I told
him he could go, but I didn’t really want him to go! I want him to stay, but I
especially don’t want him to die! Please, please tell me you can help me get
him back!”
The woman stepped forward, closing the space between them, and Piper
truly felt small. Taller than Kol, the not-human-ness of the elf finally fell on
Piper as fully as the hands that cupped her face. She wore no gloves, but her
fingers were warm, and Piper could feel the heat spread through her whole
body like being injected with a sedative. “We will find him, youngling,” she
said, and then her brow knit ever so slightly. “You are...entirely human?”
Piper nodded, a calming daze settling into her bones.
“So full of love, how could you not be?” She released Piper’s face and
straightened. “Come, we will deliver my son from his troubles.”
Piper’s hand was taken by the elf’s long, slender fingers, and she stepped
toward the still-open tree.
 “Wait, I can’t—”
Except Piper could—she could do anything with an elucidai elf holding
her hand because pure elucidai magic was a thing to behold. Unfortunately,
Piper wasn’t really in a position to behold anything, not when her brain was
being pulled out of her bellybutton and her mouth had been stuffed with
mushrooms and fresh-cut grass.
Piper was walking and falling and jumping, and the world was also
moving around her all so quickly she could make zero sense of it which was
probably for the best since tree-walking wasn’t meant to be comprehensible
to humans. Elves hardly understood it themselves, not that they would ever
admit it.
Tree-walking was also extremely fast, and before Piper really could
process that she was moving through bark and roots, the darkness around her
cleared, and she was somewhere else.
She was walked forward, hand held like she were in a dream, and a knot
in the nearest maple unfurled. They stepped into another tree, and Piper’s
kneecaps were in her eyeballs, the sound of exactly one hundred and forty-
two earthworms wiggling in the dirt that filled her ears.
When the bark cleared once again, the altitude hit her so fast she began
to faint, but the elf kept her aloft just long enough to step into yet another
tree. Piper’s appendix went to Brazil, her lungs to Jakarta, and her
gallbladder appeared for a brief but disturbing moment in a China cabinet in
Middlebury, Ohio before cobbling back together normally—or as normal as
anyone can ever be after tree walking.
“Ah, there is my firstborn.” The elf sounded as pleased as she had been
about everything else.
Beside her, Piper openly wept, overcome with gladness both to have her
innards in place and to have found him.
A surprisingly strong hand pressed into her back, reminding her there
was more to be done. Piper wiped at her eyes and gazed skyward. High
above them, a copse of white pines had coalesced, twisting around one
another and forming a massive hollow. It could have been called a nest if it
were smaller, but the twigs were made of entire trees, white birches bent and
twisted around narrow aspens, and it just couldn’t be real, but there was that
bird perched at its edge, massive and white. Its head twisted around on a
neck that just shouldn’t be able to do that, and yellow eyes peered down at
them.
 “Good evening,” called the elf, and though she hadn’t really raised her
voice, the sound traveled. “We do not mean to intrude on your meeting, but
we have come to offer assistance.”
The giant bird’s feathers ruffled, and there was movement in the nest-like
hollow. Kol appeared, peeking over the edge of the gnarled branches. He
wasn’t being ripped to shreds, wasn’t fighting off talons or a beak, yet his
face was still twisted up as if he were in excruciating pain. “You called my
mother?”
Ah, so excruciating pain it was.
Piper looked to the elven woman for help, but she only wore that placid
grin of hers. Cupping hands to her mouth, she called back, “I didn’t know
what else to do.”
“Literally anything else!”
“What, like let you die?”
“Yes!” He pushed off the edge of the nest and disappeared back into the
darkness of the hollow.
The elf didn’t appear to be offended in the least. She simply folded her
hands over one another and watched, sounds emanating from on high, but
none of them particularly discernible.
“It is not going well,” she finally said.
“How can you tell?” Piper tipped her head to the side.
“You cannot?”
Piper shrugged.
The woman made a sound with a meaning Piper couldn’t place. “Well,
that is also very human, I suppose.”
Before Piper could too heavily feel the weight of offense, there was a
screeching sound from above that made her heart leap into her throat.
“No, not good at all.” The elf called again in her not-shouting-yet-carried
voice, “Kolariel, perhaps a favor from the Ill’lor’a’syndai would please our
cailleach friend?” It was quiet for a long moment, during which Kol’s
mother leaned slightly toward Piper and whispered, “He will offer this, and
we will be done.”
Another forever-long moment passed before the bird shifted to the side,
wingspan unfurling like sails, then finally took off. A moment later, Kol
appeared at the edge again, standing this time. Hands on his hips, he peered
down at the two and sighed. “Can somebody please get me down?”
 19

Not So Immaculate Conception

Piper sat with hands clasped tight in her lap, eyes pinging around the diner
until they landed on the elven woman sitting across the booth. She couldn’t
possibly take Kol’s mother to Sonny’s because, well, it was Sonny’s, but now
she was second-guessing the Hiberhaven Diner’s neon glowing signs, its
sticky linoleum floors, and the sugar-packet-leveled tables. It was supposed
to be charming in a rustic sort of way, but now she could see every bit of
peeling pleather and was inundated with the smell of burnt coffee and bacon
grease.
But the woman, who she was instructed to call Eyv because her name
was much too long and fancy-sounding for Piper to pronounce, simply stared
back with a placid grin, long-fingered hands folded atop her laminated menu
and tapered, pointed ears sticking out, somehow just as stunningly beautiful
as the rest of her despite being so weird.
“Mother,” hissed Kol from Piper’s side, gesturing to his own head,
apparently having close to the same thought.
Eyv’s perfectly arched, black brows raised slightly in acknowledgment,
and she brought a hand to the wavy fall of her silky hair, tucking both ears
away.
“I can’t believe it,” Piper blurted then, looking quickly from one face—
serene yet unreadable—to the other—utterly indignant. “You two could be
siblings.”
They made simultaneous noises, though starkly different in nature.
“Are you all like this? Is every elf as smoking hot as your mom?”
 Kol groaned, eyes closing. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Well, she’s definitely the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”
Eyv’s placid smile quirked up. “Thank you. And you are an adequate-
looking human.”
Piper swallowed back her excitability. “Oh, uh, thanks?”
“That is a compliment, believe it or not,” Kol muttered. “And yes, full-
blooded elves are almost all like this, and they stay this way for almost a
thousand years, but you know, you also walked through trees today and saw
the guardian of the heartwood—aren’t those things a little more
impressive?”
Piper pressed a hand to her still-queasy stomach. “Oh, don’t remind me.”
Maybe she would be impressed tomorrow, but for today, she was just
overwhelmed by the fact an owl the size of an elephant, the forest’s so-called
guardian, had intended to punish Kol for her crimes. She bit her lip and
squinted at him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Kol shrugged, squeezing one of his shoulders like he just remembered
that it hurt. “I don’t think the cailleach would have really dropped me off a
cliff, but now the elucidai owe it.” His gaze shifted to his mother, blue eyes
as steely and annoyed as when he and Piper had first met.
“It is of no more trouble than anything else, my son. I am glad for the
opportunity to open communication with this region’s guardian, and I will
take care of this favor.” Eyv didn’t seem upset, but Kol did not appear to be
buying it.
“You mean your father will take care of the favor.”
“Your grandfather,” she corrected with the slightest inflection, “will
indeed be granting the cailleach the favor, but he will do it because I ask.
Details will not be necessary nor will they be offered.”
“He’s going to know it’s because of me,” Kol groused as the waitress
hustled up to their table. Before anyone could ask for anything different, he
ordered strawberry milkshakes and chili fries for all three of them, cutting
off all of the waitress’s pleasantries and practically shooing her away.
“A little worried about interacting with the locals, huh?” Piper nudged
him with her elbow.
He mumbled an apology and stared down at his lap. “She only ever has
to deal with humans because of me, so I try to make it easier...”
Piper waited, but when it was apparent he had no more to say, she smiled
back at Eyv. “So, how did you meet Kol’s dad?”
 The half-elf growled, “Son of a—”
“Oh, that is a wonderful tale of circumstance and affection and forvyl
aerstyd.” Eyv’s eyes caught the neon lights’ reflection, sparkling as she
leaned in ever so slightly.
Her strange language was beautiful but incomprehensible, and Piper
looked to Kol for a translation. He shook his head, so she stumbled through
the question on her own, making him groan again. “What is that for-val-er-
stid thing?”
“The forvyl aerstyd is an elven tradition rooted in organic compulsion.
For the elucidai tribe from which I hale, it begins in our four hundred and
forty-fourth season in which we are encouraged to explore the world and its
many material indulgences.”
Piper sheepishly looked at Kol once more.
He waved a hand. “When they turn one hundred and eleven they just...go
nuts.”
“Other elven tribes have their own traditions,” Eyv went on. “Some of
our kin are of a sylvidai tribe who spend nearly their entire lives in this
state.”
Kol blew out a breath. “And it does not make them very good record
keepers.”
“We cannot fault them, it can be a difficult time,” said Eyv, and she
chuckled lightly. “Kolariel has, I believe, just concluded his own forvyl
aerstyd.”
Kol’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head. “No, I didn’t have one, er
—it’s at least not the same for me.” He carefully met Piper’s intense gaze
and then sighed. “The human equivalent is, like, going to college and, you
know, experimenting in your early twenties.”
“Twenty,” Eyv said with a dreamy sigh. “Human aging is a wonder. An
elf that is twenty seasons or twenty years is still so very young, yet Kolariel
has been of age for quite some time.”
Piper tried to stifle her grin. “Kolariel,” she repeated slowly, savoring the
name on her tongue and being sure to pronounce it just as she’d heard it. “I
like that.”
“We’re not talking about me,” he mumbled.
“Yes, of course, we were discussing Kolariel’s father and the forvyl
aerstyd which brought us together.” Eyv hummed, lips twitching almost
imperceptibly. “A harsh winter had just come to a close, I had grown weary
of hallucinogens and mating with the same elven troop,”—at this Kol
gagged—“and I longed for something more exotic,”—and Kol gagged again
—“so I endeavored to journey southward until I arrived in the realm of Cahn
Kun.”
Piper scooted to the edge of the booth seat at the mention of a mystical,
far-off land. “Ooo, is that like the North Pole? Does it have dragons and
castles and fairies?”
“She just means Cancun,” Kol grumbled.
Piper broke into laughter. “Like, for spring break?”
“Indeed it was during the vernal equinox.” Eyv’s face brightened with an
excitement that wouldn’t have been noticeable on another. “Which also
happened to correlate with my first ever truly fertile season.”
Kol dropped his head to the table. “Oh, gods.”
Eyv was terribly good at ignoring her son. “Elves are only meant to
become fertile once or twice in their lifetimes with quite a bit more warning,
but the enchantments of Cahn Kun were so great that I was completely
unaware, believing instead I was bewitched simply by the warmth of the sun
and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the coast. It was there, of course, that I met
the most handsome, charming, virile human I have ever laid eyes upon.”
“Aww, that’s your dad.” Piper nudged Kol’s shoulder, but he remained
with his head firmly on the table.
“Ah, no, that was Kol’s father’s brother, but he introduced me to Samuel
who was, in true human form, quite the passionate being. I could not resist
Samuel, and apparently neither could my womb.”
“Mother, please,” Kol groaned into the table.
“I will spare you additional details,” Eyv went on with a light chuckle,
“except to say that it is almost unheard of for elves to breed outside of our
own kind regardless of our fertile seasons, and yet, Kolariel came into
being.”
Piper pressed a hand to her chest, seeing the pride in Eyv’s otherwise
stoic features. “Wow, you’re like a...a rainbow baby.”
“More like a mule.”
Piper clicked her tongue and placed her hand on his back, rubbing it.
“Well, maybe, but mules are strong and smart and hardworking, right?” He
remained face-down on the table, so she looked to Eyv for help.
“Kolariel’s spark was insistent, and so he is here in exactly the way the
planes meant for him to be.” His mother reached out slender fingers and
hesitantly pat the back of his head. The touch was light, but Piper could see
affection in it even as she pulled back, so strange to have not learned after
hundreds of years, but she supposed Kol had only been in Eyv’s life for a
tiny fraction of its entire time.
Kol finally lifted his head. “And here I am, making promises to forest
guardians I can’t keep and losing track of trees that should be rooted in the
ground. The planes are really brilliant, aren’t they?”
“This is true,” she stressed, eyes narrowing. “How else might one
explain two beings originating from disparate worlds and fated for such
divergent lives finding one another?”
Kol shrugged. “Tequila?”
“Kolariel,” she said with the tiniest threat of frustration, “the
circumstances under which your father and I met were extraordinary. Two
beings, engaged in temporary recreation rather than their typical lives,
intoxicated by a lack of responsibility? I know you are displeased with our
choices, but our incongruities were not exactly a recipe for eternal
happiness.”
Their food was delivered, breaking through the awkward moment, and
Eyv’s eyes changed when a heaping and messy plate was placed before her.
Very carefully she took up a fork and with a grace Piper could barely
conceive of, began to eat the sloppy, fried food as if it were some
otherworldly delicacy. They ate in silence for a few moments until Eyv pat at
the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin to remove bits of food that
weren’t even there. “I must, of course, inquire, Kolariel, what it is that called
you to this human village during your winter holiday?”
Kol stuffed a forkful of fries into his mouth and chewed, and both
women waited. “Tree,” he finally said.
His mother sipped at her milkshake, unblinking eyes never leaving him.
Kol hefted a sigh. “Okay, so, somehow I overlooked Everroot Grove’s
alcyon spruce count. Jeb and the others didn’t turn it in, and they’re already
done for the year, so I came to do it myself, found out one of the trees
accidentally bonded to this one,”—he jerked his head toward Piper—“and
I’ve been trying to figure out how to sever that so I can turn in my numbers
with everything accounted for.”
Piper chewed her straw, eyes darting between the two. It wasn’t the
whole story, but she could tell from Kol’s tight jaw that she wasn’t supposed
to say anything more.
 “That is all?”
“That’s it.”
Eyv’s lips drew down slightly. “Well, if you would like me to sever the
bond while I am here—”
“I’ll do it myself.” Kol cut through the air with a French fry, chili
dripping off it. “When I figure out which spell to use.”
She nodded, took a dainty sip, and then leaned in. “Number one hundred
and sixteen should do it, but be sure to replace the ruby nightshade with
sapphire.”
His jaw tightened further, but he eked out a believable, “Thank you,”
anyway.
Piper sat uncomfortably in the tension for a long moment and then
grabbed onto Kol’s arm. “Kol rescued me from a flock of hell geese!”
Eyv’s eyes slid from one of them to the other, and then Piper dove into in
perhaps slightly embellished details about how brave, how skilled, and
ultimately how kind to their aggressors Kol had been, and under her hand
she could feel his muscles relaxing. He interjected more factual details, but
Piper brushed them off, focusing instead on how frightening the pixies had
been until he saved the day.
It was a little easier then to speak, and Eyv asked Piper polite if
sometimes odd questions about herself and her family. Piper laughed
through most of them, especially Eyv’s wonder that there are humans who
devote their whole lives to studying trees—“arborists” she said with a
reverence and a smile—until it led to the inevitable. “So, you are one
hundred and ten seasons old, a third of your life,” Eyv confirmed, nodding to
herself, “but you do not have a mate?”
As Piper tried to find a tactful way to explain, Kol broke in, “Mother,
humans don’t say things like that to one another.”
“Actually they do. A lot,” Piper muttered.
“I am only clarifying that she is, in fact, an adult human, and she is not
mated, Kolariel.”
The two stared at one another for a long moment, piercing eye meeting
piercing eye. Kol snapped a few words in Elvish, and Eyv responded just as
quickly, and then Kol announced that dinner was over, and they needed to
return to Piper’s family.
They said a stilted farewell to Eyv at a tree behind the diner during
which the elven woman looked to want to do more but only took one of
Kol’s hands between her own and said something else in her dreamy
language. Kol nodded, face going red, and he hurried her off before anyone
could see the woman stepping into a tree.
Piper and Kol met up with the MacLeans just at the edge of Santa’s
Village as they were preparing to leave. Kol wasn’t very talkative, but Piper
kept herself nudged up against him when she could, and he seemed better for
it. When they were finally in her room a few hours later, washed and ready
for bed, Piper ventured, “I like your mom.”
Kol flopped down onto the bed and covered his face with his hands. “Of
course you do.”
She snorted, looking down at him, places switched since just that
morning. “I can tell she loves you in her weird, alien way.”
“Yes, I know. She loves me so much that she, how would she put it?
Lowers herself to the basest of human emotions to show me affection.” He
let his arms fall to either side as he stared up blankly at the ceiling. He was
wearing a t-shirt that fit him too well, a faded insignia on the chest of a
stylized flower with fanciful script running in a circle around it. More
Elvish, she had to guess, since she couldn’t read it.
Piper chewed her lip and eased herself to sit on the bed beside him. “She
seemed to like human emotion, though—she’s just not very good at it yet.
But she was definitely proud of you, even I could understand that. You’re
her special little guy.” She offered him a wide, goofy grin.
“Yeah, yeah, so special and exotic.” Kol rubbed at his face, catching his
hat and pulling it off. “Something everyone wants to try once or twice just to
say they did.”
Piper’s hand was brushing his hair before she really knew what she was
doing. She laced fingers through the strands and ran nails along his scalp
because it felt right in the moment to offer what little physical affection she
could. His eyes closed, and his chest sank with a sigh that was, for once, not
full of disdain but relief. “I’m sorry I called her,” she said quietly, “but I
really did think you were in danger.”
“Oh, I was.” The corner of Kol’s mouth quirked up. “So I should be
thanking you for not letting me die.”
A jolt ran through Piper’s chest despite his flippancy. “I’m not like either
of you,” she said, guiding dark strands away from one of his slightly pointed
ears. “There was nothing I could do to help you.”
 “It all worked out,” he said, voice sleepy as she continued to stoke his
hair.
Dread sank into Piper’s belly. Nothing. She was human, a thing she’d
never really pondered before, but it suddenly felt like the most helpless
existence on the planet.
She looked down at Kol, overwhelmed with the need to wrap herself
around him. She lay at his side and placed her hand on his chest, curling up
as close as she could get. She’d gotten so used to his presence that the
thought of him being gone broke through her like a stone dropped into a
frozen pond, and she wrapped her other arm around his like she could
somehow keep him there.
Then a flash of the night before played in her mind—kissing him, sitting
atop him, coercing him, being told no.
“Oh, uh,”—Piper cleared her throat—“I’m not trying to...do what I did
last night.”
Kol snorted. “I know.”
She pat his chest and went to pull her hand back, but Kol dropped his
atop it and held it there. Beneath was warm, his heart thumping.
“I hope it’s okay with you if I don’t take the tree yet,” he said carefully.
“I know you offered to end our deal, but I don’t think I can.”
Because of the severing spell? Or because he didn’t want to go? “I want
you to stay,” she admitted, closing her eyes.
“Good because I want to stay too.”
Piper’s lips ticked up into a smile she hid against his shoulder.
But then Eyv’s words rang in her mind. Our incongruities were not
exactly a recipe for eternal happiness. Eternal happiness probably meant
something else to an elf, but Piper understood the sentiment—Kol’s mother
and father had come from vastly different worlds and met on vacation. As
good as things seemed, they weren’t meant to last.
“Hey,” Kol said into the quiet, his voice heavy with sleepiness, “don’t
forget to call your friend.”
“Hmm?” Piper lifted her head slightly. “Oh, Lacey?”
“Yeah. You want to see her, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“All right then, I’ll remind you tomorrow.” He yawned, eyes closed.
“And the next day and the next day until you do.”
Piper squeezed him a little tighter, chuckling as she fell asleep.
 20

