My fist is still on his stomach.
"You— You should let go of my shirt."
"You should let go of my arm."
A flamingo pecks his calf. He flinches. I flinch. The spell shatters, and we spring apart like teenagers caught behind the bleachers. My cheeks burn. His ears, which I now notice are pointed and expressive, have turned a shade darker green at the tips.
He grabs the offending flamingo without looking. One hand. Base grip. Stuffs it into the wheelbarrow.
"We need a better strategy," he says to the wheelbarrow.
"Yeah." I press my palms to my cheeks. Cool them down. Fail. "Yeah, we do."
Fourteen flamingos remaining. My herb garden is a crime scene. And I can still feel the heat of his skin on my knuckles like a brand.
This is going to be a problem.
We're mid-strategy session, crouched behind my overturned wheelbarrow like two soldiers in a foxhole, when the sound cuts through the morning air. Not a flamingo sound. Engine sound. The low, predatory purr of something European and expensive, the kind of car that costs more than my entire shop's inventory and gets washed by someone named Pierre.
Tires screech.
A silver Audi sedan jumps the curb. Not partially. Not a gentle nudge. The front wheels launch over the concrete lip and the undercarriage scrapes the sidewalk with a shriek that sets my teeth on edge, and the car plows across the strip of grass between the street and my property line. The strip I plantedwith wildflowers last Saturday. Cornflowers. Black-eyed Susans. A patch of red clover I'd been coaxing from seed.
Gone. Tire tracks cut through them like surgical incisions.
The car stops three inches from my marigold border.
"My wildflowers."
Flynn stands. Full height. His shadow stretches across the hood of the Audi like a sundial.
The driver's door opens.
Out steps the tallest elf I've ever seen. And I've seen elves. Portland is lousy with them. But this one is different. He's got the cheekbones, sure, the silver-white hair pulled into a knot so tight it's probably giving him a migraine, the ears that come to points sharp enough to open mail. But he's wearing a three-piece suit. Dove grey. In June. At seven in the morning. On a suburban lawn covered in animated flamingos.
He steps over my crushed cornflowers without looking down. Italian shoes. No socks. The ankles are hairless and pale as bone china.
"Flynn Danger."
Flynn's posture changes. Not a flinch. Something worse. His spine goes rigid, and his shoulders square, and his chin drops a quarter inch. Submission? No. Recognition. The kind of body language that says: I know this person, and I wish I didn't.
"Valerius."
The name lands in my stomach like a stone. I've heard it. On the neighborhood forum. In the fine print of the seventeen-page homeowner's agreement I skimmed and signed because the house was cheap and had south-facing windows. Valerius Thandril. HOA president. Elected unopposed for six consecutive terms, which tracks, because who runs against an elf with a vendetta and a homeowner's handbook?
Valerius surveys the yard. My yard. His gaze moves like a laser level across the destroyed herb garden, the scatteredterracotta, the flamingos still pecking at everything green. One corner of his mouth twitches. Not amusement. Disgust refined into an art form.
"Miss Erikkson." He knows my name. He hasn't looked at me yet. "I see you've been busy."
"Those aren't mine."
"The flamingos, the demolished garden, or the orc standing in your rosemary patch?"
I glance at Flynn. He's shifted two steps to the left, but his boot is still planted in what remains of the rosemary bed. Crushed needles cling to his ankle.
"The flamingos."
Valerius pulls a phone from his breast pocket. Taps the screen. Turns it to face us both. Photos. Dozens of them. Time-stamped. My yard from yesterday, the moving chaos, the fertilizer cloud, the vine I shoved over Flynn's fence. Flynn's yard this morning, pink birds everywhere. My yard now, the shared disaster zone of herb corpses and animated lawn ornaments.
