Page 138 of Statler

For now, she was using it as a place to paint for her own pleasure, but eventually she planned on opening a studio for classes and a gallery for showings.

As for Statler? He was already thinking of how long was an appropriate amount of time to wait before he asked Eliza to become his wife.

He wanted Eliza in his life, permanently.

Sometimes he wondered how he’d ever functioned without her.

There were still the logistics of what would happen to her small house in Liminal, but for now, they’d left it furnished and used it whenever they visited Granny.

Today, however, when he’d come home, Statler knew something was up.

Eliza was acting…smug.

Yeah. That was the word for it, and he needed to get to the bottom of whatever it was before she burst.

“What’s got you all jazzed up?” he asked, grabbing her around the waist as she walked toward the refrigerator.

She gave an eep before he lowered them both to a kitchen chair, positioning her so that she straddled his lap, where he held on tight.

She wasn’t getting away until he found out what was going on.

Eliza laughed. “You know me so well. I wanted it to be a done deal before I told you, but… Okay. Here it is. I’ve been talking to your boss.”

“Dark?”

Statler couldn’t have been more shocked. He hadn’t even realized Eliza had the man’s number.

As if she heard his internal question, she answered. “Yeah. Blue gave me his contact info once I realized he was the one person who could help me figure a few things out.”

Statler wanted to pout that whatever that “something” was, Eliza hadn’t come to him. But he waited to hear her out.

“So,” she continued, “you know I’ve been bothered about how the factory has been shut down.”

He nodded.

“You also know that the people in Liminal have been collecting unemployment, but that won’t last much longer, sooo….” She sucked in a breath. “I knew I had to make a few things happen.”

That was Eliza, through and through.

There hadn’t been many people in Liminal who had given her the time of day, but she wasn’t holding that against them. Clearly, she’d rationalized that the snubs were because of her father.

Eliza was still talking.

“…when I called General Dark, I asked him to look into the status of William’s house, the factory, and the contracts that the government have yet to cancel.”

Again, Statler gave a dip of his chin. He knew those contracts were still open-ended.

They’d talked about all of this, and they’d assumed—without actually confirming it—that the FBI had frozen all accounts and confiscated everything that William had touched.

“When I told him my concerns, and what I’ve been thinking, he was onboard almost immediately, and, well, the man is magic, did you know that?”

Statler chuckled. “We’ve called him omniscient a time or two, but we’ve never mentioned magic as far as I can recall.”

“Well, he is.” Eliza was now smiling broadly. “He confirmed that the contracts were still active, then he got the government to agree that the factory was too valuable to become collateral damage.”

Genius.

“With some sleight of hand, he somehow managed to get the liens on both properties—the mansion and the factory—dismissed, which freed up the amount of cash that I had already proved came from the facility’s legal manufacturing, to also have it unencumbered.”