Kids Get Over Stuff Quickly, Right?

Kol stood before the alcyon spruce with his thaumatix in hand. The one
hundred and sixteenth severing spell on the EPA’s approved list was
surprisingly simple, and his mother had even sent him the ingredients
needed, he would just have to fetch them from the cabin in the Everroot
Grove. It all could wait, though, as the tree was doing well enough, and of
course...there was Piper.
He looked over his shoulder to see her, still in pajamas and an oversized
sweatshirt. He could feel his mother’s hands clasping his again and hear her
voice before she left through the tree telling him in Elvish, “I approve.”
Thank the fae ancestors Piper hadn’t asked him to translate that.
She was asking her uncle if he’d remembered to pack something nice for
each of his kids to wear. Russ scratched his head, unsure, and then all three
of his sons went rushing past, knocking into Piper.
“Come on, say excuse me!” Russ called after them with very little
conviction.
They mumbled something that definitely wasn’t polite as they grabbed
their coats and fled outside. Piper brushed it off, swallowing down the
passing annoyance and grinning at Russ. “I’ll check with Presley for backup
options,” she said and headed for the stairs.
 “Little shits.”
Kol jolted, Grandma Tilda passing by him as silent as an arctic marmot.
She made it to her chair and picked up her knitting needles, peering at him
over the rim of her glasses.
“Hey,” he finally mustered, “can I get you some tea?” He could feel she
wanted something, but she wasn’t going to say.
“No, no, Russ will be getting me that.” She winked at him. “You have
other things to do, I reckon.”
Kol watched her nod at the front door and then settle in, done with him.
He folded away his thaumatix and went for his own coat. As he dressed for
the snow, he eyed the plastic grin of that smarmy, stuffed elf, and snatched
him before he went outside.
Russ’s boys were fucking around in the snow, shoving one another and
using the kind of language they only would if they didn’t think an adult was
around. Kol slipped unseen into the woods where he sat the ugly, little elf on
a fallen log and did some of his own fucking around.
Plants couldn’t really make snowballs or throw them, but once bark and
vines wrapped themselves around something that was meant to be an arm
with a hand and fingers and was then pumped full of magic, plants ended up
nearly as good as Piper at forming snow into balls. Kol watched his plant-
bomination practice once more before setting it loose. It trudged through the
woods in the shape of the elf no longer confined to a shelf but was even
taller than Kol, limbs still twiggy in their circumference and now in their
makeup as well. The plant matter had molded around the doll and expanded,
taking on its form including the terror of its soulless grin, still recognizable
but...wrong. Well, wronger than it already was which was exceptionally
wrong to begin with.
Kol pressed his back against a tree and listened to the soft plop of snow
as the not-elf attempted to get their attention. Eventually, there was a voice
and then another—not that Kol could tell them apart—and finally the
crunching of three sets of boots as they ventured into the forest to find the
origin of the snowballs being thrown at them.
He knew when they spied the demonic seedling from the strangled
sounds they made, and then slammed a hand into the dirt to activate the
branch trap he’d set. He peeked around his tree to see them turn to run but
come up against a wall, hemmed in by impenetrable earth and roots. The
three couldn’t flee back the way they’d come, and the giant faux-fir elf
blocked off escape deeper into the woods.
They screamed, of course, because that’s what kids did, but Kol wasn’t
worried since that’s all these ones did—no one would expect something was
wrong, and no one was coming for them.
“Shut up!” Kol growled into an enchanted leaf that was attached to all
the deteriorating detritus in his creation’s guts. A horrific rendition of his
own voice projected from the creepy creature with a rattling rasp.
Immediately, the three fell into silence, and Kol lamented not being able
to have this power all the time, but it was most definitely fleeting, and he
had to make use of it now.
“You call me Buddy,” he said, and the plant puppet creaked as it leaned
over the three, knobby arms looming to either side, ready to snatch if any of
them bolted. “But I am not here for companionship.”
The three of them huddled close to one another, incapable of looking
away.
“Your behavior has been unacceptable, and I have been sent in my true
form to punish you by dragging you into the depths of the earth from whence
my kind comes.”
“Y-you’re from underground?” said the middle one, and the other two
reeled back.
“I am, but I used to be like you—a little snot-nosed bastard of a human
who was a complete asshole to everyone around me, and now look at what
I’ve become.” Kol grinned, particularly proud of that little bit of mythology
he’d made up.
“I don’t want to be an elf!”
Oh, if only we had a choice, kid. “It doesn’t matter what you want,” he
spat into the leaf, “it only matters what I allow, and on this day, I am feeling
generous.” Kol took a deep breath, and he listened to his creation creak and
bend as its twiggy chest expanded. “Your family, they deserve better, all of
them but especially your cousin.”
“Presley?”
“Cody?”
“Gracie?”
“No, I’m talking about Piper, obviously.” Kol wanted to step out from
behind the tree and throttle them himself, his anger flaring, but his grasp on
the magic that was holding the doll together faltered. “You have no idea how
much she loves and cares for each of you—for your entire family—
especially when you don’t even deserve it. But now—now you will be kind
to her, you will do everything she asks of you without question or complaint,
and you will tell her just how wonderful she is, or so help me, I will come
back, and there will be no second chances—I will turn you into living
manure, and your souls will be trapped in awful, felt dolls for eternity.”
The children clung to one another, staring back wide-eyed.
“Do you understand?”
Shrieks of confirmation echoed through the forest, and Kol lifted his
hand from the snowy ground, the wall of deadened trees at their backs
collapsing. The three sprinted away back for the house, and Kol kept
growled into the enchanted leaf, the last of his magic flaring as a terrible
sound echoed through the forest. Then he laughed, the plant life crumbling
back into the ground leaving only the little, red figure grinning up at him
from the forest floor. Perhaps that had been a little mean, but what was
Christmas if not a time for a little trauma?
Kol returned to the cabin as stealthily as he’d slipped outside just as
Piper was coming downstairs carrying a full laundry basket. Her young
cousins met her before she could even reach the floor, and the three pounced
with hugs and apologies so cobbled together none of it made sense.
Bewildered, she looked up and met Kol’s gaze. What’s going on? she
mouthed at him.
He shrugged but held up the elf, brushing a dead leaf off of it. Ask him.
Piper didn’t ask, she only handed off the basket to Holden and instructed
the boys to find their dressiest clothes. They obliged her immediately. She
gave Kol a long, suspicious look, but her duty won out. “You need to find
something nice to wear too. We’re going to Brookhampton tonight to see A
Christmas Carol.”
“We are?” He tucked the elf up on top of the coat rack. “All of us?”
“I always get a few extra tickets in case there are more people than I
expect like all of Russ’s kids. And now you too.” She gave him a smile that
warmed the cold right out of his chest, thoughtful and just too damn well
organized.
“How do you think of everything?”
“I just channel Mom’s energy.” And then she was off again, hurrying
after everyone and keeping them to her schedule, organizing a babysitter for
the littlest ones, and double-checking that every vehicle was gassed up. Kol
followed after, helping where he could until their departure time loomed.
Piper couldn’t get to everything, a pile of pans left in the sink, so after Kol
changed, he started in on them, but then Doc scratched at his leg and yapped
a request for Outside.
Kol returned from the pee-and-visit-the-fehszar break just as they were
scheduled to leave. He slipped into the hall bathroom and pulled off his hat,
running hands through his hair and straightening the knot at the nape of his
neck. The whole point of keeping his hair long was for something like this,
so he tucked the tips of his ears into the black strands and shoved his beanie
into his coat pocket. When he stepped back out into the hall, the others were
gathering around the front door, so he leaned into the corner and waited.
“We’ll be running late if we don’t leave in the next seven and a half
minutes, so I hope everyone’s ready!” Piper came down the stairs with a
quickness, and Kol wasn’t quite sure he’d ever seen so much of her at once.
She was clad in sheer black tights that sculpted her legs all the way up to the
hem of her skirt as it swept over her thighs. Dark plaid, the fabric moved
with each of her harried steps but was pulled tight over rounded hips. Her
sweater clung to her, form-fitting and black, and though he missed the way
her baggy ones often exposed the gentle curve of a shoulder, every curve of
Piper’s body highlighted in taut fabric more than made up for the lack of
skin.
She reached the foot of the stairs and went right to him, thrusting her bag
into his hands and tossing a wool coat over his shoulder before he realized
she even knew he still existed. “Hold these, please,” she said as she gripped
onto his arm for balance and slipped a tight-covered foot into one of her
knee-high boots, so unlike the scuffed-up hiking ones she always wore.
Piper wobbled slightly as she put on the other. Kol held himself steady,
watching as she bent at the waist, as she pointed her toe, as her fingers
squeezed his arm. She zipped the boot and tipped her head up to him
wearing one of those smiles he always had to work so hard for. “Ready to
go?”
Kol was ready—ready to carry her back upstairs and meticulously peel
off every stitch she’d put on until he finally had those curves completely
exposed and could run his tongue over each one.
“I’ve been ready for hours!” called Grandma Tilda, and then it was a
rush through the door and out into the many vehicles they would need to
traverse the hour and a half to the theater.
 Piper sat beside Kol, and with nothing to do in the car, she nestled
herself into the backseat, grinning out at the brightly decorated homes they
passed. She pointed out her favorites, naming the owners she knew, but Kol
was taken by how the lights’ reflection danced over her face, pale in
comparison to the brilliance of her smile.
“You’re excited,” he finally said, unable to tear his eyes away. “You’re
actually having fun.”
Her giddy face reddened. “Well, I guess it’s okay every once in a while.”
They parked in a lot a few blocks from the theater, and Piper herded
everyone along the sidewalk, doing a headcount twice as they went and then
when they reached the entry, she walked down the row of MacLeans and
handed out the tickets from one of the pockets of her planner. “You get to sit
by me,” she said when she reached him at the end of the line and handed
over his ticket.
Kol expected that, but an odd feeling still welled up inside him, heart
thumping as if he had never really felt it beat before. It was so mundane, but
he looked forward to sitting beside her in the dark and watching a show,
indulging in something she cherished at her side.
“You’re going to love this theater.” Piper fit herself against him as she
shoved her hands in her coat pockets and scrunched up her shoulders. It was
frigid with the sun down and wind whipping along the road, but she was still
grinning ear to ear. “The seats are red velvet, and the walls are covered in
these gilded designs, and there’s this giant crystal chandelier. The whole
thing will be decorated for Christmas too, so it’ll smell like cinnamon and
there will be garlands and these vintage angels, and it’s just so gorgeous.”
Kol slid his hand around her waist. “You’re gor—”
“Hey, Piper!” Presley poked his head out of the line and waved at her.
“There’s a problem.”
She rolled her eyes. “I bet he lost his ticket already. Good thing I have
backups on my phone.”
 21

