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HogDocKev: Thanks, but I’ve got someone else I can ask. He’s a kickass healer and an all-around excellent player.
Not that I’d say so to his face.
HogDocKev: Hit me up tomorrow if you’re on. Let’s chat about Vegas!
But Smitty had already logged off, and the message remained unread.
A notification from the other chat pinged.
Anomaly451: Babe?
I shook off the convo with Smitty and focused on explaining the plan to Adam. Once I finished up, Hux came back and handed me a small bowl of cut-up strawberries and carrot pieces. “For Rodrigo,” he said, not making eye contact with me.
“I need you to be our healer,” I said without preamble, plucking out a piece of strawberry to offer to the bunny.
“Me?”
I shrugged. “Don’t sound so surprised. Smitty’s good too, but he’s not nearly as experienced as you are. I’d have asked you first, but you were gonna be focused on surveillance. I figure between the two of us, though, we can handle the surveillance and the game. We’re just watching her house, and I can set up a motion-detector alert on the cameras.”
“You want me to be your healer?” Hux asked. He cleared his throat and looked a little flustered, probably feeling like I did—that it was weird and kinda cool to be on the same side in the game for once. “Who’s going to scout for us?”
“My friend Adam.”
“Anomaly,” Hux repeated in a flat voice. “Your fake internet boyfriend.”
I shot him a look. “Don’t. You barely know me. You sure as heck don’t know Adam.”
“I know enough,” he said darkly.
I held up a hand. “We’re not talking about this right now. We need a decent player, and he’s available.”
He fumed for a moment, then held up his hands in surrender. I tried not to look at the sexy ink on his arms, but it was impossible. “Fine. Let me run upstairs for my Horn. Be right back.”
Had he left his Horn upstairs when he got his snack? So odd.
While he was gone, I coordinated a comms channel for our team and set up an extra headset for Hux. Once I heard OnCallWidow’s voice, I knew we had what we needed. She was definitely an adult woman and didn’t sound anything like a teenager.
“Hey,” I said in a cheerful voice. “You can call me Kev. Nice to meet you.”
“You can call me Cam. Thanks for this. I’m stuck at home with a sick kid today.”
When Hux got back, I handed him another HDMI cable so he could run his game on another one of my big monitors. We settled in with game play on two monitors and the surveillance feed on a third. I muted my microphone and told him about Camila giving us identity-confirming information.
“Good work,” Hux said. His words made me feel way prouder than I had any right to feel. I hadn’t actually done anything to get that information out of her; she’d volunteered it. Still, I loved impressing him.
“Hey. Are we doing this or what?” Adam said in a bored voice. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard his voice over comms, but something about hearing him live made me feel nervous and a little on edge.
I unmuted my mic, feeling my face heat. “Hey! Glad you could make it. Thanks for helping us.”
Hux rolled his eyes but thankfully kept his mouth shut.
I quickly made the introductions—though it soon became clear that Adam and Hux had history. We laid out a strategy and discussed it for a while before happily embarking on the quest.
It became a shitshow immediately.
“HogMasterHux, are you even seeing how low my health points are right now?” Adam demanded. “Some healer you are! Jesus Christ, this troll is going to take me.”
“He’s a level three garden troll,” Hux said, his eyes never moving from the screen. “Heal yourself. I’m battling a Summer Spider over here, for fuck’s sake. Do you know how strong a Summer Spider has to be if she’s still alive by February?”
“Oh my gosh, where are you guys?” OnCallWidow tittered. “I lost you cuties somehow in the swamp, and now I can’t find you. Can someone send out a homing butterfly?”
“I don’t have a free hand right now,” I gritted out between clenched teeth, trying to truss up a mother grackle so I could steal her eggshells. I’d managed to sneak almost all the way to the nest while she was sleeping, but then Adam had sent a stray bolt of mage-light arcing across the nest, and the mother had immediately moved to protect her hatchlings from the nearest threat—namely me.
“HogMaster! Heal me, you trollfucker, or you’re going to have to do the rest of the op without a scout!” Adam warned.
“Good,” Hux muttered. “Since Kev and I have been ten leagues ahead of you since the outset, I’m pretty sure we’re scouting for oursel— Oh, shit! Kev! There’s a second grackle behind you!”
