Then it lowers its beak and pecks my grass. A clean divot appears. A perfect circle of exposed soil in two and three-quarter inches of flawless green.
They're all pecking.
Across the fence, every light in her house is dark.
CHAPTER 3
JUNIA
The flamingos are the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life.
I sit on my steps with both hands wrapped around a mug of coffee so strong it could strip paint, and I see a seven-foot orc in cargo shorts and unlaced boots try to grab a plastic bird off his lawn. The flamingo dodges. Actually dodges. It sidesteps on its wire legs with a jerky, mechanical grace, and Flynn's hands close on empty air. He stumbles. His bare foot finds one of the divots the birds have already pecked into his grass, and his ankle rolls, and for one glorious second this massive green wall of a man windmills both arms like a cartoon character on a cliff's edge.
He doesn't fall. Of course he doesn't fall. Orcs don't fall. He catches himself, straightens, and his jaw does that thing where the muscles flex so hard the tendons in his neck stand out like bridge cables. Even from thirty feet away, the cords are visible.
I sip my coffee.
"Morning, Flynn."
His head snaps toward me. Those amber eyes, bright as a wolf's in the grey dawn light, lock onto my face with the precision of a targeting system.
"You."
"Me."
"Your flamingos are eating my lawn."
"They're not my flamingos."
"They appeared in MY yard after YOU moved in."
"Correlation isn't causation. I learned that from a podcast."
He grabs for another one. This flamingo is faster. It ducks under his arm, skitters three feet to the left, and drives its beak into a fresh patch of turf. The sound is obscene. A wet, crunchy pop, like someone biting into a really crisp apple. A plug of sod launches into the air and lands on Flynn's shoulder.
He stares at the grass on his shoulder. Then back at me.
I'm grinning. I can't help it. The mug is warm against my palms, the morning air smells of dew and dirt and the jasmine I planted along my porch railing yesterday, and the most uptight orc in the continental United States is losing a war to lawn ornaments. This is the best Friday of my entire?—
A flamingo pecks my foot.
Hot coffee splashes my knee. I jerk backward, mug sloshing, and stare down at the bird standing on my bottom step. Its wire legs scratch against the wood. Its painted eye rotates toward my herb garden.
Three more emerge from Flynn's fence. They move in formation. Single file. Purposeful.
"Oh no."
They break rank. One veers toward my lavender. Another beelines for the rosemary bed I spent six hours building over the weekend, the one with the reclaimed brick border and the hand-mixed soil and the copper plant markers I bent myself with pliers and a blowtorch.
"No, no, no, no?—"
I'm off the steps. Barefoot. Coffee abandoned. The first flamingo reaches my lavender and pecks. The stem snaps clean.A six-month-old English lavender, the Hidcote variety, the one I babied through a root fungus in April, reduced to a headless stalk in a single mechanical bite.
"HEY!"
The flamingo ignores me. It pecks again. Another stem gone. Tiny purple flowers scatter across the mulch like confetti at the world's worst party.
I grab it. Both hands around its plastic body. The thing is light, hollow, cheap, and it writhes. The wire legs kick against my forearms, leaving thin red scratches. The beak swivels backward and snaps at my fingers.