Guilt, The Gift That Keeps On Giving

“No.” Piper shook her head, heart thumping wildly in her chest. “No, no,
that’s not...that can’t be right. I know I...I double-checked. Triple-checked!”
Despite the briskness in the air, her body was growing warmer by the second
as she flipped through the tickets she’d printed, but they were all the same.
December twelfth.
Not a single one read the twenty-first.
Voices rose from the line behind her, and another freezing gust blew
down the road.
“Okay, this is fine.” Piper scrambled around in her purse to pull out her
debit card. “I’ll just get new ones, for tonight.”
The ticket taker shook their head and pointed to the sign in the window.
Sold out.
The freezing wind was blocked, a hand pressing into her back as Kol
appeared at her side. “What’s going on?”
“I have them,” Piper whispered, throat tight. “All the tickets, they’re
here, but the date...” Tears welled in her eyes as the sounds around her were
muffled by the wind. Hot embarrassment pumped through her veins, and she
stared unblinking at the ticket taker. “There has to be something I can do!”
suddenly burst out of her as she grabbed the counter’s edge. “How do I fix
it?”
But there was no fixing the tremendous fuck up that was slowly and
painfully dawning on Piper. Her vision went blurry, voice caught behind the
lump in her throat, and then she wasn’t standing in front of the window
anymore. In fact, she was walking back the way they’d come, being guided
by an arm around her waist.
“But, the show,” she said, half bewildered as she turned to look over her
shoulder at others streaming into the theater.
Uncle Russ’s voice rose from the grumbles around her as the facts were
shared over and over: their tickets were for the wrong date. The wrong
fucking date. “You mean we gotta spend another hour and a half in the car?
For nothing?”
“The babysitter will get to go home early at least,” murmured her cousin.
“Ugh, and so do we. What a waste.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Piper heard herself saying.
“It’s all right.” Kol’s voice was in her ear, blocking the others out as he
squeezed her up against him.
“I’m not going back with Jim,” called her aunt, “his driving gets worse
every year.”
“Good luck finding someone to put up with you fiddling with the
temperature all the way home,” her father called back.
“Maybe we can just stay in the city tonight?” said someone else.
“Maybe for the rest of vacation,” another family member grumbled.
Piper’s breathing went shallow and her lip trembled. “I’m sorry,” she
whispered.
“Oh, shit, you transposed the numbers.” Presley appeared at her side,
laughing with a joviality that was probably meant to make her feel better.
“Damn, that was dumb, sis.” He dropped a hand on top of her head and
mussed her hair.
“It’s an honest mistake,” Kol growled, tugging her out of her brother’s
reach. “Maybe if anyone else did anything, it wouldn’t have—”
Piper pressed a firm hand to his chest as they entered the parking lot, and
he bit back the rest of what he wanted to say.
As each car door slammed around her, she winced. “Oh, my god,” she
finally said, the breath all pulled out of her. “I can’t believe I fucked up so
bad.”
“Hey.” Kol took her face in his hands and turned it up to him. “It doesn’t
matter.”
“But it’s mom’s favorite show.” She couldn’t bear to be under that
forgiving look of his, tearing her eyes away and back to the road, the lights
blurring with her tears.
 The ride back was almost entirely silent save for the cacophony shouting
in Piper’s brain. First, it was a replay of her family’s voices, the sting of their
words, meant for her or not, and then an imaginary extrapolation of what
they would continue to say in their cars. Then there was her own voice, so
much worse as it berated her for fucking up, for wasting everyone’s time, for
making Grams stand out in the cold. Anger bubbled under her skin and made
her twitch, begging for a release, but there was nothing to do in the backseat
except allow Kol to hold her hand until that was too much too.
She pulled out of his grip, ashamed to be so pathetic as to find comfort in
his mock gesture, and crossed her arms, pinching her knees together and
trying to control her desperate anger. Of course she had to go embarrass
herself in front of him and show him how worthless she really was. Being
organized was the only thing she was good at—a human thing, but
something she took pride in nonetheless—and she fucked it all up.
They returned to the cabin through heavy traffic nearly four hours after
they’d left with nothing to show for it but multiple vehicles of very grumpy
MacLeans. Indeed, some hadn’t returned at all, and those that did were
bickering. Even her father was angry, complaining about his sister’s latest
text message and stomping off to his bedroom. The rest were quick to shuck
off their boots and hats by the door and sequester themselves in bedrooms
because no one wanted to be near anyone else after all that.
Piper said nothing, pressing herself into the corner until it was quiet. In
the silence of the entryway, she closed her eyes and willed the tears away,
then flinched when there was a touch at her shoulder.
Kol was there, gently tugging at her coat. She let him take it off and hang
it up, then watched as he knelt before her and unzipped her boots. It was like
she was in some dream as he guided one foot and then the other onto the
floor, a hand on her calf to steady her. The feel of his fingers was real, she
knew that, but she still questioned what they were doing there and why—
why—was he helping? She didn’t deserve anyone’s help.
Piper took a step and freezing cold blossomed under her foot, shucked
off snow melting and bleeding into her tights, and that’s all it took to wake
her from her daze. Everyone’s boots were in a wet heap, none of them
making it onto the mat meant for melting snow, so she set herself to
organizing them.
“Piper, don’t worry about that.”
 She shrugged off the feel of Kol’s hand, finishing up and then quickly
headed for the kitchen.
“Where are you going?”
She maneuvered around him without catching his eye and made a
beeline for the sink filled with a mess that she actually could fix. She
slammed on the faucet to its hottest temperature and immediately started
scrubbing. The non-stick coating didn’t stand a chance.
“Piper, you have to relax. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Kol’s voice was in the kitchen with her, but she scrubbed harder to
drown it out. “I’ll be fine,” she mumbled, steam rising up from the running
water.
“You don’t need to punish yourself for one little mistake.” His voice
came closer.
“One little mistake?” She blew out an angry breath. “It was a huge
mistake! And an expensive one. Why am I so fucking stupid?”
“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” he snapped.
She scrubbed even harder, hands burning. “But it’s true! And now half
my family is gone, and the rest will probably leave in the morning before
Christmas even happens.”
“If they really think that’s the appropriate reaction to this, then good
riddance.”
Piper slapped the pan with her sponge, splattering hot soapy water up her
sleeves. “Don’t you get it, Kol? I’m letting her down!” The truth broke out
of her with an angry, ugly sound that made her clamp her mouth shut.
Kol reached around her and turned the water off. In the new silence
filling up the kitchen, Piper’s heartbeat pumped in her ears, and her breaths
were shallow and too loud. And then Kol’s voice broke in, patient and quiet,
“You’re not letting your mother down.”
Piper grabbed the edge of the sink, knuckles red and flesh burning. “Yes,
I am. She was so good at this, at keeping everyone together no matter what,
and she made everyone happy. They loved her so much, Kol. She wasn’t
even their blood, and they loved her.” She wiped at her face, eyeliner
smudging on her fingertips. “She took such good care of everybody, and I
know it’s because she lost her family so young, but she made a new one, and
now I’m ruining all the hard work she did. I’m ruining everything.”
Kol’s arms came around her waist and squeezed her back against his
chest. Her knees buckled, and she would have fallen had he not been there.
“You aren’t ruining a thing,” he said softly into the back of her head.
“Everything is better when you’re around.”
She snorted but it was weak. “Hardly.”
“There’s only so much one person can do, and somehow you do even
more. Your father and aunt would have strangled one another if not for you,
the poor dog would have probably been eaten by a bear without you
watching him, and that shitty little cousin of yours would have poisoned
himself with peanuts if you didn’t inspect every piece of food that comes
into this house—not that that would be a great loss.”
“Kol,” she chastised lightly.
“I’m sorry, I’m not good at this.” She could hear him swallow against
her ear as he readjusted his arms to pull her tighter against him. “But the
only way you’re letting your mother down is by not taking care of yourself.
You take care of everyone else, you even taken care of me. But she wouldn’t
want to see you suffer like this, Piper. You have to know that that’s the
truth.”
The truth? The truth was that none of it mattered when they still left in
the end, just like he would. “What if they’re done? What if they don’t come
back?”
“Then they don’t,” he said. “But there’s nothing you can do about it
tonight.”
His answer didn’t calm her, body still tense, urging her to do something.
“I could make cinnamon rolls, and—”
She reached for the nearest cabinet, but Kol snatched her wrist. “No,” he
said sharply. “You deserve to relax.”
“I can’t.”
“Well, you need to.” He released her hand, returning his arm to her waist.
“Do you want to go on a walk?”
“It’s too dark and cold, and we’ll just drag in more snow.” Piper flexed
her fingers, but it felt all wrong. She shook out her hands and sighed, but her
chest just tightened.
“Do you want me to run you a bath?”
“The tub is too dirty. Maybe if I scrub it—”
“Piper, you need to turn off the part of your brain that makes excuses and
won’t let you rest.”
“But I can’t,” she stressed.
 “Stop saying that. You’re—” His grip loosened. “You really can’t, can
you?”
Piper shook her head, staring down at the soapy water. A bubble popped,
and a cluster of smaller ones took up its place. There were hundreds of
bubbles, and each held her warped reflection like a hundred things she could
be getting done.
Kol cleared his throat. “You can’t accept my help, but maybe you need
more than just an offer. Maybe I can make you take it.” His hands slid away
from one another, traveling over her middle, one running over her ribs, the
other to her hip. “Would you like that?”
Piper melted backward, his thumb caressing just under her breast. She
stuttered out a sigh, closing her eyes, thankful he couldn’t see her face, but
he could still hear her, and she tightened her throat. No way was she letting
the next sound escape as he caressed her hip.
“Tell me,” he said, hands creeping ever farther from the innocently
affectionate places. Everything in her mind went quiet at the brush of his
fingers over the top of her thigh. His rising chest against her back was slow
and warm, and she let her head tip and rest against him.
Behind her closed eyelids, there was only darkness, not a rolling list of
tasks and worries. And instead of a jittery need to go-go-go pumping in her
veins, her heart thumped curiously—it was finally thumping for her.
“Piper...” He drew out her name in warning just as he drew fingers away
from her most sensitive spots.
“Yes,” she answered, eyes flying open. Had that really been her voice?
So sure? So demanding?
And then his hands were off of her completely. “Go upstairs.”
Piper couldn’t move, as if the loss of his touch had allowed every worry
to flow back into her. Was it selfish to ask him for this? Did he really want
to? What was she even asking for?
“Go. Up. Stairs.” The punctuation of each word struck the back of her
ear with his breath, and her eyes flew open. She didn’t turn to him, didn’t
say a word, just slipped out from between his body and the sink, and she left
the kitchen behind.
 22

