One thing was clear: the elves considered themselves to be at war and most of the humans in Pittsburgh didn’t realize it.
Taggart startled her by taking her hand. Apparently once you breached the hand-holding threshold, the door was always open for more. It felt good though in all the confusion to have something solid to cling to. He and Nigel were good people. She couldn’t have gotten Boo back or killed the namazu without them. Yet in less than sixty days, she was going to lose Taggart.
Unless she solved his visa problems.
“Marry me,” Jane whispered.
“What?” Taggart’s eyes went wide.
“If you marry me, you don’t need a visa to stay on Elfhome.”
His eyes went dark and sober. “If you don’t love me…”
“I think I do.” She squeezed his hand tightly. “It might take me a while to be sure, but we don’t have that time. I trust you. You’re a good man. I think you’re hands-down the sexiest guy I’ve ever laid eyes on. And you didn’t run screaming from my family. I think given time, I will come to love you more than anything in the universe. I’m willing to take the risk that it won’t work out if you are.”
He stared at her open-mouthed for a full minute.
“Well?” Jane wondered if maybe she should have waited until they weren’t covered in namazu blood and reeking of gun smoke.
He kissed her. He was just the right height so that they interlocked perfectly. Under the wonderfully soft fabric of his silk shirt, he was warm hard muscle. He kissed even better than he smelled, which was amazing.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Jane said.
Her mother was going to be ecstatic. Her brothers probably would be relieved that she wasn’t marrying Hal. (They liked Hal but had no respect for the man.)
Hal.
She knew him as well as she knew her brothers. She had, however, no idea how he was going to react to the news. Would it be best to tell him immediately or wait—like until the day of the wedding—or maybe a few weeks afterwards?
On second thought, she was fairly sure he was going to lose it. Taggart was right; Hal loved her. Maybe if he hadn’t caught himself on fire the first day they met, things might have gone differently with them. Putting a man out immediately slotted him into the “younger brother” category, despite the fact he was ten years older than her. She didn’t want to think of herself as the shallow type of woman that only liked macho-looking men, but the fact that Hal came to shoulder-level on her had always led to embarrassing face-plant moments.
Marrying Taggart only solved half the problem. What were they going to do about Nigel’s visa? He was very good-looking in his own right and a sweet-natured, intelligent man. Did she know anyone desperate to get married?
Brandy? No, the police officer only wanted a sexual partner, not a husband.
Until they found someone for Nigel, they had to assume that they only had fifty-some days to film the first season of Chased by Monsters. They needed to find any hidden namazu nests, make sure that the rivers were free of the monsters, and do the paperwork for Taggart to become an official Pittsburgher via marriage.
God, her mother was going to want a real wedding: church, priest, white dress, and a big reception afterward with a table full of several hundred cookies. Her family would want to start baking as soon as possible. They were going to want to use her ovens. Hyeholde was about to become overrun by every relative that could be drafted into the effort.
Maybe she shouldn’t tell her family either.
Her mother would kill her if Jane went behind her back.
She was still wrestling with logistics when they pulled into Hyeholde’s long driveway.
First step obviously was to find the hidden nests, since they had no idea how long the eggs took to hatch. Second was to fill out the paperwork to keep Taggart in Pittsburgh. Third was to find a woman for Nigel—assuming that the man was straight. The realization of how little she knew about the Chased by Monsters team scared her slightly now that she was planning to marry one of them.
She forced herself to put all thoughts aside. The price of living out in the middle of nowhere was to be vigilant to danger. They’d left the house empty for hours; she needed to be sure that nothing deadly had wandered into the area.
The morning had her so ramped up that Hyeholde felt like the abandoned and forgotten corner of Pittsburgh that it was. She stood in the driveway, rifle in hand, listening carefully to the wind move through the trees.
Jane eyed the forest that pressed close to the yard. Were the woods too quiet? Or had the morning just ratcheted up her paranoia to new heights? “Stay on watch. I’m checking the house.”
Her front door was still locked, none of the windows were broken, and nothing seemed to be stirring within the house. The back door and both side doors were barred as well as locked. She couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that someone had been in the house.
She looped back to the trucks.
Her brothers were all standing guard with rifles. Hal was up in Bertha’s gunner seat, pretending to fire the big gun, complete with sound effects. “Pew! Pewpewpewpewpew!”
“Bertha doesn’t go ‘pew,’ ” Guy complained. “Star Wars lasers go ‘pew.’ Bertha goes ‘Powpowpowpowpow!’ ”
“More like ‘Boomboomboomboom,’ ” Geoffrey stated.
Should she tell Hal that she was marrying Taggart before or after letting him shoot the cannon? If she told him beforehand, he would probably demand more shots. They didn’t have ammo to waste.
Taggart stood silently to one side, camera on his shoulder, letting her decide when to spill the news.
Alton’s pickup came rumbling up the driveway.
Guy reached up and yanked Hal out of the gunner’s seat. “You don’t point guns at people you don’t want to kill.” Apparently Guy considered himself still on the job of sitting on Hal.
“Hail, the victorious heroes!” Boo called, leaning out the window, waving.
“Hoi!” Jane called back.
Joey launched himself at her as soon as she opened the door. “You were on the radio!”
“We were?” Jane let herself be hugged tight and kissed on the cheek by the little boy.
“Sean saw it all.” Alton climbed down from his truck. Their cousin Sean Roach was the late-night DJ at KDKA radio. He must have been pulling an all-nighter to be at the station so insanely early in the morning. From the studios in the Gateway Center skyscraper, Sean would have had a front row seat to the Market Square action. “Sean bumped the morning show programming so he could do play-by-play. He knew it was you; he recognized Bertha. He was doing damage control. He kept saying things like ‘the unknown heroes have saved the pinned and helpless police officer!’ Speaking of which: Bowman is at Mercy with a concussion and minor lacerations.”
Jane laughed with relief, kissed Joey on the forehead, and handed him off to Marc. “EIA wasn’t happy but the sekasha made them let us go. I think we need to seriously go over the peace treaty and find out what it really says.”
“We need to find the nests,” Nigel stated firmly.
We need to plan a wedding. We need to get a girl for Nigel. We need to break the news—gently—to Hal.
Joey squealed and giggled as Marc tossed him up in the air. “Higher!”
Marc complied, throwing him higher and higher, making him shriek with laughter.
“Whoa! Don’t put him into orbit!” Alton snagged Joey out of the air. “Come on, we got to make our fresh dough and mozzarella cheese for the pizza.”
“Pizza!” Joey cried. “Yay!”