No hidden sigils. No protection spells. No warning symbols. No blood oaths woven between cross-stitch flowers. Just thread and cloth. Regardless, we followed protocol and ran both the bell and the book through every supernatural detector we had. Despite Foster’s concerns, nothing registered as dangerous or cursed.
“We tell her tomorrow.” I sealed the two items in a containment orb, just to be safe. “After breakfast.”
“Yeah, because waffles make these kinds of announcements digestible,” Zane snorted.
“After we do, we can add these to the display in the library,” Koa voiced my own thoughts.
“The pudding stone and that ribbon from the county fair?” Zane asked. “Oh, and the big shell you can hear the ocean in?”
“Conchshell. Yes.”
“She’s gonna cry,” Z muttered with a miserable look in his cognac eyes. “Buckets and buckets of snot and tears.”
I knew how he felt. The first time she’d cried, I’d mapped each tear track, measured the duration between sobs, calculated the exact pressure needed to hold her without breaking her further…
“We need to tell her, Z,” Ko insisted. “Aboutallof it. The packages, what happened to Rasputin, everything we’ve been keeping from her to ‘protect’ her.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here we were, strategizing how to deliver truth in the least harmful way possible, when for years we’d been trained to use information as a weapon. Father would be disgusted by our hesitation. A show of weakness, he’d have called it.
But Seri had taught us something different, that sometimes, strength lay in gentleness. In considering someone else’s pain before your own objectives.
Maybe Father was changing now that he had Kaori. He was certainly trying to create some kind of relationship with us beyondemployer and employees. I didn’t know whether to trust it or not, but Seri wanted us to try, so try we would.
Trying didn’t mean we would forgive him anytime soon, though, or that we wouldeverforget.
“She’s strong enough now to not need that kind of protecting anymore,” I said. “Support, yes, but as we’ve seen lately, she’s chafing under it.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Ko agreed.
“Tomorrow,” Zane echoed in a gloomy voice.
Yes, tomorrow, we’d break her heart.
Again.
“Now that the hard stuff’s over, let’s talk about even harder stuff.” Z scrubbed his hands over his face. “Seri coming along on a hunt. I know I was against it to start with, but I changed my mind after full moon. Cruor, our girl is busting at the seams with power! I say we gear her up. I’ll even order her a pint-size helmet and tac gear.”
“Zane—”
“I agree,” Koa interrupted me. “You just said she doesn’t need as much protection anymore.”
“I meant emotionally and mentally!” I growled, not liking that they’d allied on this. It was going to make me look like the villain to Seri again, and for once,just once, I wanted her to look at me like I was the hero!
#
I adjusted the folded handkerchiefs in my back pocket for the thirteenth time, wanting them to be easy to extract, yet not too obvious. Somewhere overhead, Zane balanced on a rolling ladder, muttering curses as he hid weapons in the classics section.
“Avoid Austen,” Koa reminded him, testing the give of sofa cushions. He’d rearranged the seating three times. Closer for comfort, farther for escape routes. “She always goes for the happy endings.”
“Zane.” I caught the throwing knife he hurled at Ko before the blade could strike the floor between our little brother’s feet. “Down.Now.”
“Relax, grandpa.” His boots hit the Persian rug with a thud, and he flourished a stun gun disguised as a flashlight. “Now which book should get extra spicy?”
The door creaked, and we froze like guilty teenagers.
Seri hovered in the threshold, all sleep-mussed curls and wide gray eyes darting between Koa’s sudden casual lean against the mantel, Zane’s death grip onWar and Peace, and me still clutching the dagger.
“Oh. Am I in trouble?”
