might set the house on fire. Mother Karen wouldn’t be happy with you trying that.”
“I can be careful.” He shrugged again. “And she doesn’t have to know.”
“This is her house; she has to know. You couldn’t hide this from her.”
“I think I could. I’m good at hiding things.”
And he was; he’d built a whole secret passageway in the house in hell, apparently without the Goad ever realizing. Mother Karen, for all her skill at keeping a watchful eye on her foster children, surely couldn’t supervise her home as ruthlessly as a devil monitored its hell.
Hoo boy. I racked my brain, trying to figure out how best to redirect Blue onto something harmless. Or at least onto something less potentially harmful than bare-handed soldering.
“But it would be rude to secretly do things she doesn’t like in her house,” I said. “Rude and disrespectful and … and just plain mean. You don’t want to be mean, do you?”
“I guess not,” he replied, sounding uncertain.
Appealing to a sense of honor he couldn’t have possibly developed yet wasn’t going to work. I went to the closet, hoping its contents would provide inspiration, and opened the door. And there, crammed in the corner atop old boxes of Christmas and Hanukkah decorations, was an old blue-and-white, Dalmatian-spotted iMac computer, its hockey puck mouse wedged under the top handle.
“I have a better idea,” I said, grabbing the iMac and hauling it out of the jumble. “This is a computer. Computers are cool. You can use them to learn lots of new things without having to destroy anything else.”
I set the iMac down on the play table, then went back into the closet to disentangle the USB keyboard and power cord from some tinsel garlands.
“What kind of things?” Blue asked.
“All kinds of things.” I got the keyboard free, then turned it over and tapped the back to knock out bits of stray tinsel and old crumbs. “And you can play games on them.”
Blue watched intently as I attached the keyboard and mouse and blew dust off the iMac’s vent holes. I plugged in the power cord, then paused, my finger over the power button.
“Okay, before I boot this up, you have to promise me something.”
“What?” Blue asked.
“Promise that you won’t try to take this apart. If you’re super-curious, I’ll show you how it’s put together later. And you have to promise not to take apart anything else, either.” I paused. “Especially not the cats. Or yourself.”
Blue looked down at the parts on the floor. “Will you help me put this back together?”
“Yes. But later.”
“Okay. I promise I won’t take anything else apart.”
“Good boy,” I said, feeling relieved. I pressed the Mac’s power button, and although the hard drive made some ominous grinding noises at first, we were soon looking at the old OS 9 desktop, littered with shortcuts to various educational games. I showed him how to use the mouse and keyboard, and then launched Reader Rabbit.
“I’ve got to go, but I or somebody else will check on you in a little while,” I said as I put the radio parts in an old shoebox I found in the closet.
“Okay.” He was already engrossed in the game.
Once I’d gotten the radio pieces out from underfoot, I left Blue at the computer and quietly shut the door behind me.
I ran into Mother Karen in the hallway; she was looking completely frazzled.
“Did you get Blue to bed?”
“Sort of … he wasn’t tired, so I broke out an old iMac I found in the closet and showed him some games.”
“Good enough!” She rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands.
“Did you get any sleep last night?” I asked.
“Oh, one or two hours, I expect.”
“Want me to make some coffee?”
“Already brewing! You’re welcome to have some, of course.” She pulled a wristwatch out of the pocket of her denim jumper; I figured she’d taken it off before her episode of Iron Mom: Battle Diaper. “We’re supposed to mirror Riviera Jordan in about three hours; I’d like to bathe before I do anything else. Would you mind hanging around the kitchen in case any of the children go downstairs needing help with something?”
I was cheered that she finally wanted me to do something. “I don’t mind at all.”
I went downstairs and had just finished doctoring my coffee with a couple of teaspoons of sugar and a slug of cream when the Warlock came through the front door carrying a brown paper Kroger’s bag.