“If I hadn’t been putting those spell cards in the store, maybe—”
“Don’t do that,” I interrupted. “Don’t get trapped in regrets and what-ifs. Alex had been planning this since before you were born. If you hadn’t helped, he would have found a different way to weaken the shop. He was going to try to bind himself to that world-ending octopus with or without you.”
“You were still stupid, though.” Ava punched his arm, then grimaced and grabbed a paper towel to wipe her knuckles.
“What’s going to happen to him?” asked Morgan.
Jenny removed her gloves and tossed them into the trash. “Until Alex wakes up, he’ll stay here under my care.”
The shock of having his eldritch sponsor ripped away had left Alex comatose. I would have been perfectly happy to let him die, but not Jenny. She’d set up an isolated room in the house and was working on magical and mundane long-term care for him.
“The room is locked, and we have magical monitors in place,” I assured Morgan, who looked worried. “If he does wake up, he’s not going anywhere.”
A fly buzzed through the room. I’d plugged in more than twenty air purifiers throughout the house and opened every window, but the smell from the basement persisted, and it had been attracting flies all day.
A large black streak shot across the floor. Squidward the cat leapt into the air and swatted at the fly with her front paws. The fly dodged higher.
With a low growl, Squidward stalked the fly toward the shelves on the back wall, crouched, and sent two slender tentacles shooting upward.
The buzzing stopped. The cat shoved the fallen fly into her mouth. The eye on her back blinked slowly at us as she pranced out of the room, still chewing.
“Is she going to get better?” asked Ava.
I watched her go. “I don’t think she wants to. I think she likes the way she is now.”
Ava pondered this for a moment. “Good.”
“Morgan, please go tell Noah to come down for his checkup,” said Jenny. She turned to Ava. “You can go hang out in the kitchen. Temple made cookies.”
“How?” asked Ava. “He’s—”
“I know.” Jenny shrugged. “If you don’t want them...”
Ava vanished.
“I should probably keep an eye on her,” I said.
Jenny gave me alook. “Save at least one cookie for me.”
• • •
I found Blake sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a mug of coffee while Ava munched a red velvet cookie.
“You look worse than me,” I said. “Have you slept at all?”
“In the past week, or just last night?” He rubbed his eyes. “And the answer is no.”
I filled a mug, helped myself to two still-warm cookies, and joined them.
“Is this what you used to do as a PI?” asked Ava. “Tracking down bad guys and stopping evil gods and saving stupid kids like my stupid brother?”
“It wasn’t usually god-level problems,” I said. “That was more Jenny’s and Temple’s department. A lot of my jobs were the typical divorce and infidelity cases, just with vampires and hamadryads instead of humans. But sometimes I’d get a juicy one.”
“And then you’d disappear for weeks until you solved it.” The edge I was used to hearing in Blake’s voice was present but not as sharp as usual. “Dad and I never knew how long you’d be gone or what shape you’d be in when you came back to us.”
“I know.” My muscles tensed. I didn’t have it in me to go another nine rounds with my son. “Can we save the fighting for—”
“Let me finish, please.” He held up a hand. “I used to get mad at Dad, too. I didn’t understand why he put up with you leaving us all the time. When you two split up, I was relieved. I thought he deserved better.”
