“Usually how it works,” I said. “Tell me about it?”
“Can’t, literally,” she said cheerfully and waved an airy hand. “Faerie mystique and all that.”
“Figures. You like it?”
“Not always,” she said without rancor. “But . . . it’s necessary work. Worth doing.”
“Yet you didn’t tell your folks about it.”
For the first time, Molly’s calm slipped a little. Her cheeks turned a little pink. “I . . . Yeah, I haven’t quite gotten around to that yet.” Her eyes widened suddenly. “Oh, God, you didn’t . . .”
“No,” I said. “Skated past it just in time. Though I think I might have given your father the impression that we, uh . . . you know.”
A small, choked laugh, a sound equal parts mirth and absolute horror burst out of her mouth. “Oh. Oh, God. That’s what those looks were about.” She shook her head.
“You should tell them,” I said.
“I will,” she said, with a little too much instant assurance. “You know. When I find a way to bring it up.” She bit her lower lip, maybe unconsciously, and said, “You, uh . . . you’ll let me do that, right?”
“If that’s your choice, I’ll respect it. You aren’t really my apprentice anymore, Molls.”
She stared at me for a second after I said that, and I saw hurt and realization alike flicker through her features. Then she nodded and said quietly, “I guess I’m not, am I?”
I made another major effort and patted her hand. “Things change,” I said. “Nothing to feel sad about.”
“No,” she said. She squeezed my fingers back for a second and forced a smile. “Of course not.”
“Mab been around?” I asked.
She shook her head. “She knows I’m going to want to talk to her about sidetracking me. But she’s in town. I can feel that much. Why?”
“Because I’m going to want to talk to her too.”
*
One hour, one shower, and one barrage of painkillers later, I was dressed and able to shamble down the stairs under my own power, just after sundown. Mouse followed me carefully. Molly didn’t quite hover around like a Secret Service agent prepared to throw herself into the way of a bullet if necessary, but only just.
“You know what’s weird?” I said, as I got to the first floor.
“What?” Molly asked.
“The lack of cops,” I said. “There should be cops everywhere. And police tape. And handcuffs.” I raised my wrists. “Right here.”
“Yeah,” Molly said. “I noticed that too.”
I looked at her and arched an eyebrow. “Was this you?”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t really know how to go about bribing the authorities. And I’m not sure Mab understands the concept.”
The first floor of the Carpenter house had always been something of a riot in progress, even in calm times. Tonight was no exception.
“Run!” screamed a young woman with curly blond hair, who was dressed in a school uniform, was a shade taller than Molly, and who probably caused neck injuries when turning the heads of the boys in her school. She fled past the bottom of the stairs, firing one of those toy soft-dart guns behind her. As she ran past, she waved a hand at me, flashed me a grin, and said, “Hi, Bill!”
“Hell’s bells,” I said, feeling somewhat bewildered. “Was that Amanda?”
“She still wears the uniforms,” Molly said, shaking her head. “I mean, even after school. Freak.”
“Rargh!” roared a young man, whose voice warbled between a high tenor and a low baritone. He was lanky with youth, with Michael’s darker hair and grey eyes, and was running after Amanda half bent over at the waist, with his hands pressed up against his chest as if mimicking relatively tiny dinosaur claws. I recognized “little” Harry immediately. He looked like he was big for his age, developing early, and already starting to fill out through the shoulders, and his hands and feet looked almost comically too large for the rest of him.
Maggie was riding astride his back, clinging with her legs, with one arm wrapped around his neck. She’d have been choking him if she wasn’t on the small end of the bell curve herself. She clutched a toy dart gun in her free hand, and sent a few darts winging aimlessly around the room, giggling.
“Dinosaur Cowgirl wins again!” she declared proudly, as Harry ran by.
A moment later, another blond girl came through, calmly picking up fallen darts. She was older than Harry, but younger than Amanda, and shorter than any of the other Carpenters. She smiled at me and said, “Hey, Harry.”
“Hope,” I said, smiling.
“Hobbit,” she corrected me, winking. “Molly, Mom says to tell you that our guests need to get going.”
Maggie, her steed, and her prey went running by in the other direction with the roles reversed, with my daughter shrieking, “No one can catch Dinosaur Cowgirl! Get her, Mouse!”
Mouse’s tail started wagging furiously and he bounced in place, then whipped his head around to look at me.
“Go play,” I told him.
He bounded off after them.
I watched them rampage off in the other direction for a moment. I sensed Molly’s eyes on me.
“Man,” I said quietly. “Is . . . is it like this for her all the time?”
“There are crazymaking moments too,” Molly said quietly, in the tone of someone delivering a caveat. “But . . . mostly, yeah. Mom and Dad have some pretty strong opinions but . . . they know how to do family.”
I blinked my eyes quickly several times. “When I was a kid . . .” I stopped talking before I started crying, and smiled after them. When I was a kid in the foster system, I would have given a hand and an eye to be a part of something like this. I took a steadying breath and said, “Your family has given my daughter a home.”
“She’s a pretty cool kid,” Molly said. “I mean, as Jawas go, she’s more or less awesome. She makes it easy to love her. Go on. They’re waiting for you.”
We went into the kitchen, where Charity was sitting at the kitchen table. Her eyes were a little glazed over with prescription painkillers, but she looked alert, with her wounded leg propped up and pillowed on another chair. Michael sat in the chair next to her, his own freshly wounded leg mirroring hers on a chair of its own, and the pair of them were holding hands, a matched set.
Michael’s cane, I noted, was back. It rested within arm’s reach.
Binder and Valmont sat at the table across from them, and everyone was drinking from steaming mugs. There were five brand-new locking metal cash boxes from an office supply store sitting side by side on the table.
Binder was in the middle of a story of some kind, gesticulating with both thick-fingered hands. “So I looked at her and said, ‘That’s not my pen, love.’”
Michael blinked and then turned bright pink, while Charity threw back her head and let out a rolling belly laugh. Anna Valmont smiled, and sipped at her tea. She was the first to notice that I had come in, and her face brightened, for a moment, into a genuine smile. “Dresden.”
Binder glanced over his shoulder and said, “About bloody time, mate. You look a right mess.”
“Yeah, but I feel like an utter disaster,” I said, and limped to the table. “Where’s Grey?”
“He won’t come in the yard,” Michael said.
I arched an eyebrow and looked at him. “Hngh.”
Michael spread his hands. “He said he’d be around and that you would take him his pay.”
“Said he didn’t want a share of the stones,” Binder said in a tone of utter disbelief. “That he had his pay coming from you.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Huh.”
“There’s professional,” Binder said, “and then there’s just bloody odd.”
“Not everyone is motivated solely by money,” Valmont said, smiling into her tea.