He winced. “A little bit? I wrote the first security program, and existing companies couldn’t see the value. I split the code between a bunch of computers, but each one only holds a piece of the code. That’s not how cloud systems usually work.”
She tossed the book on the coffee table. “That sounds like a wolf pack.”
He’d never thought of that before. “Hunh.”
“Siobhan and Niamh don’t agree on astrology. Siobhan actually agrees with you, which is why it’s pissing her off so much. She doesn’t want to do that.”
“And you?”
“I see the future in a crystal ball.”
“I learned a long time ago that I don’t have to understand everything to know it’s useful,” he said sincerely. He was glad of anything that made her life easier. He glanced into the hall. “Do you want to go for a walk, or will the chaperones let you out of the house?”
She grimaced. “The last time I left the house, I disappeared for days, and they thought I was dead in a blizzard, so notreally at the moment. They may forgive me in another month. Unless…”
There was a crash from the kitchen.
“Go back to unless,” he said urgently. He had to get her alone.
“If there was a werewolf in town, they would go investigate.”
“I can do that,” he said with sudden hope. “I can make that happen.”
He dug out his cell phone and clapped it to his ear. “Nico, I need you to do a sweep of the town, and I need you to be visible. No, don’t eat anyone, just freak somebody out enough to get back to a couple of witches as fast as possible.”
“Go by theCauldron and Broomon Main Street,” she whispered.
“You heard that?” he demanded, and Nicolo confirmed.
He hung up the phone quickly as he heard footsteps and cracked his knuckles.
He smiled as the twins came in and ignored the second cup of tea she put down.
“Shall I return to the next category, which is… flower essences?” he said with an inner groan.
“You know, like homeopathy,” Cat said quickly.
“Is that a disorder of the system?” he asked, parsing through the Latin.
“No, it’s when you take a bit of the essence of the opposite of your problem to fix your problem. You know, like a tiny dose of coffee to go to sleep.”
“How tiny?”
“Milliliters.”
“You know nothing in the world works like that, right? The more you take of something, the bigger the effect, and also the opposite of the effect you want gives you the opposite effect. But how brilliant was the creator of this that they figured this out!”
“Weren’t they?” Cat said with a grin.
How long did it take to run from the house to downtown Silver Spring? It couldn’t be that long.
He cleared his throat and flipped to the next page. “Next category: divination systems throughout the world.” He glanced at Cat. “This is one of my favorites.”
Niamh let out a tittering laugh, and Cat was biting her tongue again.
“There are long histories of prophets in every culture of the world. Even in our modern world, we have futurists who claim to do the same thing empirically. Everybody wants to know what happens next.”
Siobhan harrumphed.
