The Hob (The Gray Court 4) Read Online Free PDF

she just chose not to.
    “Face it, Puck was a serious bastard of the first order. If you look at what he did just in Shakespeare’s plays, you’d realize that. He gives a man a donkey head, for fuck’s sake.” Stella began ticking points off on her fingers. “In Jonson’s work he forced people to follow him, leading them away from their homes, probably killing them in the wild.”
    “Pfft. In the wild. Please.” Michaela rolled her eyes. They were talking Lancashire, not the Serengeti.
    Stella continued as if Michaela hadn’t interrupted. “He stole kisses and food, would strip their bedclothes from them, pinched them, punched them and threw them out of bed.” She wrinkled her nose. “Seriously, he’s a prick.”
    Amanda nodded in agreement. “It’s true. Just read the ballads.”
    Michaela rolled her eyes. Like she hadn’t memorized the darn things. “You’re forgetting something.”
    “And that would be?” Stella leaned back and crossed her arms. Amanda gave her that annoyingly superior look.
    No matter what Michaela said they were going to stick with their belief that Puck was nothing more than an evil little hobgoblin, but she had to try. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument, and it wouldn’t be the last.
    The guy had a bad rap, but it wasn’t entirely his fault. Most of what he’d done had been to people who’d deserved it, but Stella and Amanda had been teasing her over her obsession for too long now to acknowledge that. She began ticking her own points off, just as she always did. “According to the very same ballads, Puck would card wool to help the less fortunate, help with the farm work, get lazy workers to do their jobs, lend money to the needy and expose nasty gossips to those they’d betrayed. Even Bottom’s misfortune was due not to Puck’s mischief but orders from Oberon.” She shrugged. “He just got it a little wrong.”
    Stella sniffed. “You can’t deny that Puck did an awful lot of bad things without orders from Oberon.”
    Michaela wagged her finger at Stella. “The thing is, when he did them, did he do them because the person deserved it or not?”
    “Not always. You’ve read the ballads, you should know better than us.” Amanda picked up her empty cup and frowned. “Damn. All out of my skinny mocha. Anyone want seconds?”
    “Not me. It goes right to my hips.” Stella patted her well-rounded bottom. Her boyfriend loved Stella’s hips and would have already bought her another one, silencing her protests with a kiss. Frank was good for Stella, and Stella adored him. It did Michaela’s heart good to see one of her friends settled with a wonderful man.
    Michaela held up her cup. “I’m good.”
    “Be right back, then.” Amanda stood and threw her cup in the recycling bin before getting back in line.
    Stella kept up the argument. She was never one to let something die. “I’m telling you, Puck was a shithead.”
    Michaela frowned. “No. He wasn’t.” The final act of the play, where Puck asks forgiveness of the audience, had been both sad and roguish at the same time. She was enchanted every time she saw it.
    She wrapped her hands around her cup and began to recite one of the ballads.
    “ Yet now and then, the maids to please,
    I card at midnight up their wooll:
    And while they sleep, snort, fart and fease,
    With wheel to threds their flax I pull:
    I grind at mill
    Their malt [up] still,
    I dresse their hemp, I spin their towe;
    If any wake,
    And would me take,
    I wend me, laughing, ho, ho, ho! ”
    Stella laughed. “You are not quoting Ben Jonson at me.”
    Stella was a literature major, but Michaela was a connoisseur of all things Goodfellow. There was no way Stella would win this fight. “Yes. Yes, I am.” Michaela sipped her hot chocolate and smirked at Stella over the rim. Take that, hater.
    Stella’s eyes narrowed. The woman loved a challenge. “What about the times he messed with people’s weddings just for fun?
    “ He