Probably Not What They Meant By A-

Milking
Piper did exactly as Kol said—she didn’t double-check they had the
ingredients for a full breakfast, didn’t fuss over the coats left on the banister,
she just went upstairs. Her footsteps were soft and measured, tights slippery
on the hardwoods, hand skimming the banister. She was aware of Kol behind
her, following close enough to feel but not to touch.
The hall upstairs was quiet, and her bedroom even quieter. She stood in
its middle, softening her gaze and taking a deep breath. The door clicked
shut behind her, and Piper jerked out of the trance she’d begun to settle into,
her feet tapping, hands flexing.
“Stand still.”
She balled her fists and planted her feet firmly on the ground,
straightening her back.
Kol made a sound of displeasure, and she felt it all the way into her
bones. Her shoulders sank.
“Better,” he said, and then he was there, hands on her hips again though
no press of his front to her back. “Breathe.”
She was breathing, wasn’t she? Piper checked, but, no, she had been
holding it, so she started up again.
“Deeper.” One of his hands slid up to the middle of her belly. “Move my
hand.”
She filled her stomach with an inhale and then let it out with a shudder.
 “Good. I don’t want you overthinking this time,”—his body lingered
closer behind her—“but are you still sure?”
Piper nodded without hesitation, lips parted and mouth dry. Fingers
skimmed along the hem of her sweater, and then it was slowly peeled
upward over her head. The air was cool against her bare skin, but then Kol
pressed himself to her back as he tossed away her top, warm hands returning
to her lower ribs.
His touch roved over her skin, but no laughter poured out of her this
time, just a quiet sigh as her eyes fluttered closed once again. Kol’s fingers
crawled up over one of her covered breasts, and his thumb circled her nipple
already at attention. She cursed the fabric between them. Wait—was she
supposed to tell him he could take her bra off? Or was she supposed to take
it off herself?
“Relax,” Kol whispered as if he could hear the voice in her mind.
The reach of his other hand was scratching at the top of her thigh, and
she blinked her eyes open to see he was slowly gathering up her skirt. Her
knee started bouncing.
“Stop?” He released her and froze.
“No, no, no...” she heard herself mumbling as she leaned into him
completely, bringing up a hand to his and pressing it back to her chest.
Kol chuckled, deep and rumbling, but she didn’t care how eager she
knew that was—if he wanted her to relax, he had to be touching her, it was
the only way. As he cupped her breast again, his other hand slid up under her
skirt. More layers. Damn it.
“Spread your legs for me.”
Piper inched her thighs apart.
“More,” he growled, and she felt his foot between hers, giving one of
them a nudge. She gasped, quick to resettle her feet much wider, and then
her legs shook as his fingers dipped between her thighs. His touch was light,
the relief she wanted blunted by her tights.
Piper swallowed. “Should I—”
“No.” He swept the hair away from her neck to press his lips against her
flying pulse. “Don’t do anything.” His words vibrated into her skin, and she
wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be able to keep herself upright, head
lolling to the side, flesh waking up but bones liquefying. His touch ghosted
between her legs as his lips trailed down her neck, one feather-soft stroke
after another, slow, methodical, intent.
 He gently swayed, moving her body with his as it loosened. Slowly and
indulgently wasn’t how Piper did things, not with herself or anyone else, but
Kol was determined to take his time, pressure building deep within her even
as his touch continued to only trail the surface. But Piper was never a
passive participant. “Do you want me to—”
“Do nothing,” he droned against her skin, lips pressing to her earlobe,
fingers still teasing, no sign of fatigue.
She hummed—such a nice sentiment, though no one ever really meant it
—and she slid her own hand between them. Piper found the hardness of his
length and wrapped fingers around it.
“What did I just say?” His touch was then gone completely, and he
snatched her wrist, pinning her hand against the small of her back.
Piper yelped though his firm grip was painless. God, if he’d just use that
pressure other places. She tensed but moaned, a thrill running through her at
the rough handling, and then she was immediately embarrassed and turned to
him. “Don’t you want me to—”
Kol grabbed the back of her neck and dragged her into a kiss, and wants
melted away into needs. His hands were in her hair, and his lips trailed away
from her mouth, leaving her breathless as he worked his way down her jaw
with the edge of his teeth. Piper sucked in a cold breath as he peppered
kisses along her sternum, sinking to his knees. His hands went under her
skirt again, but not where she wanted them. Instead, he hooked thumbs into
her tights—only her tights—and began to slide them down.
Kol’s eyes roved up to her face, piercing gaze catching hers. Another
achingly slow process ensued as he stripped her, skin sizzling as it was freed
from its tight confines. She shivered, tipping her head back and squeezing
her eyes shut. Teeth dragged along her bare thigh, following the material as
it rolled to her knees, and then he nipped her, pain briefly zinging up to her
center and then blossoming into a pulsing ache.
There, he lingered, fingers tracing the dip at the back of her knees. Fuck,
she was going to collapse.
When she felt him reach her shins, it should have been over, but Kol
continued to take his time. Piper counted silently in her head as inch by inch
he undressed her, missing his touch under her skirt but with no idea how to
tell him. Her body stiffened, empty hands pawing for something to do until
he finally reached the floor.
 “Now that we’ve got these off,” he said, slipping her feet out of her
tights, “you’re going to keep your legs apart.”
“I am,” she muttered, unsure if it was a question or an agreement. With
the tight fabric removed, there was another chill that ran itself over her body,
and then the acute realization that her arousal was about to be on full display.
Kol’s hands came around the back of her thighs and held her in place
even as her knees wobbled. She still had on plenty of clothing but felt
completely exposed as he lifted her skirt, tongue teasing over her skin. She
squirmed, not wanting him to see the soaked mess she’d already made, and
she clamped her legs together again.
Kol pulled his mouth away from her thigh and grunted. Uh oh. Piper’s
heart hammered at her chest as his eyes lifted, narrowing on her. Then
everything was movement as hands slid up to her ass and lifted her. There
was a clatter as she was unceremoniously deposited atop her dresser,
knocking askew the things set neatly atop it.
“Too loud,” she hissed, reaching for a tube of mascara rolling toward the
dresser’s edge, but he stopped her, pulling her wrists inward and sliding his
hips between hers. That was certainly one way to keep her from closing her
legs.
“You can’t start worrying about noise now, Pipsqueak.” Kol took her by
the low back and dragged her to the dresser’s edge, right up against him. She
sucked in a breath at the feel of his length exactly where she wanted it, and
she bucked against his cock as he kissed her. “Tell me what you want,” he
mumbled into her mouth.
“You,” she said, a bizarre ache in her chest at the simple answer. She
pulled back from his next kiss and her eyes refocused in the dark. Just you.
“You’re thinking too hard.” He chuckled, and his hands slid up under her
skirt again. She had to steady herself against the dresser’s top, gazing down
as he once more knelt. His fingers curled into the waistband of her
underwear, her skirt pushed up, but instead of removing them, he just tugged
them upward, pulling them tight against her.
There was no clenching her thighs together, not with his head right there,
though, god, why would she now? Yes, she felt utterly indecent, splayed out
and showing him just how full of need she was, but then Kol kissed along
the inner edge of her thigh and all that worry blotted itself out. His mouth
skimmed upward until it pressed right to the apex between her legs. She
throbbed under the too-light brush of his lips, fabric still separating their
skin. His thumb followed through, stroking over her with the slightest bit
more pressure, long and lazy as he kept her pinned to the dresser.
So much pleasure and yet not enough, not at all enough.
“Can you come for me like this?” He pressed his mouth to her again, and
she groaned at the tension of a painfully light kiss, barely moving and then
taking away what little he gave her.
Piper shook her head, eyes squeezing shut, hands slippery with sweat.
“No?” He stroked her again, this time harder, and all she could do was
wiggle beneath his hold. More kisses and nibbles trailed down her other
thigh as his thumb gently but consistently pet her, and Piper held her breath,
biting her lip. “Seems you’re enjoying it well enough.”
“Please let me take them off,” she finally said with a last push of air from
her lungs.
“Let you?” Kol’s lips vibrated against her most sensitive spot. “It’s not
up to me.”
“Do it,” she demanded, startling even herself. “I want your tongue on
me.”
“That’s my girl.” Piper’s underwear was yanked to her knees, and Kol’s
tongue slid over her so quickly, she didn’t have time to register what was
happening. One of his hands snaked up under her skirt to grab her ass, the
other assisting his tongue and spreading her wide so she couldn’t possibly
hide away.
A sound broke out of Piper, a lusty moan and a surprised cry all in one.
Her head fell back against the wall and she bit down hard on her lip, the pain
stealing from the pleasure of his mouth as he lapped at her. It was good, too
good, and it struck her suddenly how long it had been since she’d finished
with someone else. If she had ever finished with someone else. She’d gotten
close, especially if she had a drink or two, but getting over that edge never
felt as satisfying as when she was all alone.
Am I taking too long? she wondered, breathing harder. Is he getting
anything out of this? Do I look okay?
“No, no, don’t slip away.” Kol’s voice was throaty as his thumb made a
tender circle around her. “Stay here with me, baby.”
Piper’s mouth dropped open as she snapped her head down to him, the
sparkle of lust in his eyes and on his tongue intoxicating. She gripped fistfuls
of his hair, pulling his mouth up against her once more. He answered with a
guttural sound as he brought her ever closer. “I...I might,” she whispered,
toes curling as she writhed under all of his attention.
“You will,” he said, pulling his mouth away and running his thumb over
her once again, this time with the slickness of her body and a pace she
couldn’t elude.
“I don’t”—she swallowed, catching her breath—“I don’t want anyone to
hear.”
Something soft was shoved into her face, and she mindlessly grabbed
onto it, pressing it to her mouth just in time for an orgasm to pour out of her.
Wave after wave of ecstasy crashed within her veins, running through her
limbs and uniting in her core. Her back arched and her shoulders fell loose,
and it was like his touch was a light, drawing her out of every dark place
she’d ever hidden as her delighted cry was graciously muffled.
But Kol’s touch didn’t relent even when she shuddered and tried to catch
her breath. His fingers, his mouth, his very spirit were still worshiping
between her legs, one arm wrapped around her hips and holding her in place
as she bucked up against him.
“I can’t,” she said, but it was silenced by what she held. “Oh, Mr.
Barnabus, I’m sorry,” she squealed, dropping the teddy bear on the dresser
beside her, and then her legs were shaking. “I can’t, Kol. Not again.”
His tongue pulled back, but his fingers remained, tracing around her
entrance. “You can’t? Or you won’t?”
Totally out of breath, Piper shook her head. “I haven’t come like that
in...ever. That might be...my lifetime allotted orgasms...all rolled into one.”
“You’re sure?” He flicked his tongue over her again.
Piper bucked, the pleasure morphing into pain. “That’s it. You got it all.”
With everything so wet, Piper should have slid right off the dresser and
onto the floor when she slumped backward. Eyes closed, she couldn’t move,
limbs so heavy and boneless they refused to cooperate. But she was moving
anyway, being lifted from the dresser by strong arms that wouldn’t let go,
and then the bed was beneath her.
 23

