“Oh.” That was my word of the day. I almost laughed because I’d thought— Oh, I don’t know what I’d thought. That he would ask me if we could get back together? What an ego. He was here with his girlfriend.
“But if you want to try to get together another time this summer or later in the year, we can. I don’t want you to think that I object to you having a relationship with my—our—daughter.”
No, Amber objected. I got that.
“Where do you live now?” he went on. “I’m sure we can arrange something.”
“Ballard,” I said before I could reconsider. To make sure he couldn’t find me if he looked, I’d never told him I’d stayed in the area. He’d always assumed I was traveling the world on my assassination missions, and it had been safest to let him.
“Ballard? You’re ten miles away from us, and you never said anything?”
“With traffic, it’s more like twenty miles.” It wasn’t the time to be snarky, but my tongue never could get timing right.
“Shit, Val. What, were you afraid I’d come over for a booty call or something?”
I snorted. “People our age don’t have booty calls.”
“Yeah, what do they call it?”
“Unwise decisions.”
This time, he snorted, but it sounded more pained than amused.
“I’m sorry, Thad. My apartment gets broken into regularly, and I’ve been shot at more times than I can count this year. I was always afraid you—or Amber—would get hurt if—”
“I know, I know. You gave me the spiel ten years ago.”
I slumped against the hard bench, stung by his disappointment, even if I had no right to be.
“Ballard.” He swore and then was quiet so long I checked to see if he’d hung up. “Well, anyway, what I was about to say is if you’re going to stay here for your mission, you can stay in the house here if you want. I don’t think people our age enjoy sleeping on the ground in tents either.”
“You never did. I remember vociferous objections whenever you had to go to the field. Even though the army gave us cots.”
“Cots it took a crowbar to assemble. Tech guys aren’t supposed to sleep in tents. Why don’t you come by the house this afternoon—we’re leaving around four, so before then—and I’ll give you the door code and show you the house rules the owner left for us. I will expect you not to host any wild parties. I want my damage deposit back.”
“Thanks, Thad, but the campground is fine. I really don’t—”
“Cool dish, lady,” a teenager called from a bicycle as he pedaled past, waving at the artifact.
Wait, I’d wanted to set a trap for the goblins. If I did it here in the campground, and the goblins came with weapons and their sasquatch buddies, a lot of people could get hurt. That house Thad had rented was tucked away on a point, halfway behind a cliff and out of sight of the neighbors. If trouble showed up there, I would be the only one around to take the brunt of it. I could pitch my tent in the yard and sleep outside so the house—and Thad’s damage deposit—wouldn’t be in danger.
“I take it back, Thad. That’s a generous offer, and I’d like to accept.”
I waited to see if there would be a hint that he’d only been offering to be nice, but he responded without hesitation.
“Good. Maybe Amber will deign to talk to you.”
“About beauty pageants?”
“Maybe about dresses and fashion.”
“Are you trying to torture me, Thad? I’d have an easier time talking about programming and robotics.”
“Been brushing up on your Python and C++, have you?”
“Yeah, I like pythons.”
“Are you making an innuendo or are you interested in developing scalable web applications?”
“Wouldn’t both get you excited?”
“Yeah, but especially the latter.”
“You haven’t changed.”
“You either. See you in a few hours.”
19
A little after three, I knocked on the door to the house, my Jeep in the driveway with my tent and sleeping bag inside, and the goblin artifact stuffed into my backpack.
Mom, her luggage already packed and outside, was sitting in the sun on the dock with Amber’s friend while Rocket sniffed around on the bank. Mom lifted a hand but was reading a book and didn’t come over. Apparently, we’d done our bonding for the month.
Thad answered the door. “Come in. Shauna and Amber are finishing packing. We have about a half hour until our ride gets here.” He waved toward the lake.
“It’s a good thing you’re leaving from here instead of from the marina in town.” I stepped into a two-story foyer with a chandelier hanging above us. A couple of suitcases were stacked by the door, including a pink, hard-sided spinner with raised stars. No trouble finding that one on the baggage carousel. “A boat came in as I was leaving and there was a mob. People were ready to abandon their RVs to get out of Harrison.” I shrugged. “Last night wasn’t that bad. Nobody even got shot.”
