Page 69 of The Human’s Heart

He chuckled and hugged me tighter, his head on my chest. “Call your grandparents so they can start asking the trees to turn into a house or whatever wild magic-y thing you said they do.”

“Honestly, that’s exactly what they do.” I pulled out my phone, keeping one hand on Hugo’s back, tracing circles along it, and put in the call.

We met my grandparents at the back of my dads’ gardens near a stream. Across the stream, Kian and Virion both had their own smaller living tree houses, and down the stream a bit, a few of our cousins had homes.

My siblings and I always planned on having homes right in a row there, so I already had the perfect spot in mind right beside Kian’s house.

I pointed it out to Granddad and Grandpa after they gave us each a big hug, and Granddad asked, “How many bedrooms do you want? Two? Three? We can always add more in later on if you guys ever want more space or, you know, kids or whatever.”

Hugo’s wide eyes met my own. Kids? What? We so weren’t anywhere close to that in our lives. Holy shit.

Granddad continued like he hadn’t just given my viramore and me heart attacks. “And I assume you’re okay with an open plan kitchen, living, and dining room area?”

I blew out a breath, pushing the scary kid thoughts away and concentrating on right now. “Yes, that works for us. Um, what about three bedrooms? That way we have a guest room, and we can make one an office if we want?”

“Alright. I’m also going to add in a library area on the first floor. Everyone can use a nice reading room. Could be good for studying too, not that you have much longer for that.”

“True, but I’m sure I’ll still have plenty to learn as I go along. Plus, I love reading.”

When I glanced at Hugo, his eyes were wide and excited-looking. In my head, I heard him think, “How cool would it be if it was a secret reading nook?”

That made me smile, and to Granddad, I asked, “Could we make it a secret room?”

Hugo’s head whipped over to me, but he didn’t say anything out loud.

“Sure. That’ll be fun.” Granddad stared at the spot, clearly thinking. “Do you want a bookcase as a door to hide it or something like that?”

“A bookcase door would be awesome.”

Granddad smirked at me. “Sure, I can do that.”

“Really?” Hugo blurted.

Granddad chuckled. “Definitely, kiddo.”

Hugo blushed, and I grinned at him.

Granddad continued, “We definitely need a basement so you can build a dark room or whatever you vamps call it.”

I blinked. I hadn’t even thought of that, which made me cringe. That was something I should’ve thought of when my primary job was to protect Hugo. He might need that one day. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great idea.”

Before I could freak out that our home in Clairiston didn’t have a basement, Grandpa added, “Don’t worry, Zay. We had Jules come out to the Clairiston house with us to figure something out. We’re building a small basement under where your back deck was, and we’re extending your kitchen and living room out over it. Or at least we’ll be doing that after you two approve the plans. The basement will only be big enough for the one room and small bathroom. And hopefully you don’t mind adding a little square footage to the main house. We figured it was safer if there was some house over the top of it so no one could, um, just dig into it if they were after… well, shit. Sorry. You know what I mean. Plus, the stairway will be inside, so it gives you a way down without exposing yourselves to the sun.”

My eyes widened. “You guys did all of that already?”

“We didn’t build anything yet since we wanted to talk to you guys about it. Well, we started digging since, no matter what, you need a dark room, but we haven’t touched the house yet. But yeah, we plan to do it.”

I threw my arms around him. “Thank you. Thank you for always thinking of ways to protect us.”

He hugged me back but said, “Actually, this time, it was Uncle Toby who came to us with the idea. He, Thayer, Jules, and Em all came to us to tell us how important it was to have a dark room in the house. So we talked it over, looked at the plans of your house and the addition, and came up with a plan. If the addition wasn’t so close to being done, we could’ve put the room under there and made you a bigger basement, but this should work out fine.”

Hugo said, “It’s perfect. Thank you so much for doing all of that.”

“No need for all that.” Grandpa shot him a smile. “But you’re welcome.”

Granddad said, “Let’s get this shit started.”

Before I could respond, his green magic flowed out of him and right at the trees on the other side of the stream.