Better Than Coal

Usually, they wanted him to leave, so Kol wasn’t entirely sure what to do
when Piper wrapped her arms and legs around him. It was easy to grip onto
someone when giving them what they asked for, easy to hold them in place
while drawing out the thing they needed, and with Piper it had been even
easier because he wanted to uncover everything there was to know.
And then once she was completely spent, that was supposed to be it.
That was when he was supposed to put on his clothes and go back to his
lonely apartment and wait for someone else to call.
But Piper wasn’t letting him go.
She snaked an arm behind his neck, hand tangling itself in his hair once
again, and her other hand reached all the way across his chest to squeeze his
side. The thighs he had to coax into spreading now had no trouble as she
wedged his hips between them, leg hooking across him. She had turned her
entire body into the epitome of a hug, and, gods, it was wonderful.
“I should take care of you now,” she murmured sleepily into his ear.
Kol carefully laid his arm atop hers, spreading fingers over her skin and
holding on but gently, just in case it was too much and she pulled back. She
only nuzzled into him harder. “You already have.”
 It was hours later when Kol felt himself be roused out of a dreamless
sleep. Piper’s small voice was whispering his name, and he instantly came to
attention below the waist if not above the neck. “Again?” he asked, reaching
for her blindly in the dark. “This time I’m going to make you come twice.”
“No, no, something happened.” The urgency in her voice made him sit
up. Piper was kneeling on the bed beside him, a robe pulled tight around her,
and she was biting her lip, but not in that sexy way when she’d been
hovering above him and holding back. “I have a funny feeling that
something’s wrong.”
“I can fix it,” he said without concern for whatever it might be.
“I sure hope you can.”
The house was silent with only their shuffling footsteps on the stairs as
they crept down to the living room. Grogginess swam in Kol’s head, but he
could tell it was either very late or very early, that time that almost all
humans found themselves asleep, so it was only right that Piper was taking
him by the hand and leading him through the darkness.
She’s holding my hand, danced through his brain as she tugged him down
the hall, and his heart fluttered. The glow of the lights on the tree ahead
haloed around her form as she led him, and he wanted to pull her back into
his arms, but...oh, well, that was...interesting.
“What do we do?” Piper came to a stop just behind the couch and began
to chew on her fingernails.
The tree had...well, it had grown. It was pushing up against the ceiling,
and its branches were sprawling outward, catching on the nearest furniture
and bending awkwardly, a few ornaments fallen askew.
“You are welcome,” Kol whispered through a wide grin.
“Kol,” she hissed and nudged him with her elbow, but the anxiety hadn’t
gone from her face. It was serious, of course, but he had to laugh—all that
concern that the tree would die, and here it was, better than ever. Her
younger cousins were sleeping so hard in the room, they hadn’t noticed yet,
but they would when they woke. Everyone would. “Did it really grow
because...because of that?”
He tipped his head and scratched his chin, shrugging. “It’s better than a
deluge of pine cones at least.”
Even in the dark, Piper turned bright red and crossed her arms tightly
over her chest.
 Kol waggled his brows at her as he passed to inspect the spruce closer. It
was impressive, but it really shouldn’t have been a surprise—Piper had been
holding in a lot, and the tree was only mimicking her. But when he touched
one of the boughs, the needles were so dry they fell right off. “That might
not be good.” His thaumatix told him then that his interpretation had been all
wrong. “It looks like the tree expended an awful lot of energy. Energy it
didn’t really have.”
“Shit,” Piper whispered, pacing silently behind the couch. “Do we need
to do that severing thing now?”
Kol straightened, frowning. “No, I don’t think that would be wise. It’s
already exhausted, and if it’s cut off from you without its roots, it might not
make it through Christmas.”
“Oh, Tree, I’m so sorry!” She slipped around one of her sleeping cousins
and stood before it, eyes big and baleful.
Kol carefully maneuvered both hands between the branches and reached
the trunk. He felt for the magic inside the tree and mustered everything he
had to lengthen the life it was holding onto. When he pulled away, he was
unsure he’d done much, but it wasn’t quite ready to dry up and catch itself
on fire. “That should help for now.”
“It’s still a lot bigger. People are going to ask questions.”
“Those presents in your closet might be a good distraction.”
“Usually I wait until Christmas Eve, but maybe this is a good year for
Santa to come early.”
“Not just Santa,” he said, running a finger up her back.
Piper’s eyes went wide. “Stop that or the branches are going to break
through the windows.”
When the MacLeans who hadn’t come back to the cabin the night before
finally arrived the next day, they were another useful distraction besides all
the gifts that Kol and Piper stacked around the bigger boughs, and no one
really asked after what happened to the tree. The awfulness of the evening
prior was forgotten, Grandma Tilda joking that she only had so many hours
left to live as is and was glad she didn’t have to spend three of them
watching that play again, and Piper had her family back on schedule.
The day was filled with games, ones Piper actually took part in for once
and convinced Kol to play along as well. One in particular required a row of
tea light candles to be lit on the counter, and each family member took turns
blowing out as many as possible from a spot at the row’s end. Little prizes
were lined up beside each candle, and everyone won a different, simple gift
as they goaded or cheered one another on. Even when Kol took his turn,
aunts and uncles and cousins encouraged him, celebrating when he earned a
candy bar he hadn’t had since he was a child.
Maybe this was the point, he thought, watching Piper grip the counter
and take a deep breath, chest swelling up and cheeks filling with air. She
shouldn’t run herself ragged for anyone, but he understood a little better
when she blew out an impressive amount of candles and was swarmed by
excited, squealing cousins. Piper loved these people, and she deserved to fit
into them, to be happy. She deserved that quiet, normal life she had finally
admitted to wanting.
When the game was done, Grandma Tilda wrapped a bony hand around
Kol’s wrist and brought him out of the kitchen and to her spot by the tree, a
little tighter with the encroaching branches, but she didn’t comment on that.
Alone in the living room, she lifted the knitting project she’d been working
on to show him the final product. “What do you think?”
The stocking was just like the others pinned to the wall, red and green
striped with snowflakes peppered throughout, and around the band at the top
was his name, Kolariel.
“Uh,” his breath caught, and he had to laugh to start up again.
“You...spelled it right?” was all he could say.
“Course I did, I’m a genius. Come on, now, we’re going to hang it up.”
“Oh, you don’t have to. I mean, it’s nice—it’s really nice,”—he pressed a
hand to his chest to dull the sudden ache there as he followed her across the
room—“but I’m not exactly...one of you. I don’t belong on your family
wall.”
“You’re here, aren’t you? And Piper likes you which is good enough for
me.” Grandma Tilda slipped the stocking over a nail that was helpfully
already hanging beside Piper’s. The colors were a little more brilliant than
the others, but it fit in all the same. “There, I think it looks nice, don’t you?”
Kol nodded because saying something then was too much of a risk,
reflex tears being what they were.
“And if you’re good,” said Grandma Tilda, “there just might be
something inside it on Christmas morning.”
Kol wasn’t sure about that, but he grinned at her and rejoined the
festivities where Piper was quick to latch onto his arm and not let go. It
seemed he was already getting the best gift he could hope for.
 Later, after dinner, Piper plopped herself on the couch and then sat right
back up, digging something out of the cushions. She held up a wadded piece
of paper, greasy to the touch, and when she unfolded it, discovered the
Sonny’s logo in its center. Kol watched her hesitate, but then she stood.
“Hey, guys?” She presented the wrapper to the room. “This isn’t cool.”
Some of the others mumbled, blaming one another, and Piper shrugged,
wadding it back up. Kol stuck his foot under the couch and discovered
another wrapper, clearing his throat until she saw.
Piper gasped then squinted at her family. “Okay, new game, this one is
called Clean Up The Living Room Before Piper Goes Off The Deep End
And Burns The House Down.”
The MacLeans looked at one another in silent astonishment.
“Ready?” she said with feigned sweetness, dropping the wrapper she’d
found onto the floor. “Go!” Kol was prepared to help, but Piper tugged at his
arm. “Not you,” she said. “We’re going to bed.”
When they escaped the others behind Piper’s bedroom door, she
immediately attacked him, only this time he knew she was sober.
“Where did that come from?” he asked between kisses, lifting her and
pressing her back to the wall.
“No idea.” She nipped at his lip and giggled, wrapping legs around his
waist.
Kol took her face in his hands and held her still, pinning her to the wall
with his hips. “Is it weird to say I’m proud of you?”
She blushed deeply, eyes darting away from his. “Maybe, but I would
still like it if you did.”
“I’m proud of you, Piper MacLean.”
The lights strung up around the room reflected back in the brilliant
brown of her eyes as she looked back at him. There was no excuse needed
this time when she kissed him, no intoxication and no mistletoe, just a deep
yearning they both gave in to. Her soft lips were deliberate and gentle, their
fervor tucked away as tenderness took over. Kol wasn’t sure he’d ever been
kissed like that before, and when Piper pulled back, he knew he never would
be again.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he said, letting her slip back down and
plant her feet on the floor, “but I’m not sure the tree will survive another
night like last night. Unless you want to sneak off into the woods.”
 Piper’s eyes went wide, and then she broke into a fit of laughter. “What’s
in the woods?”
“It doesn’t seem to bother the tree when something happens to you far
away from it.” Kol grinned. “I know it’s cold outside, but I can find a way to
keep you warm.”
“Do I seem that desperately horny?” She ran a finger down his front,
catching on the waist of his pants. “You know, you aren’t connected to the
tree.”
Kol chuckled both from her touch and the look in her eye. Very funny, he
thought, but he’d never gotten without giving before. “You can’t trick me,”
he said, backing away from her and sitting on the bed. “You’ll barely brush
against it, and next thing we both know, I’ll have you bent over and drolling
into the pillows.”
“Oh, my god.” She looked aghast, but it didn’t last, climbing onto his lap
and pushing him backward. “I’m talking about repaying the favor.” Piper
licked her lips and rolled her hips against the hardening length beneath her.
“Everything I’ve learned about you tells me you’ll probably get off even
more doing that.”
She made a little sound of indignation but fell in beside him. “Well,
that’s okay, we can just cuddle instead.” She was all arms and legs again,
wrapping every limb around his body and dragging him close.
Kol prepared himself for her roving hands, seeking out his cock, but they
didn’t come. Instead, Piper just hugged him and clung on, nuzzling her head
under his arm and burying her cheek against his chest with a sigh.
“Oh, unless?” She pulled her head back and looked up at him, her grasp
loosening. “If you don’t want to that’s...that’s okay too.”
Fuck yes, I want to! Kol struggled against the sudden stiffness that had
overtaken him, as absurd as it was. He wanted nothing more than to be
wrapped up by her, finally managing to bend his arm and bring it around her
body. “No, that, uh...that sounds nice.” His voice was strained, and he
cringed.
“You’re sure?”
He mumbled affirmations into her hair, pulling her into him. Her body
was easy to move despite that she was curling away. Gods, of course he
screwed up cuddling—the one thing he’d been craving for so long. He set
his chin against the top of her head and reorganized her limbs so they were
as before.
“Sorry if my feet are cold,” she whispered when they finally fell still.
“Don’t apologize for anything,” he whispered back.
 24

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Piper woke because something was wrong. It was similar to the night before
when, slippery and still in a delightful daze, she’d roused because a tickle in
her chest told her to check the tree for something much worse than
sugarplum fairies or purple-faced pixies. That same tickle was irritating her
insides, but this time it felt urgent in the most dreadful way.
So she woke Kol for the second night in a row, and again he was eager to
put his mouth all over her. She contemplated it for only a moment, but alarm
beat out arousal.
The tree was...drooping—that was the nicest word for it. Its extra tall top
had flopped over, and its branches looked to be melting under a sun that
wasn’t yet out. Doc chased after one of the fallen ornaments, others scattered
on the floor like leaves in autumn after a terrible storm. The color had half
gone out of it too, a thing that could be seen even in the dark, the greens as
sickly as a dehydrated frog.
Kol collected a few needles from the ground, but he didn’t bother to pull
out his device. “Definitely not good.”
“It’s my fault,” she choked out. “You told me, but I wouldn’t let you take
it, and now a seven-thousand-year-old tree is going to die because of me.
Can you take it now?”
“I think it’s acclimated to the warmth in here. It’s way too weak to
move.”
“Okay, well,”—she shook his arm—“do that glowy thing you do?”
 Kol spread out his fingers, unglowing. “I don’t think what I have to offer
it is enough. It needs more.” He looked up to her, blue eyes full of distress.
“It needs its normal life.”
His words struck her, and she swallowed, arms shaking. “But you
said...you said it doesn’t always know what it wants because it’s a tree.
Remember that? Maybe it would be okay here if we...if we told it what it
needs and...and if we just tried?” Her voice cracked, heavy with fear and
dragged down even further by metaphor.
Kol was quiet. He licked his lips thoughtfully, and her heart fluttered, but
not because she missed their taste. “I can bring it something from its home?”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Almost everything in the grove is
dormant right now, but there are dried seejia buds in the cabin. They’re
powerful and definitely a last-ditch effort—once they wear off, the tree will
really be sapped—but if I grind them into a powder and add them to the
water...it just might work.”
“Kol, that sounds great! Let’s go get them.”
He took her by the arms and guided her away from the tree, closer to the
corner of the room. “Ah, no, I have to go. You’re not supposed to be in the
grove.”
“But what if you need my help?”
He raised a brow, and the condescension made her grunt.
“Who’s going to call your mom if something happens?”
A smile ticked at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you want to stay with
your family?”
Piper glanced wearily at the floor where Holden, Luke, and Noah were
sprawled out as if they’d collapsed in the midst of a wrestling match. “This
is more important, and I want—” She caught herself, unsure if she should
say after his reaction the night before when he’d hesitated so much to her
snuggly proposal. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
“We might not be back before dark.”
“I’ll pack flashlights!” Piper was off, running through the house as
silently as possible and collecting what gear she thought they might need.
Her brain was in a panic, stopping only to glance at the tree, its sad state
worse each time. If it died, would he ever forgive her? Would she ever
forgive herself? Would those pixies come back and drag her to hell? They
definitely wouldn’t give her rock back, that was for sure.
 Those fears sat heavy in her stomach as she did the worst job ever at
getting ready. She’d pulled on socks that didn’t match and kept having to
return to her room for something else forgotten or misplaced. She was so
completely frazzled as she attempted to stay quiet, that she tripped headfirst
into a bin of laundry, lucky it was so full.
Kol met her at the bottom of the stairs just as the sun was rising. He was
composed, dressed, and with a full bag slung over his shoulder. It hit her
suddenly that all of his things could be packed inside, and if he left without
her, there would be nothing left of him behind but the tree, and if it died...
Her hands twitched, wanting to hook her arms around him, but instead,
she went for her keys.
“You won’t need those.”
“Then how are we getting there?”
Piper had never ridden a horse before, and she was fairly certain no one
had ever ridden an elk, but a fehszar? The creature’s height was terrifying,
each lumbering step jostling her forward and then tipping her back, but then
Kol was right there behind her, and she decided that if she had to ride on
anything, she wanted to do it with him. “This is a lot slower than my
hatchback,” she said over her shoulder as they plodded along through the
forest. “The truck’s even faster, and its shocks are shot.”
The fehszar chuffed.
“It’s not about speed, it’s about accessibility. I don’t know how you got
into the grove last time, maybe something tricked you, or you got lucky, or
—”
“—I followed a bird.”
“Okay, see? That was a one-time thing, and you shouldn’t have been able
to find it at all, but the fehszar was born there, so she naturally knows the
way.”
They’d left behind the marked trails long ago, so Piper certainly hoped
the animal knew where it was going. She did bring a compass with her but
had completely forgotten her phone, filled with location-finding and
foraging apps. Her mind wandered to the bag she’d packed and what she had
managed to remember to bring. “Oh, shit, I completely forgot about food.”
“Don’t worry, I brought plenty.” Kol passed her a granola bar over her
shoulder.
Piper took it and ripped away the wrapper, hunger gnawing at her insides
and another ache chomping on her heart. It almost balled itself up into anger
because how dare he—how dare he continue to be so thoughtful when things
were going so poorly—but then that melted away too as she chewed. He was
right that she’d gotten lucky finding the grove because it ultimately led to
him.
Piper leaned back into Kol’s warmth, the fehszar beneath them bumping
along. She thought maybe she should ask first, but she didn’t want a replay
of the night before, of that awkward moment when she wasn’t sure if she
was wanted or not. It had occurred to her when she cuddled into him that it
was always her initiating. Did he think this was all just part of their deal?
Was he only trying to keep her happy so the tree would remain alive?
Her mind began to spiral, but then she took a deep breath of the cold,
winter air and tipped her head back to stare at the branches waving in the
breeze above. Piper hadn’t expected to get another chance to tromp deep into
the woods and just exist until after the holidays. Maybe it was a little selfish,
running off, a vague note left on the kitchen counter for her family and
nothing else, not even a breakfast casserole to warm up in the oven, but
maybe that’s what she needed.
Kol remained quiet at her back, but his hands slipped around her waist. It
was nice to have someone to share the peace with for once, especially
someone who wrapped their arms around her.
Beyond the trees, the sky was heavy and grey. The wind picked up, and
the bare trunks creaked. Piper pulled her coat tighter, but it didn’t do much
against the sudden, harsh breeze. They continued on, and in the greyness of
the forest, time seemed to stand still, the sun lost beyond the clouds. The
fehszar brought them to a frozen river, but Piper couldn’t name it. Kol told
her that enchanted groves often changed the surrounding area, creating and
destroying and displacing things strangely. She could feel that strangeness
deep in her gut when the fehszar found a dam to cross. It twisted up inside
her and made her want to run, but then they were on the river’s other side,
and Piper’s whole chest lit up.
The Everroot Grove was beautiful. That was all she could say, repeating
it over and over in a breathy whisper, unable to blink for fear of missing it.
Like seeing The Tree again and again, each stood more perfectly than the
last. Even the snow was different, more powdery, more glittering, and there
was that feeling, the one she got every year at exactly the right time, the
brief, magical spark that gave her hope—it was everywhere.
 And then so was snow. It fell gently at first, delicate and white as it
landed on the fehszar’s coat and Piper’s gloves, but then it came harder and
faster, and a whipping wind blew it into their faces.
“Oh, of course,” Kol grumbled, arms coming around her as he leaned
forward. “The cabin’s not too much farther ahead.”
It probably was short, but it felt much longer, and by the time they made
it to the small building, Piper’s eyelashes were crusty, and her whole body
shivered uncontrollably. The fehszar had a safe stable beside to hole herself
up in, and the two shut themselves up in the cabin, closing out the cold and
the worst of what was quickly becoming a blizzard.
It was dark inside as wind howled over the creaking roof, but Piper could
still make out the wooden walls, rich and dark, and the whole place smelled
of the earth. One corner was built out into a little bathroom, and another was
a stone hearth, a table stretching between beneath a curtained window, but
the majority of the cabin was meant for sleeping, a huge, fluffy space up
against the far wall piled with blankets and pillows.
“Whoa, this can sleep like four people,” she said, wiping frost from her
face as she inspected the massive mattress.
“Yeah, I imagine most of the elves who come here do that,” Kol
mumbled, unpacking his bag on the table. “Don’t think about that too much
though—we’re probably going to be stuck here all night.”
Piper’s brows shot up. That didn’t sound bad at all.
Kol fussed around with his things, grumbling, and Piper’s shoulders
drooped. Maybe it actually was bad.
She silently watched him from the corner as he moved around the space,
running fingers along grooves in the walls and magically calling up a fire in
the hearth and water from a faucet into a kettle. He did everything with ease
and grace, switching on lights with the flick of his wrist and lining up the
provisions he’d so thoughtfully packed, but he looked fairly unhappy as he
did it, and all she could think about was how he’d told her she didn’t belong
out in the grove.
Piper rubbed her arms, keeping to the corner. The cabin was run by
magic, and she couldn’t help with a single thing. No, she didn’t belong here,
not in this place full of wonder and danger too, but she had insisted, and now
he was responsible for them both.
“Kol?” she finally gathered the courage to say. “I’m sorry.”
He turned slowly, brows furrowed. “For what?”
 “Everything.” She swallowed. “For not letting you have the tree in the
first place. And for forcing you into this deal. For making you take me out
here where I don’t belong. For being a burden.”
“Piper, I’m the one who should be apologizing. It’s freezing and
dangerous out here, and I took you away from your family at Christmas.”
He raked a hand over his head, pulling off his hat, and his hair fell loose.
“You deserve to be at home with them where it’s safe, not stuck out here
with me eating...this.” He sighed, holding up a bowl of prepackaged noodles,
the lid torn back and steaming from the hot water he’d poured in.
“You made dinner?”
He handed it off reluctantly. “It’s not homemade lasagna or chicken
cacciatore, but it’s hot.”
She took it and grinned, its warmth already defrosting her hands. “I can’t
think of anything I could want more.”
If she didn’t know better, she would have thought Kol blushed at that,
but he turned away too quickly to grab a second bowl of noodles for himself.
They settled on the floor of the cabin and ate, and soon enough Piper felt as
warm as chestnuts on an open fire. Outside, the evening creaked and howled,
but there was a stillness within the walls. Nothing could be asked of her
there, nothing except what Kol might want, and she watched him take every
bite, waiting for him to make some request of her—to ask for anything.
But he didn’t. He just told her he was glad she’d been so persistent about
buying all that junk at the grocery store because that made up half of the
pack he’d brought. And then he explained how the sigils in the walls
worked, and how the cabin was old but sturdy, and he gave her long looks
that devolved into charming grins that made her feel like maybe it was okay
that a human had come out to the grove after all.
“These are the seejia buds,” he told her when their styrofoam cups were
drained. He plucked two dried bundles from the ceiling and put them in his
bag. “They only bloom under the full moon in the spring, so they’re potent
stuff. They should pep the tree up long enough to make it, hopefully until the
twenty-sixth, but they’re a band-aid, not a cure.” There was a small package
that had been sitting on the table, and he picked that up too, slipping it into
his bag.
“What’s that?”
“From my mother.” He cleared his throat. “These are the ingredients I
need to sever you from the tree.”
 “Oh.” Piper’s chest sank at the thought. It would be a relief to know the
spruce was safe, but that also meant their deal would be over. “Kol, I have a
question.”
“Ask away,” he said, leaning back against the table.
“How...um, how far are we from home out here?”
“Oh, well?” He scrunched his face up in thought. “Liminal spaces aren’t
really anywhere, so we’re not just far, we’re basically outside of space and
time in regard to your house.”
She gazed up at him as innocently as she could from the cabin’s floor.
“So, would you say we’re out of range of the tree’s connection to me?”
Kol’s eyes went dark, and his charming grin turned wicked.
 25

