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“Okay.” So no poking around gift-giving holidays but everything else was fair game if I was confident or nosy. “I’m assuming judging by the careful way he was talking to you about it, he means stuff from yesterday?”

It felt like a thousand years ago instead of a single day but Daddy especially had been really patient.

That probably meant he was ready to pop.

“Yes.” Raxius seemed to slip into Master mode and leaned back in his chair as he studied us both. “That does not mean you have to be ready for our questions, though.”

Our.

Master had questions too.

I’d kind of hoped we could just skip over it since Daddy worried, but it seemed like that wasn’t going to work.

“I can answer your questions.” I’d made them wait long enough. “Daddy got stressed, though.”

The way he sighed again as he stirred something that he thought would end up being like spaghetti made me think we weren’t going to skip that part this time either. Master raised one eyebrow. “He is already stressed, so keeping him in the dark as you call it will not help.”

Answering him probably wouldn’t help either.

“Then let’s just start.” Because otherwise I’d think about that pasta and start worrying all over again.

It was the wrong color and every time I thought about it my little side tried to pop out and be dramatic. That wouldn’t help the conversation and would probably make Daddy nervous, so I ignored the black noddles and focused on the discussion.

“I would like to clarify when you first started…your job as you call it.” Master was sending me relaxing emotions through the bond, but I wasn’t sure why he thought I was upset.

Maybe it should’ve gone to Daddy like some kind of emotional wrong number?

“This isn’t a type of magic I’ve ever heard about.” Master looked thoughtful but didn’t feel upset which made things easier.

“Um, okay.” That wasn’t hard and it was probably a good place to start. “From what I understand the spell is passed down to the firstborn in each generation but it doesn’t really seem to kick in until our magic starts to steady. So my mother thinks it…I guess activated in me at about eight months old.”

For some reason they both twitched, but I tried to stay on track and not get distracted.

Black.

Noodles weren’t black.

And good boys weren’t supposed to say something looked yucky, so I had to stay focused.

Magic.

What would Master might not know?

“It’s basically designed to be as strong as the magic user it’s in, so since I was young, it was weak and I grew into it.” And it grew into me. “I don’t know how the spell originally started out on this side of the portal, but for my family, it comes with the knowledge from the previous…guardian, basically.”

I was hoping Daddy liked that title but he was very carefully shielding the bond.

“I’ve always just known stuff but it was like background noise until I was old enough to start actively using it.” When they nodded slowly, I kept going. “I knew a lot of it without thinking about it but learning to read helped the rest…well…come online.”

It’d felt normal at the time. “When I grew up, I traveled to more of the remote areas where our people lived and did my best to read everything our people left behind.”

Meeting all those strangers had been the hardest part, but I’d pushed through my shyness because I knew I needed to pass on as much as I could to the next guardian. “I added to the genealogical record as best I could, both written and memorized. But you heard me talk about that already. I’m hoping Agent Murphy can help us find any families that were lost.”

With the internet, keeping track was a lot easier and some families had even sent digital copies of the papers that they had, but it’d been a lot harder in the past.

“The primary reason that spell was locked away was because our brains are not designed to hold that much information.” Daddy’s tone was so carefully neutral it made me worry what he was saying silently to Master. “How have you adapted and why does it not spill over through our bond? Is there a…genetic change from the spell being passed down?”

I wasn’t sure answering would make him happy or not, but lying wasn’t an option. “From what records I have about it, the seers felt that the problem with the way the spell was used originally was because it was given to a fully developed adult brain. Those are not adaptable.”