After tossing the bits of paper around for effect, I dumped them on the coffee table, and tallied.
“One vote for Colby.” I picked up the next. “Two votes for Colby.” I smiled. “Three votes for Colby.” I pressed the next flat. “Four votes for Colby.” I found another piece. “Five votes for Colby?” I checked with each of them. “Who voted twice?” It hit me a heartbeat after I asked. “The daemon.”
Asa inclined his head in confirmation, and I loved that the daemon had gotten to participate. I wasn’t sure if he cast his vote in the moment, in Asa’s head, or if they worked it out earlier. But I was glad all the same.
“We have a unanimous winner.” Clay whooped. “What’s the prize?”
“Bragging rights,” I said at the same time Colby told him, “A hundred dollars.”
Twenty-five bucks per person went into the pot as an entry fee to keep it fair-ish.
A hundred dollars was a small fortune to a kid, and I knew exactly where the money would go. I might as well go ahead and buy the Mystic Realms credits so she could get started designing her next character. It might go toward pets or mounts, but that kind of cash would outfit another avatar to play when she got the itch to be sneaky or to explore without her team.
Occasionally, she liked to get up to trouble on her own without it affecting her main account’s stats.
With Clay around, it happened more often. A lot more often. Like they kept a running list of hijinks.
“Okay,” I yelled over the commotion. “Who’s ready to decorate cookies?”
“Me.”Clay shot his arm up in the air. “What’s on the menu?”
Once I got everyone seated at the kitchen table, I pulled the cooling cookies off the top of the fridge where I had hidden them. I placed the tray on a potholder in front of Clay and watched him blanch.
“That’s cruel and unusual punishment.” He poked one with his finger. “Why do you hate me?”
The cookies were gingerbread men, and I could tell from his expression he would never forget the time Mrs. Malone tried to feed us her version. My secret ingredient was chili powder. Hers had been human flesh.
“People cookies.” Asa stared at them. “You baked people cookies.”
“People cookies?” Colby glanced around the table. “We call them gingerbread.”
“No people were harmed in the baking of these cookies,” I promised them. “Think of this as therapy.”
I returned with piping bags of icing in white, red, and green then fetched six bowls filled with a variety of seasonal candies.
“This is wrong.” Clay recoiled from the cookie I placed in front of him. “It’s just…not right.”
“What am I missing?” Colby flexed her wings. “What’s a people cookie?”
Poking one of my cookies, I assumed, to see if it would cry about it, he said, “They’re—”
—not conducive to Christmas cheer.
“Why don’t we skip this for now and open presents?” I spoke over him. “Yay. Presents. Fun.”
Colby, being a kid, required no more prompting to blast off toward the tree and the mountain of gifts underneath. She resumed her spot on the chair perch and made grabby hands until I began sorting the presents into piles for each of us. I left Aedan’s to one side, so he could open them when he got home.
Home.
The word encompassed so much, and these days, so many.
The second I finished double-checking under the tree, it was open season on gifts.
Evil laughter poured into the room as Colby held up two Mystic Realms gift cards, one from each of the guys, and twitched her wings like she might fly off to cash them in right then.
“You still have gifts left, and so does everyone else.” I indicated her pile. “Keep going.”
A flicker of childish petulance was all she could muster when there were more goodies to be had.