She grimaced.“I’ve done wigs, little brother.They’re like wearing a furnace on your head, particularly if you’ve got a lot of hair underneath.I may straighten it and dye it blond.”
“That’d be a shame,” Liam said.“Maybe a cut?Or a simple plait might do.”
“A blond braid would be a change,” she admitted.“Or maybe dark brown… or auburn, like Chuck’s!”
“Green,” Grace said smugly.“I hear green goes great with vampire skin and freckles these days.”
“I don’t see it inyourhair,” Molly muttered.
“Pink’s hot this summer,” Grace replied with a catlike smile.
“Green makes him look jaundiced,” Chuck said flatly.Well, Mollywashis favorite.
Molly gave Chuck a kissy-face, and he laughed, the sound infectious.
“Dogs,” Liam said.“Sorry, Chuck, I know you like to make an entrance, but somebody mentioneddogs.Last I heard, the bet was that Michael would get either the most out-of-control giant puppy in the entire kennel or a dog that makes Methuselah look like a teenager.I still don’t know who won.”
“You had a bet on that?”Michael asked, his limpid brown eyes practically swallowing his narrow face.
“Yes, we did,” Carl said, gazing fondly at his mate.“Now tell the man who won.”
“Wait….”Michael frowned.“Was there another category?Old, destructive—”
“Ginormous,” Molly said.“I had money down on ginormous.”
“Tiny,” Grace said.“I had tiny and mean.”
Michael stared at all of them.“But which one of you won the bet?”he demanded.“Because I got one of each!I got old and ginormous and young and destructive and ginormous, and two old and blind and two tiny and mean!”
“Hunter,” Josh said, shaking his head.“He hadhismoney onplethora, and he cleaned us all out.”
“I bought a damned fine gun with that money,” Hunter said, with zero regrets.
“You should have bought me a dependable dog sitter with that money,” Carl told him.“We turned our backyard into dog heaven, complete with a dog door into the laundry room, which will forever smell like wet dog, and so far we can’t find a single person who’s willing to stay at our house, use our air-conditioning, eat our food, and clean up dog poop for a living wage.”
“Students,” said Josh and all his student-aged friends.
“Carl, my man,” Grace told him.“You should have asked us sooner.Perfect job for students.Don’t worry about it.I’ll have you two people willing to split the wage as long as they can eat your food and watch your TV.”
“Thank you, Grace,” Carl said, truly grateful.And then he brought their attention to the elephantsnotin the room.“Where’s the grownups?”he asked, because by this time Danny, Felix, Julia, and Leon were usually there.
“I don’t know,” Josh murmured.He’d been thinking about his mother for much of the day.Notallday—those hours with Liam had been delicious and necessary, but Josh’s mother usually would have been downstairs when they’d been playing video games, just to check on him.As much as a boydidn’twant to have his mother poking into his romantic life, Josh also knew she’d fussed over him sending Liam away for the last months.She’d promised the night before that her fainting spell had been caused by too many nerves on an empty stomach, and he wasn’t to worry, but, well, his mom.The whole world worshipped Julia Dormer-Salinger, but that was only because they hadn’t been able to get the word out to aliens, where universal adoration would make her reign complete.
“We’re right here,” Julia said cheerfully, entering the room on Leon’s arm with Felix gallantly on the other side.“Is Tor here yet?”
As Julia bent down to kiss his cheek, Josh searched her face for something—anything—that would tell him what the delay had been about, or any hint at all about the night before.All he could get from her—or any of them—was a sort of blinding happiness that was at odds with the soul-eating worry that had consumed the lot of them since they’d first seen Kadjic’s message, written for Danny and submitted in code on Stirling’snot quitehacked system that January.
“No, ma’am,” Chuck said.“Tor’s going to be a little late.Apparently there was a rather spectacular art theft last night, and Torrance is getting out the follow-up story before he comes in from Chicago.”
Julia gave a gracious, interested smile as Leon pulled the chair out behind her and settled her in.“Oh really,” she said.“Has there been any news as to who would perpetrate such a heinous crime?”
Grace snickered.“Sometime this morning,” he said, “therealpainting appeared in the house of one of Dizzy Gillespie’s heirs, to whom the painting was actually willed.He’d had no idea it had been recovered, but he was ever so grateful to find it hung on his wall.”
Josh cocked his head at Grace, impressed.“Was this before or after you brought me doughnuts?”he asked.
“Definitely before,” Grace said, doing his little facing-sunshine dance.
“You didn’t even tell me,” Josh said, genuinely tickled.“I was going to do that this week.”