Thad gave me a bemused smile. “What constitutes a bad night for you?”
“Beheadings, disembowelment. Usually of people I know. If those things happen to the bad guys, it’s more of a good night.”
“Were you this much of a ghoul when we were married?”
“Yes.”
He smirked. “Strange that I’d forgotten.”
“Thad,” came Shauna’s voice from a landing at the top of the stairs that overlooked the foyer. She’d said his name, but she frowned down at me. “Can I see you for a moment?”
“Sure.” Thad handed me a card with the four-digit code for the door lock on it. “Make yourself at home.”
He tramped up the stairs.
Shauna gave me a frosty look as she waited. Maybe I should have asked Thad to text me the code and then waited until they were gone to come by. He’d said something about house rules though. Maybe there was a huge notebook of instructions. I didn’t want to do anything to risk his damage deposit. The place probably cost a thousand dollars a night. Who knew what they charged if you forgot to clean the dishes and take out the trash?
“What is she doing here again?” Shauna whispered from the bedroom they’d stepped into. She hadn’t shut the door.
“I told you. She’s going to stay here while we’re gone.”
The door closed. I might have cocked an ear and heard the rest of the conversation, but I didn’t want to listen to them argue, especially not about me.
Since Amber had some elven blood, I could sense her aura, the same way I could with Nin and Dimitri. She was in the living room, putting away a laptop and a handheld gaming device, so I wandered in. Maybe I should have gone outside to hang out with Mom, but this might be my last chance to see Amber, so I felt I should take another stab at saying something.
Amber turned as I walked in, opening her mouth, but closed it when she saw me. “I thought you were Myung-sook.”
“If that’s your friend, she’s outside playing with her phone.”
“She’s probably texting Heath.” Amber rolled her eyes. “She misses him so much. What I miss is when we used to go places and nobody was blathering about boyfriends all the time.”
“Does that mean you’re not into guys yet?”
“They’re fine, but that doesn’t mean you have to lose your mind and become a different person because of them.” Another eye roll.
I decided that answered my question in the affirmative but didn’t say anything. I’d rolled my eyes through high school drama, too, but I’d always thought that was because Mom had homeschooled me for so long that I had a low tolerance for normal human young-person behavior. Maybe it was in the genes.
A door slammed upstairs.
“Shauna doesn’t like you,” Amber informed me with odd relish.
“No? There’s a club she can join back in Seattle. The dues are steep, but I hear they forgo them if you try to kill me at least once monthly.”
“You are so weird.”
“That is not an untrue statement.” Standing there, I decided that maybe I’d made the right decision to leave Thad and Amber and take my weird life with me. The fact that she was more or less a typical teenager, with nothing more significant on her mind than boys, sports, and school, was a relief.
“She said you look like a model. I think that’s the main objection.” Amber looked me up and down. “I said a model for a gun magazine, maybe, but she didn’t get it.”
“Unless I take Chopper and Fezzik off, only people with at least a quarter blood from a magical being can see them. Your kids, if you have children, will be down to an eighth elven blood, and that’s usually too diluted to gain any attributes. They’ll be normal.”
“Fezzik?”
I tapped the gun in its holster. “It’s from The Princess Bride.”
“I know that.” Another eye roll. Did her pupils ever get stuck back there?
“Oh? It’s from before you were born.”
“No kidding. But it’s a classic. Like Back to the Future and Goonies.”
Wonderful. Movies from my childhood were classics. Right up there with Casablanca. Though at least we’d had color in the eighties.
“You should have named it the Dread Pirate Roberts.”
“I did consider it, but that’s a mouthful. It’s also something of a brute-force weapon. Fezzik seemed appropriate.”
“You’re not looking for an evil dude with six fingers who killed your father, are you?”
I couldn’t tell from her expression if she was mocking me or hoped that was the case. “I believe my father is still alive and living in another realm.” Saying on another planet seemed more kooky somehow, as if I also believed in UFOs full of green aliens who abducted women from Earth for breeding purposes. “I did once kill a zombie with nine digits on one hand. He kept adding extras to stave off his leprous tendencies. It’s difficult being undead.”