“You’re ignoring the obvious system,” I said.
“Color is not a system.”
“It’s a perfectly valid system.”
“It is aesthetic chaos.”
“It is curated.”
Bobbi sat cross-legged beside him, chin in her hands, pure delight on her face as she observed us.
“He’s using the Dewey Decimal System,” she informed me. “That’s what libraries use.”
“This is not a library,” I said. “This is my house.”
“It’s a very efficient system,” Liam said, sliding a book into place with precision.
“It looks like a spreadsheet.”
“That’s the point.”
Markie shifted on his perch and watched the proceedings with narrow-eyed suspicion.
Bobbi leaned closer to Liam. “How do you know the numbers without looking them up?”
“I remember them,” he said.
She gasped. “Why?”
He paused. “It’s useful.”
“That is fascinating,” she said with complete sincerity.
I watched the two of them, the massive shifter and the eleven-year-old interrogator, bent over my bookshelf with identical intensity, and my heart made a slow, complicated turn.
The sun dipped lower. Shadows stretched longer.
I told myself again that this was ending tonight. That I was okay with that; that it was good, even.
Bobbi broke the silence. “Zoey says you’re a shifter.”
Liam went still for half a second before he answered. “Yes.”
She scooted closer. “What kind?”
“Wolf.”
Her eyes widened in open awe. “That is significantly cooler than being human.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Humans have advantages.”
“Such as?”
“You have opposable thumbsallthe time.”
She considered that seriously. “That’s true.”
I tried very hard to look bored.
