Wrong answer.
“Oh my god!” the woman snapped.
Another mother hurried over while CJ slowly lowered his notebook with the fascinated expression of an author witnessing excellent material firsthand.
Bianca finally looked up from her book.
“You shouldn’t kick people,” the enraged woman informed Billie.
“You insulted Winnie.”
The injured woman pointed furiously toward the far side of the gym. “I want the superintendent over here immediately.”
Billie crossed her arms. “She deserved it.”
Another woman leaned down toward Billie with horrified disapproval. “That is not ladylike behavior.”
Billie stared at her for one long second. “Neither are your eyebrows.”
Dear God.
CJ folded forward into his notebook, wheezing silently.
The superintendent arrived, looking exactly like a man who’d been informed there was a situation involving wealthy parents and physical violence. Meaning, he was exhausted already.
He was tall, silver-haired, and looked exactly how you’d expect someone to look if they’d survived many years at their job through strategic emotional dissociation.
The furious PTA mother descended upon him. “That child assaulted me,” she snapped, gesturing wildly at Billie, who was now sitting cross-legged under the table and eating one of the pastries.
The superintendent blinked once.
Billie blinked back with raspberry filling smeared around her mouth.
In the woman’s defense, from a distance, she did look slightly feral.
I held out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, sir. I’m Winifred Carrington. I nanny the Lawrence children.”
He nodded and smiled. “Nice to meet you. I’m Mr. Rodriguez.”
The woman stepped toward the superintendent and continued. “This entire display is grotesque. Children are running around pretending to be dead and covered in blood and?—”
“Jam,” Bianca corrected from her chair without looking up from her book.
“Whatever it is,” the woman hissed.
The superintendent turned toward me. I made a snap decision without giving it too much thought, though I did try to justify it by reminding myself that glamour wasnotmind control.
Glamour worked best as a suggestion. A redirection of emotional certainty. One could not force someone to believe the impossible. But one could encourage them toward the easiest conclusion.
I rarely used it.
Very rarely.
Mostly because I disliked the feeling of stepping into another person’s perception and rearranging the furniture. I knew all too well what that felt like, and it wasn’t something I generally felt comfortable employing.
Still, this seemed warranted. I couldn’t stand the idea of the children suffering consequences on my behalf.
I lifted my gaze to the superintendent’s and allowed the smallest thread of glamour to unfurl beneath my words. I made a point not to be too aggressive. Instead, I wanted to give him the certainty that everything here was much less serious than it appeared.
