“Ezzy, you know Alara. She’s… full of surprises.”
“If it helps, I think she’s mostly in the book club because she’s low-key obsessed with learning about the mob.”
“That I did know,” Ezzy admitted. “It started the day they rescued us. Been going strong ever since. You’ll be seeing her weekly?” she asked me.
“Yeah. Being a bagman is steady work for me right now.”
“You’ll keep an eye on her for me?” she asked. “I worry about her there. And I know she keeps things from us because she doesn’t want us to worry.” She paused. “Or because she thinks she can handle everything on her own.”
“She pays the Family for protection,” Brio reminded his wife.
“Yeah, but—”
“So, how long until dinner?” Alara asked, leaning in the doorway.
“Half an hour, give or take.”
“That bookstore the next street over, that’s only like a ten-minute walk, right?”
“You’re leaving to go to the bookstore?” Ezzy asked.
“I have to see a man—or woman—about a blood mage. Charlotte has made a good argument for me needing to read it. Even if there isn’t an alien with a special nub.”
“I don’t think I want to know what that means,” Ezzy said.
“Well, you see, they have this extra little nub right above their—”
“Uncle Chris,” Charlotte piped in.
“Jesus. You need a bell on your neck or something, you ninja,” Alara said, wide-eyed at what she almost just explained in front of a twelve-year-old.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Alara is going to the bookstore.”
“Is this you asking to go too?”
“No.”
“No?” I asked. In her whole life, she’d never turned down a trip to a bookstore.
“I have a whole pile still. It’s nighttime, though.”
“Uh, yeah,” I agreed, looking out the window.
“Alara shouldn’t walk alone.”
“I walk alone at night all the time.”
“More stuff for me to worry about,” Ezmeray grumbled.
“Uncle Chris,” Charlotte said with more emphasis, giving me big eyes and stern lips.
Was Alara likely perfectly capable of a ten-minute walk in a very safe neighborhood? Sure.
But I was also trying to be, you know, a good example to Liam for how a man should behave and to Charlotte for how men should treat her one day.
“Right. Yeah. Of course I should walk her.”
