Page 73 of From the Edge

She paused. “I do have a friend, and she taught me to grill. I can ask her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Hope Matthews.”

One of them whipped out his phone and was tapping away.

Rowan asked, “I have been meaning to ask, how do you guys text so fast?”

The guy typing grinned. “The wide fingers?”

“Yeah. That.”

“We have claws under the tips of our nails, and we use that as the contact point. After growing up with them, we can be pretty precise.”

“Thank you for keeping the explanation clean.”

He grinned and looked at his screen. “Rowan, what does your friend look like?”

“Long black hair, pearly white skin, eyes made of rainbows. Why?”

He looked at her in surprise. “You didn’t think that was odd?”

Rowan snorted. “No. I didn’t. That was part of the world I grew up in. You haven’t seen my grandpa yet, but he never wore a glamour at home. Just like you guys don’t wear one now. Different skin and pointy ears were part of my everyday life.”

The men in the room looked at her in surprise.

“Oh, you will see in a moment. They have taken a time out of scent marking their bed.”

She felt her grandparents come down the stairs. “Oh, duh, they are hungry.”

She got servings of everything, and when they came down, there was a setting for them.

Eleanor smiled and said, “Oh, is this the recipe we made when you were six?”

“Yes.”

The orcs were staring at Vasoric. “Sir, we had been led to believe you had passed on.”

“No, I merely accompanied my wife into the deepest sleep. When our granddaughter began to give me extra energy, I shared it with Eleanor, and here we are.”

Rowan got them glasses of lemonade and returned to sorting the meat.

The butcher bowed low. “Lord Vasoric, it is an honour to be in your presence.”

Her grandfather grinned. “You will see me again Friday night. Write down the questions you want answered. I have returned to the here and now, and now, I just need to learn how things have changed. The phones are three times the size.”

Rowan said, “Yes, Grandpa, but they all have more computing power than the hospital computer systems from when you were working there.”

Her grandmother smiled.

“And now Grandma can do all her shopping from home. We have an excellent courier.”

He snorted. “How far did you get through the trust?”

“Haven’t touched it. I started making barbeque sauce, and I got a day job as a paralegal, and now I have more money than when I started.”

He blinked. “You work at a law office?”