She shook her head, still clicking on keys. “It doesn’t activate. It just kind of… slinks.”
That was a frightening description. “Let’s take a look, then.” No slinky code on his watch. He highlighted the variable name and ran a quick search.
Ginia smirked when nothing came up. “Told you.”
Jamie had learned a thing or two from their resident hacker. “Maybe we have some hidden system files.”
“A worm?” Her eyes gleamed. “Or a magical Trojan horse?”
It was probably a bad sign when your team got excited by possible security breaches. “Let’s check the logs, see who added the code.”
Ginia groaned-checking the logs was about as much fun as painting a room beige. “Can’t we set a trap instead? Dad showed us how to do that.” She grinned. “I can turn the miscreant’s game points all pink.”
“Miscreant” was the Realm word of the week. Jamie had no idea how it had started, but gamers were suddenly dropping it in casual conversations all over the kingdom. “I don’t think this is a section of code a gamer is likely to have messed with, sweetheart.” Morgan’s Castle had joined Moira’s Meadow as off limits, game-wise.
“Fine. I’ll check the code.” Ginia peered into her fry box, and then pitched it in disgust.
He watched, impressed, as the box sailed into the far garbage can. “Nice toss.”
She grinned. “We’ve been practicing.”
“Excellent.” He tugged on a stray curl. “If the whole witching thing doesn’t work out, you can take up pro basketball.”
She snorted. “I’m a girl, silly. I can do both.”
Of that, he had very little doubt. “Come on upstairs-I think Nat’s reheating spaghetti for lunch.”
“Nope.” Ginia shot one last look at her lines of mystery code. “She’s doing yoga in the back yard. Sierra’s sleeping with Kenna, and I think Mia’s cooking.”
It was sometimes hard to remember he had only one child. “Mia’s cooking, or Mia’s warming spaghetti?” The latter was probably safe.
“Dunno.” Mischief landed in Ginia’s mind with both feet. “She might be making smoothies.”
Oh, hell. The last time Mia had used a blender, they’d scraped pink stuff off the ceiling for a week. Jamie headed for the stairs.
Ginia was hot on his heels. Apparently she didn’t want to miss anything good.
Marcus sat on his front porch, watching the random game of something resembling soccer that had broken out in the street. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the residents of Fisher’s Cove had poured out of their cottages in response. Some gardened. A talkative group repaired nets on Uncle Billy’s driveway. And several of the grownups, including Mike and Aaron, had joined the kids in the street.
“Nice day.” Sophie walked up the side steps of his porch. “Morgan sleeping?”
He couldn’t even work up a good growl-somehow, he’d gotten far too used to drop-in company. “For now.”
It occurred to him that she had no baby in tow, and Mike was currently chasing a black-and-white ball down the street. “Where’s Adam?”
“Asleep in Aunt Moira’s flowers. He and Mike went out on the boat with Uncle Billy this morning.”
One day soon, he needed to take Morgan out-but he dared not go too early in the morning. They stayed in Realm until the sun crept high into the sky.
Sophie sat down on the glider beside him, ignoring the other perfectly good chairs on his porch. “I have something for you.” She held out her hand, mind carefully casual.
He raised an eyebrow at the key on her palm. No one in Fisher’s Cove locked anything. “What’s it open?”
“My old house.” She watched her husband toss the ball back down the road. “The one in Colorado, well away from all large bodies of water.”
He ignored the clenching in his gut. “You still have it?” She’d been in Fisher’s Cove for almost a year.
“It was Mike’s wedding gift to me.” She traced the lines of the key. “I’m a solitary witch, and sometimes I need a place to be truly alone. My husband understood that far better than I did.”
A second eyebrow joined the first. “You go back?”
“Not often now.” Amusement stirred in her eyes. “The gardens are overrun, and dust bunnies seem to evade the cleaning spells.”
He had his own collection hiding under the bed, breeding and occasionally attacking the cat. And he knew her offer had nothing to do with dust bunnies. She offered him a gift-distance and solitude.
The thing he’d been craving every day for a year.
And as he sat on his porch, watching the everyday life of Fisher’s Cove bask in the sun, he knew he didn’t want to take it. “We don’t know that she’d be safer there.”
“No, we don’t.” Sophie’s eyes were steady. “I’m not saying you should go.”
Her mind was hazy, and he wasn’t willing to intrude. “What are you saying?”
“That you have a choice.” Her grin was wry. “Although the housekeeping staff at Morgan’s Castle might not make it a very attractive one.”
He watched Sean race into Moira’s garden after a stray ball. And felt truth slide into his heart, along with the late-afternoon sun. “I’ll take her to Colorado if need be.” For now, he’d fight from Realm-that’s where his troops were, and the magnificent fortress they’d built. But he’d go anywhere he had to go to keep his girl safe.
And then they’d come home.
To a village, and a ramshackle cottage with dust bunnies under the bed.
“Wanna have another baby?”
Nell looked up at her husband-and gaped. “After Aervyn? Are you crazy?”
He shrugged. “Jamie won’t share Kenna, and Leo says he’s too big to ride in a baby carrier anymore.”
Leo had just turned three, so that seemed like a reasonable claim. Nell shut her laptop-something was afoot at Witch Central. Code could wait, and after a very emotional morning, she could use a distraction. Something her husband likely knew. “What’s going on?”
He grinned. “Nothing.”
Yeah. And cute pink pigs were currently invading the North Pole. “Try again. How come you’re trying to steal a baby? Never mind, forget that-how come Jamie won’t share?”
“He got the first prototype to test.” Daniel looked like someone had stolen his favorite teddy bear. “I had to hitchhike all the way to Nova Scotia to get the other one.”
Nell tried not to laugh-Aervyn came by his pouty face honestly. “And exactly what is this prototype?”
Her husband pulled something fuzzy and purple out from behind his back. “We might have kind of raided your fabric stash. Kenna liked fuzzy best.”
Nell stared. It resembled a baby sling-one that had accidentally fallen into a vat of misfit toys. Slowly, she circled the fuzzy purple monstrosity. “What
“A new baby carrier. Ginia called it the KidPocket.” He winced. “Since we apparently aren’t very creative at naming things, I think it’s gonna stick.”
If Ginia was involved, that explained the purple fabric raid. “And you invented a new baby carrier because…?”
“It needed to be done.” Daniel shrugged. “We had what, fifteen carriers?”
At least.
He threw the pouch contraption over his head. “And not one of them had a beer opener. Bad design.” He held up the feature in question. “So we fixed it. See? And right next to it, a handy-dandy sleeve to hold a beer. Undo the Velcro bottom and it works great for light sabers, too.”
Light sabers. Oh, God. She reached for a chair, plunking down in an unceremonious heap of giggles.
Daniel patted the saber holder with pride. “Highly useful. Lizzie keeps launching sneak attacks, and Marcus never has a sword handy when he needs one.”
