one to Order shame before, but fuck me, Polethius Mole Shifters were fucking gross to look at. Or maybe it was just him. But couple that appearance with Plunger's less than wholesome personality and you had yourself a Fae who I did not want to be stuck in a small, dark space with for hours on end. No, Sin had saved my ass there for sure.
When Plunger had first shifted, I had honest to fuck thought he was having me on and had just done a half job to gross us all out, but no, I’d found a reference book and apparently they really did just kinda half shift. In his Order form, the grey hair which coated his body shrank away until he was smooth all over, but then his skin seemed to stretch until it was hanging in loose folds like one of those weird naked mole rat things, but his body stayed in its Fae shape so he looked kinda like a melting waxwork. Then his hands shifted into mole-like claws, his eyes shrank and his nose grew and turned all red and sprouted what looked like tentacles and glowed – honest to fuck, I’d never seen such a creepy looking Order in all my life.
And of course, because it was Plunger he insisted on stripping while he was shifted even though his actual body was similar enough in shape to his Fae form for him to have easily kept his clothes on. He kept bashing his ass against the sides of the tunnel as he dug, saying the words ‘it’s my method’ enough times to drive me insane in the five minutes I’d spent with him while he began to dig.
Sin was seriously taking one for the team by overseeing that freakshow and I would happily pay him back in any way he liked to show my gratitude later.
Gustard was unsurprisingly not helping, taking a seat at one of the crappy tables and flipping a book open as he settled himself in to read.
"You have to help with the work, stronzo," I snarled at him, moving to stand over him and pressing my hands flat to the desk in front of him.
"I think you all have it in hand," he replied lazily, flipping a page and I growled as I reached out and slammed the book shut.
"We are two men down on this job while Sin and Plunger are in the tunnel," I hissed. "We can't afford to let it show that we’re taking too long to do the work, or the guards might have questions for us. Or worse yet, they might decide to reassign the workers down here."
"Relax, my dear, the guards don't care how long this job takes or they would have hired magical professionals to do it. They just want to be sure that we hate every fucking second of it. So remove your greasy palm from my reading material and I'll go and take watch near the main door. No doubt you'd like fair warning if the guards return to check on us." Gustard tugged his book out from beneath my hand and yanked it back into his grasp, smiling dangerously before sauntering away toward the doors at the far end of the cavernous room.
Luckily for him, the CCTV covered his smarmy ass down there or I might be tempted to beat the shit out of him the way his fucking cronies had done to me in here once. I ground my teeth as I tried to force my anger at Gustard into a ball of hatred at the back of my mind. His time would come. I was already planning on the best way to get rid of him before we got out of here and I’d be getting revenge on his band of merry assholes if I got the chance too. Soon enough, all of my enemies would feel the iron fist of my wrath coming down on them.
A hand caught my elbow as I stood there seething and I whirled around to find Ethan glaring at me. He dragged me away from the rest of the group, into the stacks and through the maze of shelves with books dedicated to criminality and changing your life path.
I could have fought him off, but I didn't. We needed to have this out now that I was stuck with him on this team too and it made sense to do it sooner rather than later. Besides, the feeling of his hand