Stocking Stuffer or Chimney Euphemism,

Reader’s Choice
“Tell me what you want, Piper.”
She took a ragged breath between kisses as she struggled to escape her
coat. “Everything,” she gasped out.
Kol tore off his own jacket for only as long as it took, hands right back
on her and pulling at her sweater to rip it off over her head. “I’ll give you
anything,” he mumbled, freeing her of her top and then flicking at the clasp
of her bra as if it were nothing. “Fucking anything.” Then he dropped his
mouth onto her breast, and she squealed at the feel of his tongue lapping at
her nipple.
Piper grabbed the back of Kol’s sweater and peeled it up over him,
taking his shirt along with it. His body was long and lean and maybe even
better than she’d imagined running bare-chested through the forest with skin
like stone and defined muscles that could shred cheese.
Her mouth filled up with drool, but then he was working at her waist,
and she was woken out of the dreamy stare. He didn’t tease her this time,
pulling her leggings downward and only fighting with her feet for a moment,
and before she knew it, she was completely naked.
Sprawled out beneath him on the blankets, the breath went all out of her,
and she tensed right up. The firelight was suddenly too bright, the sigils on
the walls too revealing, and she wanted to hide herself away, Kol’s mad rush
coming to a halt as he gazed down at her. He brought a hand to the center of
her chest, pressing fingers lightly over her heart and then his palm, dragging
it slowly downward. Then he used his other hand to trace down the length of
her arm, her waist, her hips, eyes following every contour.
Kol touched her like it was real, like he might actually love her. She
didn’t know it was possible for someone to touch her like that, so slowly and
thoughtfully, and she didn’t know she could endure it—that she could even
enjoy it. She’d been so untouched for so long, she forgot it was possible until
his hands glided over her full of reverence and care.
“Piper,” he finally said, quieter, “tell me what you really want.”
“I just want you, Kol.”
He growled and grinned then, and he dove in between her legs like an
animal. She cried out with delight as his tongue drove her to screaming, even
louder than the howling winds outside. No one would hear, and even if there
was someone around, fuck it—they could know. She was going to come, and
it was going to be loud, and she didn’t care.
Piper’s mind scrambled as Kol brought her to the edge and pushed her
right over. Her back arched, her hips thrashed against his arms wrapped
around her thighs, and there were fireworks and butterflies and raindrops on
roses and whiskers on kittens, and then she collapsed backwards into a
sweaty heap.
“You have to let me,” she finally groaned out as the last of her climax
shuddered through her. “Let me touch you.”
“You know how I feel about that,” he said, squeezing her thighs and
gazing up at her between her knees. “You do whatever you want.”
“Okay,” she huffed, but she didn’t move, she couldn’t.
Kol grinned, lips wet, teeth pointed. “You seem like you actually need a
little break.”
Piper tried to catch her breath, arms up over her head, floppy like jelly.
She managed a meager reach, but her fingers were all pins and needles. “I
really just want you inside of me,” she mumbled, “but I didn’t bring a
condom.”
Kol sat back, quiet for a moment. “You know, one of the benefits of
having elven blood is no diseases. Can’t catch them and can’t pass them on.”
“Oh?” She pushed up onto her elbows and blinked.
“And, uh...” He bit his lip, gaze roving to the ceiling. “Not everyone
considers it a benefit, but being a half-elf means I’m a...hybrid? So I’m
not...potent.”
 She tipped her head, still woozy from coming and slow to understand.
“What is it humans say? I shoot blanks? I mean, it’s still shooting plenty,
like, it works just fine, even better than you’ve probably experienced
because I hear human men usually need some downtime in between, but I
can just keep on—anyway, point is, no matter how many times you let me, I
won’t leave behind”—he swallowed—“an accident.”
Piper finally managed to sit up, mouth falling open. “You can’t get me
pregnant?”
Kol shook his head slowly, fear in his eyes. “No, and I’m sorry, but—”
“That’s amazing!” She threw herself at him, pulling his body down
against hers as the burst of energy died away immediately.
“I thought you wanted to have a baby?”
“Oh, god, are you kidding?” She clung onto his neck and shook her head.
“I’m surrounded by babies, even grown up ones. I don’t want one of my
own.”
Kol laughed, relief heavy in the sound. “Well, if that’s the case...” His
eyes flicked down the naked length of her, and she didn’t mind at all. “You
look tired.”
She shook her head, but her eyelids fluttered.
There was a touch between her legs, and she squeaked. “You’re still so
sensitive.” He chuckled. “How about you flip over?”
“Hmm?”
“Get on your knees, Piper.”
The command ran straight through her, sparking just enough energy to
do as he said. She turned over and scrambled up onto all fours, and then
Kol’s hands were on her hips, pulling her back against him. He ran a hand
along her spine, taking her gently by the back of the neck and guiding her
down into the softness of the blankets. “Relax,” he said, and she wiggled her
hips as she set her cheek against the pillows.
With a hand hooked around her hip to keep her back half aloft, his knees
came between hers, and he pressed slowly into her opening, slick and eager.
Piper moaned into the blankets, grabbing handfuls of fluff as he filled her up
from behind inch by throbbing inch. She pressed back, but there was very
little room to move, and she savored being held onto so snuggly, the ridge of
his head knocking against newly sensitive spots as it slid deeper.
Fingers massaged at her neck, another hand sliding away from her hip
and caressing her breast. She could feel the drool pooling around her face as
she rocked her head sideways to glance over her shoulder. Kol notched
himself all the way inside her, and she sucked in the deepest breath. His eyes
were closed, lip bitten, hair falling in his face.
“Fuck me,” she finally demanded, and she pressed back against him
hard.
Kol drew backward and plunged in, and Piper shrieked with delight at
the electricity that sizzled through her. He persisted, and she met his rhythm,
and she never wanted to stop.
But then he did, and she could hear him breathing as he pulled out of her.
“Flip over,” he grit out.
She made a perplexed noise, more alert than before, but he took her by
the hip, and she was on her back again.
Kol gathered up her leg and tossed it over his shoulder. “I want to see
your face when you come,” he huffed, sliding himself inside her once again,
and Piper nearly did then, toes curling as his fingers found the spot that
would take her all the way. “Tell me when you’re close, baby.”
“Oh, god, now,” she cried, matching his speed, and the two collapsed
together in a panting, satisfied mess.
“Happy Christmas Eve Eve,” Piper hummed against Kol’s cheek when
they finally settled into one another’s arms. She was so drained, she didn’t
notice that there was no hesitation in his desire to hold her.
“Christmas Eve Eve,” he repeated with a chuckle. “Is that a thing?”
She shrugged. “It is now.”
“Oh, shit.” He sat up. “It’s the twenty-third. You missed ice skating.”
Piper pressed her hand to his cheek and pulled him back down. “That
was a lot better than ice skating.”
He groaned but fell in next to her and they lay there together, listening to
the wind howl. After a bit, Piper worked up a little courage and asked,
“Okay, Kol, please tell me why you don’t have a girlfriend.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to know what’s actually wrong with—oh, god, wait, do you have
a girlfriend? A real one, I mean.”
Kol’s chest rumbled with laughter. “No, no I don’t.”
“You’re sure? There isn’t a gorgeous, leggy elf who would get very
angry if she heard you say that?” She squeezed onto him. “Someone with
scary tree powers that would turn me into an elm for touching you?”
 “Elves are actually a lot better at sharing than you’d expect, but no, there
is no one who cares enough about me to do anything like that to you, and
there never has been.”
She looked at him dubiously.
“There have been girls, er, elves. A lot of them, actually, but I’m only
appealing to them in one very specific way which means I’m good for a
good time but only for a short time. Elves don’t explore too far outside their
own kind, so when they want something adventurous, they come to me, but
not when they want to mate, you know? Actually mate, I mean—longterm.
Obviously I can’t give them children—I can’t even give them longer than,
what, maybe a tenth of their life?”
Piper traced circles on his chest, frowning. “You told me there are all
sorts of beings where you come from, but you never tried to date anyone
who isn’t an elf?”
“That would just ostracize me more. My mother has a hard enough time
cleaning up after me.” Kol tightened his grip on her despite his words feeling
like they were pushing her away. “I don’t want anyone to have to clean up
after me.”
Piper nodded, appreciating that, but her chest still filled up with
melancholy. “Well, what are you going to do then?” she asked quietly.
Kol hummed, and he rested his head on hers. “I’m going to fall asleep
beside you for a little bit, and then I’m probably going to wake you up in an
hour and beg you to fuck me again.”
She let herself laugh because it was all she could do, and the truth was
that she didn’t want it to end, the night they had carved out of space and time
itself, so she was happy enough to doze beside him before the fire and wait
for him to rouse her to do it all over again.
 26
image
Eat Your Heart Out, Hallmark
“Piper! Piper’s back!”
The MacLean cabin was warm and bright and full of noise the moment
Kol opened the door. Presley made it to the hall first, shouting his sister’s
name and then catching her around the waist and lifting her off the ground.
Her eyes bulged, her fingers stiffened, and she tried to speak, but all the air
had been crushed out of her lungs.
“Uh, I think you’re suffocating her,” Kol said, poking the man in his
shoulder.
Presley dropped her but didn’t let her go. “I didn’t think you were
coming back.”
“Wha?” Piper wobbled as she took a full breath, and the rest of her
family caught up, piling into the hall.
“Pippy? Honey?” Her father pushed through the others and pulled her
into a gentler hug. This one Piper returned though her eyes were wide,
searching for and finding Kol. He just shrugged and stood to the side,
watching the others. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Jim said as he rubbed her
back. “Please don’t scare us like that again.”
“I...I left a note.” Carefully, Piper pried herself from her father’s grip.
“But you were so mad at us,” said Aunt Deb in perhaps the quietest
voice she’d ever mustered.
“Jiminy Christmas, let our girl breathe!” Grandma Tilda waved her
arms and parted the familial sea, pushing her own son away and taking
Piper gently by the arm. “Come on, honey, dinner’s almost done, and if they
haven’t made a mess of your mother’s recipes, you’re in for a treat. But
first, let’s take a load off.”
Piper gave Kol a wary look over her shoulder as her grandmother
guided her away, but he just grinned, recognizing the fear and sincerity
passing over the faces of the MacLeans. She had disappeared after telling
them she was going to burn down the house, and despite that he knew she
was joking, the rest of them had obviously taken it to heart. She never
spoke to them like that, he gathered, but he hoped they would soon get used
to it.
“Pippy,” Presley called, following after like Doc when he begged for a
treat. “Check out the mantle!”
Kol filed into the living room behind the others, and there on the mantle
was the fabled Christmas village Piper had longed for someone to find but
hadn’t had the time to look for herself.
“It was behind my old weights,” Presley went on. “I must have stacked
them up there over the summer when I moved. It took forever to find, but
all the pieces are there.”
Piper covered up her mouth with a gasp, eyes going glassy. She poked
at the little, ceramic people, and she shifted the bakery by a quarter turn,
and then she was absolutely beaming. Her grandmother guided her over to
the couch after, and someone else pushed a hot drink into her hands, and
someone else took her coat. Kol stood back in the doorway, watching the
confusion pass over Piper’s face as it transformed into a quiet acceptance of
the courtesies she was being offered. Kol always knew his feelings were too
big—everyone said—but as he watched her face warm, he knew there was
nothing too big about how full his heart was to see her happy and loved.
Across the room, the spruce leaned against the picture window, languid
and sickly. He slipped away and crushed the seejia buds, covertly sprinkling
them into the tree’s water. As if it took a breath, the boughs of the tree
lifted, and its greenery began to sparkle. Crisis averted, for at least a bit.
Christmas Eve was filled with warmth in the MacLean household, and
Kol assumed much less work for Piper than it would have been otherwise.
Someone else cooked, someone else cleaned, someone else worried about a
schedule and keeping everyone entertained. Piper was still exhausted by her
own attempts to find something to take charge of, but she was consistently
put back on the couch, handed another snack, and fussed over. By the time
she was falling asleep, all the feistiness had been driven out of her, and she
let Kol walk her upstairs. Together they climbed into her bed and curled up
in one another’s arms. She was out before her head hit the pillow.
“Merry Christmas, Piper,” he said the next morning, planting a kiss on
her nose.
“Mer...ismas.” Her eyes remained closed as she cuddled deeper into
him.
“Don’t you want to see if Santa came?”
 Piper yawned, her fingers clawing at his collar and tugging him closer.
“Nuh uh,” she mumbled and then gasped. “Oh, no, the presents!” She flew
upward, nearly falling out of the bed.
“Whoa, chill out, Pipsqueak.” Kol caught her by the hips and dragged
her back. “We brought everything downstairs nights ago, remember?”
Piper slapped a hand to her chest, settling backward into his lap. “Oh,
well, does that mean we have a little extra time?”
He rubbed against her and kissed her cheek. “You tell me, schedule
keeper.”
Half an hour later, they climbed down the stairs, groggy and in their
pajamas, but they hadn’t missed a thing. Everyone else was just waking up,
and Russ’s boys were sitting patiently on the couch, no small thanks to
Buddy, Kol assumed. But once everyone was gathered, it was a mad dash,
wrapping paper flying through the air and happy declarations from
everyone as gratitude and hugs were traded.
“You should go get your stocking,” Piper said into Kol’s ear through his
beanie.
He retrieved Grandma Tilda’s knitting, and inside was indeed an
intricately wrapped gift complete with a perfect bow. “When did you do
this?”
Piper’s smile was taut, anxiety in her eyes. “Well, I got it a while ago,
and then I wrapped it when you were showering, and then I hid it in my
nightstand until Grams put up your stocking, and then I sneaked it in there
this morning when you were getting me coffee.”
Kol squished the soft packaging, watching Piper’s eyes as they filled
with more worry. He flipped it over and hummed, and he thought she might
rip into it herself just before he finally decided to unwrap it. With precision,
he unfolded her neat creases, listening to her whine until there was no care
left to take, and he let the paper fall away.
Inside was a pair of socks, pale blue with white moose hand stitched all
over them, and a tag reading, Made in Hiberhaven. Something in his chest
cracked open, and he metaphorically slapped duct tape all over the crevice
to hold it in.
“I know socks aren’t a good present!” she said all at once, covering her
face. “And I had to guess at your favorite color and what pattern you might
like, but when I got them, all I knew about you was that you wear socks to
bed like a total weirdo.”
 “You got these that day we went shopping?” Kol rubbed his fingers over
the soft thickness of them. “From that Sewin’ Love store? The one you sent
me away from?”
She nodded, squinting like she was prepared to be told she had ruined
every Christmas that had ever come and gone.
“You got me a present way back then?”
“Technically, it was pretty late in the year for me to be buying gifts for
anyone,” she mumbled, “but yeah, I didn’t want you to feel left out. Now I
just wish I got you something better.”
“Piper, this is...” He squeezed the socks, all the ridiculously big feelings
that wanted to come pouring out brimming in his throat until he swallowed
them back. “Thank you, Pipsqueak. I love them.”
As relief broke out on her face, one of her cousins came running up and
dumped a box into her lap. “Pippy, this one’s for you.” Then he ran off to
dole out more gifts.
Piper frowned at the package. “I don’t remember wrapping this.” She
poked at the pattern and looked for a tag, but there wasn’t one, and then she
glanced out at the room, but no one met her gaze. Kol watched intently as
she finally peeled back the paper. Piece by piece it came away until her eyes
lit up like they had that day. “Kol, look! It’s the carousel! It’s got the zebra,
and—” She lifted her eyes to look at him, glassy and full.
“I know it’s not practical,” he said, holding up his hands, “but hear me
out: imagine your Christmas village just got a grant from the EPA, but it
had to be spent on something fun.”
She threw herself over the box at him, hugging him tightly. “Ugh,
you’re the best, you know that? When did you even get this?”
He could only shake his head and hug her back. “That was the only
good thing about being dragged away from you to go to the gun range.”
Piper rearranged the entire village to set up the carousel, and she spent
the day running back and forth just to watch it spin. Christmas was
otherwise filled with movies and meals, all of which Piper took part in
making but was never alone in doing so. Her laughter filled the house along
with everyone else’s, and for once, she truly seemed to play a part in her
family instead of being the director, sitting in the shadowy wings and
making sure the show went on for everyone else’s enjoyment.
Kol’s happiness was as he expected: bittersweet. She was getting what
she wanted, what she deserved, but he fit into that about as much as the
dying tree did. He said nothing until it was much later and most of her
family shuffled off to bed, but it was time to point out that the spruce was
sagging again, their makeshift plan to give it a little extra life a good one,
but not long-lasting.
“Oh, it really needs some help, doesn’t it?” Piper wandered up to the
floppy branches and then gathered her young cousins around before they
fell asleep for the last time in the rubble of their couch-cushion fort. “Boys,
I need your help. Can you take all the ornaments and lights off the tree and
put them in this big tub?”
Without question, Holden, Noah, and Luke did as she asked, quietly and
carefully filling up one of the storage bins. Piper removed the cardinal
ornament herself but placed it up on the mantle beside the carousel then
turned to Kol. “They’re busy,” she said in a whisper, and he knew what she
was suggesting.
Kol pulled the sachet filled with the ground-up ingredients his mother
had left him from his pocket. “It’s simple,” he said, grabbing the glass she’d
been sipping eggnog out of all evening. He poured in the dust and swirled
the cup around. “You just have to drink this, and the tree will let you go.”
Piper took the cup when he offered it, brow furrowed with that crease
again, the one he stopped being afraid of sticking days ago. “That’s it?” she
asked. “You don’t have to chant in a dead language or cut my hand open or
anything? Am I at least going to get stomach cramps?”
“I hope not.”
She frowned into the mug, the firelight falling over her as she raised it.
Kol clenched his fists before he could stop her. It would be ludicrous to
leave them connected—that would ruin his numbers, it would make a mess
of his reports, upend his job, his entire life, and of course, it would kill the
tree. Only one of those things wasn’t worth doing, but it was an important
one.
As he watched her tip the mug back, he chewed at his lip, glad for every
feeling he’d ever swallowed down because this was what he’d been
preparing for, when it would be too hard to say the things he wanted
because that would only introduce new complication into the life of
someone who deserved so much more. She was on the right track now, she
had learned to speak up for herself, and soon she would figure out what she
truly wanted.
 Piper swallowed and looked around the room as if waiting for
something magical to happen. Kol joined her, having never really severed
anyone from an enchanted plant before, but there was only the smallest tug,
like the flipping off of a switch, and Piper pressed a hand to her chest with a
quiet, “Oh,” and that was it.
The thing neither of them realized was that Magic had already done its
job, it would just take a few more chapters for them to understand.
“They’re finished,” she said, gesturing to the tree. It regained some of
its color from the seejia buds, and without the weight of the decorations or
the mottled, rainbow lights, it stood a bit taller, but it was clear it had very
little time left.
“Let’s go to bed.” Kol took Piper’s hand, and together they went
upstairs. He knew she wouldn’t feel it when, in a few hours, the spruce
began to die in earnest, and for that he was thankful. She would feel him
slide out of the bed though, because of how tightly he would wrap himself
around her. She would mumble a questioning sound, and he would kiss her
and tell her he would be back, and she wouldn’t know it was a lie until the
next morning when she woke up alone.
 27

