Morgan tried again, and managed some odd spluttery sounds.
And then Marcus, studiously ignoring everyone in the room, leaned over and blew a raspberry into her toes.
Morgan laughed in belly-shaking delight-and blew one right back at him.
It was ninety shades of adorable-and if embarrassment could kill, Marcus was right on the brink.
Jamie looked over at Daniel. Someone needed to rescue the poor guy.
Mike intercepted the look and dove into the Doritos. Loudly. “So, what’s next?”
Daniel shrugged. “We think. Backtrack. Put our brains to work.”
Marcus nodded. “That would be appreciated.”
Daniel grinned and tossed Kenna in the air again. “But in the meantime, I think we need to build a better baby carrier.”
Jamie stopped, his hand halfway into the Doritos. “You think we can ward a sling?” It wasn’t a bad idea.
“No.” Daniel rolled his eyes. “I think we can build a
Marcus’s mind fled into a haze of embarrassment. Jamie tried not to laugh-this meeting had been hard enough on a certain grumpy guy’s ego already.
Daniel held up the pouch again. “Where’s the bottle holder? The permanently attached set of car keys?” He winked at Marcus. “Some place to hang a sword?”
Aaron grinned. “A padded chest.”
Marcus growled.
Jamie visualized a baby sling with breast implants and pushed the image out to the room. Sometimes, you just had to let your inner thirteen-year-old boy out to play.
Daniel snickered. “You’ve been hanging out with Nathan too much again.”
Permanent immaturity was hardly his oldest nephew’s fault. “You don’t think they’d be useful?” Jamie seriously coveted Nat’s chest on a regular basis, and for entirely different reasons than he used to-Kenna slept way better with a little padding under her head.
“I know where we can get some.” Aaron reached for the Doritos, eyes brimming with barely restrained humor. “I hear there’s a new shop in Halifax.”
Marcus slammed his soda down on the table with far more force than necessary. “And then perhaps we can get back to the topic of making sure my little girl stays safe?”
“We’re already there.” Daniel looked over, eyes calm, a world of sympathy in his mind. “Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem isn’t a straight line.”
“You think adding a sword sheath and breasts to Morgan’s sling is going to fight off the mists?” The grumpy factor hadn’t dialed down a whole lot.
“No.” Daniel leaned back. Jamie could hear the gears of his mighty brain searching for words. “When you code, you start at one end and work to the other.” He waved his hand in the general direction of Realm’s playing fields. “Most programmers do. Follow a line of logic.”
“Sure.” Marcus looked as confused as Jamie felt.
“Hackers don’t.” Daniel shrugged. “We don’t get that luxury. We have to swim around, poke our noses in odd places, trawl for anomalies, connect strange dots.”
“I’ll take your word for that.” Marcus’s voice was dry as dust.
Jamie grinned. His brother-in-law had made peace with his gray-market skills long ago-but Marcus wasn’t a total stranger to those realms either. Entirely straight-laced coders didn’t have firewalls on their personal computers that made Daniel curse.
Daniel rescued his iPhone from Kenna’s quick hands. “My point is, it’s not always about brute force. You’ve thrown what you know at this thing. Brains, code, common sense.”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “Half the stash of game points in Realm.”
Daniel grinned. “That’s a good thing. Maybe a few lazy witches will start to practice their coding skills again.”
It was a fifteen-year-old argument. Jamie snorted like he was supposed to. “I hear someone’s giving the new kids lessons.” Between Daniel and Moira, Witch Level One had never been quite so… competent.
“Mmm.” Hackers knew when to duck. Daniel looked over at Marcus. “Take a break. Help build a better baby sling, or plant flowers, or buy yourself some new shirts. Wait for strange dots to connect. Stop trying to force it.”
Marcus stared. His brain churned. And then he looked down, a sudden spurt of humor breaking through. “What’s wrong with my shirts?”
Jamie snickered. Quietly. The Fairy Godfather Manual had missed a few things.
Marcus sat down at his computer. The girl-child had just puked on his last clean T-shirt-and black was a hell of a stupid color for taking care of babies.
If a baby was going to reside in the Buchanan household, he needed an entirely different wardrobe. It was only practical.
He typed in the URL for the website Aaron had recommended-and blinked in horrified shock. There were men in the world who wore flaming pink stripes?
Gingerly, he clicked on a category. Men’s shirts. Surely there were choices that were neither pink nor striped. Maybe a nice gray. Or blue. Or some sort of oatmeal color.
Gods. He was not wearing a shirt the color of baby puke.
And if he squinted a lot, you could hardly see the stripes on most of the shirts.
It had to be done. If you couldn’t solve the big problems, incinerate the little ones.
The last time he’d run out of shirts, Morgan had drooled all over his chest hairs. And then slept on the soggy mess all night long. Wincing in memory, Marcus added anything to the shopping cart that didn’t make his eyes bleed. Ten. That should be enough-at least a three-day supply. With overnight shipping, or he was going to be doing midnight laundry again.
And then he clicked back to the home page and bought the one with the pink stripes. Aaron had a birthday coming up.
Sophie walked into Aunt Moira’s kitchen, curious. “You’re sure Nell wanted to meet us here?”
“Aye.” Moira looked over, a twinkle in her eye. “Something about the menfolk having taken over the Witches’ Lounge again.”
Mike had disappeared with a few incoherent mumbles. Sophie patted her son’s well-padded bottom. “Maybe that’s where your daddy’s gone off to.”
“Yup.” Nell landed with a pfft of magic and the whiff of cookies. “Daniel, Aaron, Mike, Jamie, and Marcus. The dad collective.”
Sophie let the word “dad” slide over her image of Marcus. It was a strange and uncomfortable fit-but not an entirely impossible one.
“I’m not sure my nephew is quite ready to admit to fatherhood yet.” Moira handed out tea cups, Irish hospitality on automatic pilot. “But it pleases me that the others have gathered round him.”
“They’ve done more than that,” said Nell, eyes twinkling. She pulled a sheaf of papers out from under the cookies. “I’ve been doing some work on Morgan’s wards. Tracing odd energy lines, cleaning up sloppy code.”
The kind of work that separated the truly professional programmers from your average gamer. Sophie grinned, very glad to be in the latter category. Mopping up code was about as much fun as any other activity requiring a bucket and soap. “You found something?”
