Page 49

Story: The Elf Beside Himself

“You, too.”

And then I put the phone down and pulled Elliot to me, letting him sob into my shirt while I pretended to ignore the tears on my own cheeks.

Elliot’s sobs had stopped, although he was still resting against me, by the time Taavi came out of the kitchen, having found a tray who the fuck knows where. On it, he had the bottle and shot glasses, three mugs with something steaming, and a big plate of those fried pastry sticks covered in cinnamon and sugar—clearly the reason he’d wanted choux pastry.

He set the tray on the coffee table, then poured out shots of mescal, offering them to Elliot and I.

“Taavi, it’s like ten-thirty in the morning,” I pointed out.

“You have anywhere else to be?” he asked me.

“Fuck it,” was Elliot’s response, and he leaned forward and took a shot glass, throwing it back.

“Fuck it, indeed,” I replied, touched my glass to Taavi’s, and the two of us followed Elliot’s example.

Taavi made us do two more before he let us eat thechurrosand drink the hot chocolate, which was the Mexican style kind, not the Swiss Miss shit he hated so much.

The pastry, fat, and sugar only partly offset the mescal, although we sort-of tried to pace ourselves. We ate all thechurros—both the plate Taavi had brought out and the second one he refilled from the kitchen—and the whole saucepan of cocoa, which was an additional three mugs of that.

We still ended up lying in a weird half-pile on the floor, the coffee table having been pushed out of the way and several pillows having been pulled off the couch, a lot like the way Elliot and I had thrown slumber parties in this exact room when we were kids.

I was leaning up against the couch, Elliot leaning against my side and Taavi’s cheek resting on my thigh, his legs half curled up so that one socked foot was within Elliot’s reach. Elliot was tracing the chevron pattern on Taavi’s sock with a finger. I had one arm up on the couch, the other hand threading through Taavi’s hair because I was too drunk not to just do what I wanted.

Elliot was doing that finger-flexing thing he did when he wanted to shift, and while I might not worry too much about pissing off his human form, I knew better than to piss him off when he had literal four-inch claws. Shifted, El was about twice the size of your average badger, which meant that he could rip your leg off if you made him mad enough.

Taavi was watching him closely, although I was definitely too drunk to be able to tell if he was nervous or just waiting.

I was nervous.

You’d think that getting shitfaced would have made me less nervous. Apparently not. Apparently me getting shitfaced meant that I was actually going to get even more anxious.

Because I wanted this—whatever the fuckthiswas—to work. Somehow.

How the fuck do you make your best friend’s dad’s murderwork?

Fuck if I knew.

Elliot pushed off my chest, shoving himself away from both Taavi and I.

“Need to go outside,” he muttered.

“It’s muddy,” I told him. The weather had warmed up since we’d gotten here, heating up to a positively tropical forty degrees yesterday, and most of the snow had melted into the mud. It was still above freezing, but not by much, although it was supposed to snow again tonight.

“I like mud,” came the response, which I should have figured.

Fucking badgers.

Elliot pulled his shirt over his head.

Yep. Drunk shifting. It’s a thing he does.

Not in public. I’ve never seen himthatdrunk.

But here? Yeah, I’d seen him dig some massive holes in the backyard.

“Don’t dig up the flowerbeds,” I told him.

Because that’s what Gregory always told him.