Christmas Magic? More Like Mom’s

Unpaid Labor
Relief didn’t come on December twenty-sixth, unlike every year before.
Piper opened her eyes and turned off her alarm, darkness staring back at her
through the skylight above. She understood, really, she did, and he didn’t
need to explicitly tell her. In fact, it was better like this, to wake up and go
on like it hadn’t even happened because that was what life was like after
Christmas anyway: back to normal.
And normal was...well, it was reliable.
Doc nosed his way into her room and bound up onto the bed, snuffling
under the duvet and only finding her.
“Yeah,” she said, voice cracking, “it’s just me.”
The terrier popped his head out and licked her cheek.
“Well, the deal’s done, and we got the perfect tree, up until the end.” She
swallowed. “I got a lot more than a tree, really.”
Doc flopped his head down on her chest, fluffy black fur twitching over
big, round eyes.
“I know, I miss him too, but we don’t have time to be sad. We have a trip
to the airport to make, and that’s a two-hour drive.”
Aunt Susan and Aunt Mindy were already bustling downstairs, carrying
luggage to the door and trying to dress their daughter. Russ’s boys were still
asleep, and the rest of the house was quiet, but Grams was in the kitchen
with two mugs of tea waiting at the little table in the corner.
 “Come sit with me for a few minutes, honey.”
Piper dragged herself over and dropped into the chair beside her
grandmother. In the table’s middle sat her planner, and Piper fiddled with the
cover, surprised she left it out. “Did this year go okay?” she asked. “Even
with...everything?”
“Okay? This year was just right. A little chaotic, but that’s just like it
used to be.”
Piper snickered through her nose and took a deep breath of Earl Grey.
“Oh, sure, just like when mom was alive.”
“Actually, it was a lot like that.”
“Yeah, right. Christmas was perfect back then.”
Grandma Tilda pat her hand. “I don’t disagree that if your mother were
here that would be a perfect Christmas, but even I know that’s not possible.”
Piper nodded, that tearful feeling overcoming her but more easily bitten
back than times before, almost like it was okay. “She really was perfect.”
Then Grandma Tilda laughed, sharp and high, and made Piper jolt
upright. “Oh, honey, your mom wasn’t perfect. Don’t get me wrong, she was
an amazing woman, but she was as fallible as the rest of us. Don’t you
remember the year she wanted to make prime rib and forgot to turn the oven
on?”
Piper squinted out at the kitchen, imagining for a moment her mother
gracefully crossing it just as a timer went off. “No?”
“That’s probably because you were only about two and a half feet tall
and refused to eat anything except cheese at the time, but it definitely
happened. What about the year we had that storm and a tree came through
the picture window?”
Piper’s eyes went wide. “Oh, yeah, I do remember that, but that wasn’t
her fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t, but she cussed up a storm and was so frustrated
about the whole thing, she took you and Presley to Brookhampton for three
days. I thought she made the right decision, she wasn’t worried about
anybody but her babies, but some people might have called it selfish to leave
your dad to clean everything up with the rest of us here to fend for
ourselves.” Grandma Tilda shrugged.
Piper did remember then, she remembered the hotel—the very nice hotel
—and the indoor pool and how they all stayed up late every night eating
candy and watching Christmas movies in a giant bed.
 “Oh, how about when she thought she’d look better as a redhead?”
Laughter burst out of Piper. “She looked like Ronald McDonald—it was
so orange!”
“See? Not perfect, full of mistakes, just like you and me.” Grams took a
sip of her tea. “But she was special, honey. She took care of everybody, even
when we didn’t need it, another imperfection, I’d argue. But I think what I
liked best about her, besides how much she loved you and Presley and Jim,
was that she knew what she wanted, and she always went out and got it.”
Piper nodded, and she pulled her planner toward her because holding
onto it made her feel a little more secure.
“Doctorate? Got it. Jimmy? Got him in just three months. Christmas,
here, every single year? She’s still getting that five years after she’s dead.”
Grams squawked out another laugh, indelicate but accurate, and Piper
couldn’t help but snicker along. “But that’s because she wanted to replace
the family she always thought she was missing, so she went out, she found
us, and she got us. And she really did have us, honey, right up to the very
end. It was important to her to not be alone, to surround herself with people
that she loved.”
Piper’s mother hadn’t been alone—Grams was right about everything,
but especially that. In those last couple weeks, everyone paid a visit, and no
one demanded anything, they just came, and they sat, and they talked. They
spent time with Piper too, and even though she had been twenty-two, that
was the last time Piper felt like a child.
Aunt Deb had taken Piper out to get coffee and talk about nonsense
things for a few hours so she could forget, just for a little bit. Aunt Susan,
who rarely knew what to say but was good with her hands, had brought
Piper a squirrel she’d carved out of cork, and Aunt Mindy, who knew
exactly what to say, wrote it all down in a letter that Piper kept tucked in the
front of her favorite book of fairytales. And then there was Uncle Russ who
also never knew what to say and also wasn’t very crafty, but he did clean
every inch of the garage and the yard and stained every deck and was so
busy over the course of a week he probably lost ten pounds.
And finally, there was her dad who, after it was all over, held Piper in his
lap for the first time since she was ten and they both cried as he promised he
would always take care of her. He might have broken that promise because it
had been Piper taking care of him ever since, but she’d never blamed him
because she knew he wanted to—Mom had just always done it all so well
that the void she left was too big to fill.
Piper knew that for a fact because no matter how hard she tried, it just
couldn’t be done.
“It’s okay to cry,” said Grams, and Piper wiped at her face, feeling the
tears without knowing they’d begun to fall. “But you have to take action too.
Your mom was always busy, but she had a lot to show for it. She had your
dad and the two of you. I know you don’t want exactly that, but you can’t
have nothing, honey, and you can’t just wait around for magic to happen.
Sometimes you have to make it yourself.”
Piper nodded because she knew that Grams was right, but she couldn’t
quite say anything, throat too tight. Instead, she flicked open her planner,
vision a little blurry as she mindlessly flipped through the pages until she
reached the one she’d written about Kol. Just seeing his name would be
enough for now, just to know it had been real, for a little bit.
But someone had changed things.
It had to be Kol’s handwriting because it could be no one else’s.
Favorite movie: A Charlie Brown Christmas, for obvious reasons.
Favorite smell: Vanilla, like that shampoo you use.
Favorite color: Blue is fine, but now it’s brown, just like your eyes.
“Grams, I have to go,” she said, already out of breath.
“I know you do, honey, and you better hurry up.”
Piper jumped to her feet and raised her voice so that the whole house
could hear. “Presley! Wake up and get down here!”
Doc started howling, Grams broke into more laughter, and there were
multiple thunks throughout the house. Piper ignored it all, running to the
front hall and gathering as many layers as she could find.
“I’m here,” her brother finally shouted back as he tripped halfway down
the stairs, totally bewildered. “What’s wrong? Who died?”
Piper snorted. “You have to take Grams and everyone to the airport.”
“I do? I thought you were—”
“They need to be there in two hours and twenty-three minutes, Terminal
B, just put it in your GPS until you get to the off-ramp and then follow the
signs.”
“My truck doesn’t have enough seats.”
She threw her keys at him. “You can take my hatchback.”
“Why can’t—”
 “Just do it,” she spat, and ran out the door to blindly rush into the woods.
Piper had never been lost before, which is to say, she had never not
known, physically, where she was. On a scale of found to lost, Piper had
actually been wandering aimlessly for many years, a thing she knew but
could only admit when standing out in a field and being goaded on by a half-
elf.
Finding her way back home was always easy, though, because there was
a safe place where she left her things and could go to be alone. But that
wasn’t really home, she had come to learn, because home should have been
more than that. Now, home was a person’s arms, and maybe he didn’t want
to be that, but she had to know for sure, she just had to find him first.
 28

