My father was already there, on his back, underneath the desk. The screens still showed static.
“Hand me the electrical tape,” he said without any kind of preamble.
I located the roll of tape on the table, next to the pens, and handed it to him. I should have guessed he’d be here. Dad was security obsessed. It was kind of unavoidable, given who and what we were.
He took it, grunted thanks, and said, “Let me guess: you got yourself down without any help and came straight here to reset the security system, rather than staying with your brothers to clean.”
I hesitated for a moment, wondering what was the correct answer. Since the only options were the truth and an obvious lie, I opted for truth. “Yes?”
He waved the tape at me, scolding with it. “Don’t question. Answer. You need to learn to speak with conviction. No crew will ever follow your lead if you don’t project confidence. Try again.”
“Yes, Dad. I swung myself off the chandelier and then ran here.”
“You broke the chandelier.”
It wasn’t a question, but I figured it was safer to answer anyway. “Yes.”
He snorted, either in amusement or disapproval. I voted disapproval. He hadn’t laughed in weeks, not since Mom had left. “And you left your brothers with the mess.”
There was only one answer to that too. “Yes.”
“Hit the reset,” Dad said.
I flipped a red switch off, then on. The computers whirred as they rebooted. I pushed the power buttons on all the screens. One after another, they blinked back on. Very nice. My brothers might have their specialties, but Dad is good at everything. In fact, I’d yet to find anything he wasn’t great at. He set an impossible bar for all of us, which explained many of my brothers’ issues. Not me, of course. I have no issues.Except for a broken heart,I amended.
“Check the phone.”
I lifted up the receiver. No dial tone. “Not yet.”
Grunting, Dad fiddled with more wires. His body was blocking my view. Squatting, I tried to get a better look at what he was doing. “You’re blocking the light,” he complained.
“Teach me?” I asked.
“You don’t need to know this.”
In addition to protecting the house, Dad liked to protect me. It drove me crazy when he refused to tell me things that my brothers clearly knew, supposedly for my safety. I didn’t know if it was because I was the youngest or because I hadn’t led my first heist yet or what. For our kind, leading your first heist is a major milestone, even better than learning to talk, walk, or do long division. “If I’d known how to do this, I wouldn’t have needed to dangle from the ceiling, and the chandelier wouldn’t be broken,” I pointed out.
He considered that for a moment, then waved me under. I scooted underneath the table with my father. Lying on my back, I looked up at the rat’s nest of wires. It was the closest I’d been to my father in probably years. We aren’t a physically affectionate family. My mother used to hug me about once a year, usually on my birthday, and I couldn’t remember the last time my father hugged me. He smelled like smoke. Not cigarette smoke, but forest fire smoke. Pine smoke, the kind that makes you think of winter, even though it’s spring. I always loved that smell. Made me feel safe.
Dad pointed out the different wires, explaining the pitfalls in trying to bypass a security system. Liam had cut them in a certain order, one that wouldn’t trip the redundant alarms in place to prevent someone from disabling the system by cutting them. But with an unfamiliar system, you’d be better off hacking the software. You never knew when someone might rig their hardware to a bomb. Cut the wrong wire, andboom.He worked quickly, stripping the wires and twisting them together. “Later tonight, I’ll replace all the wires, but this temporary fix will get the system operational again.”
“What if someone gets in while we’re restoring the system?” I asked.
His hands stopped moving. There were shadows on his face, but I thought I saw his cheek twitch. A smile? A frown? I couldn’t tell. At last, he said in his gruff voice, “I don’t say this often enough, but I am proud of you, Sky.”
I felt a rush of warmth, and now it was my cheek that twitched. Just a little dust in my eye. “You’re using a spell,” I guessed. Spells cost gold, both to purchase and to use; we prefer to rely on human security systems, but I knew my father kept a few on hand.
“Yes, of course.”
“Then you knew I had come home.”
He smiled, a very rare sight. I stared at his lips, curled within his beard. “Yes, of course,” he said again.
“But you didn’t warn them.”
“This was their test.”
I was tempted to smile too, but then I thought of the mess in the foyer with the statues, the vase, and the chandelier. At least the statues hadn’t fallen on top of my brothers. “They’re angry with me.”