How Lovely Are Your Branches

“I know, and yes, I am upset, but if there’s anything elves and human men
have in common, it’s that they don’t cry.” Kol wiped at his face with his
shoulder anyway. There were no tears, only that endlessly empty feeling that
went right to the base of him, that void that would probably be sticking
around forever now.
The fehszar snorted, offense if he ever heard it.
“Don’t you think I already considered that?” he grumbled and dug his
hands harder into the earth around the base of the spruce. He’d been at it for
hours, he’d seen the sun rise and felt the temperature drop, but the tree was
finally beginning to look hopeful. “I’m...I’m still considering it, all right?”
The fehszar had settled behind him, propping up his back as he sat in the
snow. The edge of the Everroot Grove was just the worst place for the tree to
have been chopped down, his innards an absolute mess as the liminal space
tried to push him away and suck him back in all at the same time, but at least
his magic was working to heal the trunk.
On the ground beside him lay his thaumatix. He’d finished following all
the steps hours ago and had scrolled past the spell to that human profile he’d
made nearly a fortnight prior. Piper’s name peeked at him from the bottom
of the screen. He couldn’t pull his hands away from the ground, but he
imagined what it might say now, that she wasn’t as grumpy, that she still
worked hard but she knew when to take a break, that she was ready to let
someone treat her the way that she deserved.
A shadow flew overhead, and Kol’s stomach flipped as massive, white
wings came swooping down on the tree’s other side. He didn’t pull his hands
away from the earth and run even though he wanted to, gaze slowly
ascending the figure of the cailleach. “Hey, heartwood guardian,” he said
carefully. “This is what you wanted, right?”
The massive bird settled between two trees and watched him, its head
twisting in a very particular way.
“Oh, you too?” Kol rolled his eyes and gestured with his elbow to the
healing tree. “I kind of figured this would be more important to you.”
The cailleach clicked its beak and stared.
Kol averted his gaze though his chest ached. They didn’t understand—
they couldn’t possibly. Their world was just simpler, existing in a place
where they belonged, hidden away and with no other expectations but to just
be.
He settled in deeper against the fehszar, blocking out the wind and
focusing on his spell. At least the spruce wasn’t being a nosy, little know-it-
all, but as he inspected the closest bough, he had the creeping feeling that it
would tell him he had fucked up too if it could communicate as clearly as the
creatures.
Exhaustion was creeping up on Kol by the time he heard the honking. He
hoped he was only imagining the wretched sound as it echoed out over the
grove, lifting a heavy head, shoulders and back aching. But his faith was
dashed when swooping down from the sky came six stymphalian geese with
pixie riders. The cailleach fluffed up as they landed chaotically in the snow
all about it, not at all the regal greeting it was likely expecting.
Kol hefted a sigh, an expert at that now. “Look, I put it back, just like I
said I would.”
One of the pixies dismounted, but his feet never touched the snow.
Instead, he zipped over to Kol on iridescent wings and stopped short just at
his nose. With a snap, a glittery pall swirled before his face, invading his
senses with itchy magic until something materialized from the mist. The
object dropped out of the air, falling onto the back of Kol’s hand and
bouncing off.
 “Um, ow?” Kol glared at the pixie, then leaned down to inspect what had
fallen. A polished stone with striations running over it every shade of earthy
brown lay in the snow between his hands, and for just a moment, Kol felt he
was looking into Piper’s eyes again. “Oh, gods, damn it, you too?”
The pixie shrieked at him and threw out its spindly arms. The others
joined in with more nonsensical blabbering, and the geese started in too.
Kol groaned and fell back against the fehszar, glancing up the length of
the tree, and to his utter relief, the top of it was standing straight once again.
“Fina-fucking-ly.”
Free of the spell and confident the grove had accepted the spruce once
again, he wiped off his hands and snatched up the stone. Clearly the work of
a human, he turned it over and felt its smoothness, chest aching. He pushed
himself up to his feet, body tired, and the fehszar stood behind him,
chuffing.
“I’m thinking about it,” he grumbled.
The cailleach hooted lowly.
“But what if it’s a mistake?”
The geese hissed.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that!”
There was a flash of red just before his face, and Kol stood stark still as a
cardinal landed in the tree. It didn’t have tiny fangs or glowing eyes, it
wasn’t stymphalian or the guardian of any wood, and it really didn’t even
belong in the Everroot Grove, but it sat there all the same. And then it
tweeted.
“Okay! Fine! I’ll go back, and I’ll tell her how I feel, all right?” Kol
threw his arms out and shouted at the creatures around him. “I’ll admit all
my stupid, big feelings, that I think she’s the most wonderful woman in the
world, and that I’m falling in love with her, and I’m pretty sure I’ll shrivel
up and die if she doesn’t say she feels the same about me even though that
will probably scare her off for good. Will you all be happy then? Huh?”
The critters fell silent, black eyes staring back at him, heads untilting. No
one even chuffed. And then he heard his name in a clearly human voice.
Piper stood behind him in a sweater two sizes too big, hands tucked up
under her arms. Snow dusted the top of her head, and her face was as red as
a gift bow.
“What in the nether are you doing out here?” He closed the gap between
them and caught her just as she wobbled in place. Her teeth chattered as she
fell fully against his chest. “How did you even find this place?”
Her shoulders lifted briefly, and she huffed out a single word, “Bird.”
He opened his coat and pulled her against him. Utterly bewildered at
how she was there, he could only look back at the cardinal for an answer, but
it was gone.
“I just wanted to ask,” Piper spoke in a tremulous voice, shivers
subsiding slightly, “do you want...to go on a date...with me sometime?”
Kol’s brain emptied completely. “What?”
“I want to take you out for pizza.” She took a shuddering breath,
pressing her forehead to his chest. “Or to the movies. Whatever you want.”
Kol rubbed her back, and her arms slid out from around her and
encircled his middle. “What I want is for you to warm up. Come on, we’ll go
to the cabin, and—”
“Please say yes.” She tipped her head up, her eyes big and round and full
of that thing he’d been searching for and was all too lucky to find and all too
stupid to have almost lost. She squeezed him tightly, purple lips trembling as
they quirked into a smile. “Every time you asked me what I want, and I said
you, I meant it. I want all of you. I want to see the treehouse you live in, and
I want to convince your weird family to like me even though I’m human,
and I want to cook dinner for just the two of us, and I want to hold your
hand. To really hold your hand.”
Kol cleared the thickness from his throat. “I actually just live in a really
boring apartment.”
She snorted, giving his middle a shake.
“That’s what I want too. You heard me yelling at all the birds, right? You
are what I want, Piper,” he admitted, and he reached for one of her hands,
squeezing it and bringing it to his lips. “Can I take you home?”
“Take me anywhere, as long as I’m with you.”
 Epilogue

In A Neat Little Bow

Piper wrapped a towel around herself and squinted at her reflection in the
wiped-off middle of the steamy mirror. She stretched upward until her whole
body shivered and flexed her toes against the fuzziness of the rug with a
sigh. The long shower was just what she needed, and she pumped lotion into
her hand, gently rubbing it all over her face and arms. Vanilla soap and
eucalyptus mingled in the air, and she breathed deeply before she left the
bathroom to go get dressed.
“Happy autumnal equinox, Pipsqueak.” Kol appeared in the bedroom
doorway, a mug of steaming coffee in each hand.
Piper could already smell the hazelnut. “Ooo, gimmie.” She abandoned
the drawer he’d given to her where she kept extra clothes and took the mug,
the coffee inside nearly white and just how she liked it.
“I got you something.”
“For the equinox?” She took a sip and chuckled, throat warming. “Wait,
is this a special elven holiday I don’t know about? Was I supposed to get you
something too?”
“Nope, we don’t normally exchange gifts, but the timing’s kind of
perfect.”
Minor panic averted, Piper tucked her towel in a little tighter, placed her
mug on the dresser, and held out her hands expectantly.
Kol gave her one of those grins, the kind that made her melt into
giddiness, and she flexed her fingers, eager and unafraid to let him know. He
reached out into the hall and produced a brown paper package tied up with
string. She gasped at how pretty it was, oohing and ahhing for an appropriate
amount of time before ripping in. Kol had surprised her far too many times
over the last three seasons for her to be too precious about packaging
anymore, but she didn’t think she’d ever really get used to it.
Inside was a t-shirt, deep forest green, the Elven Perennial Association
logo over the heart and a ring of Elvish running around it. Piper squealed
and held it up to her chest—it would fit her perfectly. “I love it! Is this
because I’m always stealing yours?”
“Not exactly.” Kol pointed to the fanciful script. “Do you know what that
says?”
She flipped the shirt over and squinted at the writing. Elvish had four
hundred and thirty-nine characters, and she had only learned about a tenth of
them, but from this close, she could tell the words were different from the
ones that Kol wore to work. “Um, well, I think that might say simple?”
“Close, that’s human, try not to be too offended.”
She snorted, running a finger over the script of the second word. “This
one I definitely don’t know.”
“Liaison.”
Piper clicked her tongue. “See, this is another reason why Elvish is so
hard. You’ve got words from Latin and from French and—” She blinked,
mind scrambling and then resetting. “Human liaison? To the EPA? You
mean...”
“I don’t know how you did it, maybe it was your slide show presentation
on the history of national forests, maybe it was the basket of cranberry
muffins, maybe it was that time you caught that baby basilisk that escaped in
the council chamber because you thought it was just a regular garter snake,
but my grandfather has decided that you’re the first human to ever be worthy
of the EPA’s payroll. Congratulations, your new boss sucks, but I think
you’re going to love the job anyway.”
“Kol!” Piper threw herself at him, unworried about the coffee he held
since he never spilled a thing.
He hugged her back, placing down his mug and wrapping his arms tight
around her. “I thought maybe you could wear it to lunch with your dad
today.”
“Oh, he canceled,” she said, pulling back and grinning wide.
Kol cocked his head.
“He has a date.”
 “From that app for widows with dogs?”
“Yes! They’re meeting at a park and she’s bringing her Jack Russell
terrier. Doc’s either going to be utterly thrilled or irreconcilably jealous.”
Kol threw his head back and laughed, and the sound rumbled into Piper,
warming her up even as her hair dripped over her shoulders. “That means we
don’t have any plans for today.”
“Sure we do—I have to give you your present.”
He smirked at her. “You didn’t even know about the equinox.”
Piper shrugged, pushing at his chest and knocking him against the wall.
She slipped a finger along the top of her towel, untucking it so that it fell to
the floor. “I still have something to give you.” She stood there naked in front
of him for just a moment before sliding down to her knees and yanking at his
sweatpants.
Kol gripped onto the doorway for support when she wrapped her fingers
around his cock, bringing him right to attention. “Fuck, baby, do you have
any idea how much I love you?”
“Of course I do,” she giggled, running fingers over him in long, slow
strokes. “But that’s no reason for you to ever stop telling me.”
So Kol told her, over and over, because it wasn’t humanly possible for
him to keep in all those big feelings, and Piper listened every time with a
smile on her face and a heart full of love.
 Thank you, Dear Reader, for letting me get away with this. The Elven
Days of Christmas has been a silly, little story that’s been floating around in
my head for years, but I never found the time to fully flesh it out before
Christmas. Seeing as I’m releasing this on Christmas 2023, I almost didn’t
find the time this year either, but hopefully it’s a story that can be enjoyed in
future holiday seasons too or whenever you need a little cheerful boost.
Grief is something I have personally struggled with for quite a while
now, and this book allowed me to explore those feelings while wrapping
them up in a ridiculous story of overly-dramatic romantics, magic that makes
very little sense, and dick jokes, so thank you for coming on this journey
with me. I hope it meant as much to your heart as it did to mine, or it at least
made you snort laugh once or twice.

ALSO BY A. K. CAGGIANO
Standalone Novels:
The Korinniad - An ancient Greek romcom
She’s All Thaumaturgy - A sword and sorcery romcom
The Association - A supernatural murder mystery
Vacancy
a contemporary (sub)urban fantasy trilogy:
Book One: The Weary Traveler
Book Two: The Wayward Deed
Book Three: The Willful Inheritor
Villains & Virtues
a fantasy romcom trilogy:
Book One: Throne in the Dark
Book Two: Summoned to the Wilds
Book Three: Eclipse of the Crown
Celeste’s Spinoff: Bound to Fall
Xander’s Spinoff: Bound and Tide (coming soon)
For More, Please Visit:
https://www.akcaggiano.com