manageable levels.
“Thank you,” she said, her smile charming and poised. Probably her usual state.
Hunter nodded, and she smiled up at Uncle Danny and continued.
“So as I was saying, I think Grandfather wanted me to warn Dylan to be careful, but he didn’t want me to….” She bit her lip, then carried on. “He didn’t want me to say anything about Kadjic, because that could get him hurt—or arrested—and he didn’t see any way out.”
Danny nodded. “Hm. Tabitha, does your grandfather ever take people on his trips, now that they’re no longer done under the cover of the dance troupe?”
Tabitha thought about it. “Sometimes,” she said. “Last year he took me to Paris with him. He told me it was a last-minute trip, since we were on vacation and all, but he had to drop off a package at a hotel again. So I think he was making the best of a bad situation.”
“Mm.” Danny chewed on his lower lip. “How’s young Dylan for this next show, my dear? I mean, really, how much practice does he actually need?”
Tabitha gave Grace a disgusted eye roll, and the snotty little shit actually preened. “He’s fine,” she muttered. “He could learn the show cold in a day and perform it flawlessly in a week. We’re eight weeks in. The hard part is keeping him interested enough to listen for his cues.”
Grace gave a benign smile. “I’m a prodigy,” he said with no repentance.
Hunter scowled at him, and Grace scowled back.
“I am too!” Grace argued, as though that look had come with words attached.
Hunter raised an eyebrow.
“Fine! I’m being a brat. I’m just saying, I could probably miss a week to go do—” Grace looked at Danny. “—whatever it is you want me to do.”
Danny’s smile held more than a tiny bit of Peter Pan mischief in it. “Oh, my dear boy. The things I could name.” Danny turned back to Tabitha. “Do you think if you asked, your grandfather could take Grace with him? It’s not entirely necessary, but we’re going to need Grace to… run some errands with our friends in the city, and it would help if he wasn’t constantly trying to hide the fact that he was there from Artur.”
“But you don’t even know where he’s going!” Tabitha said, baffled.
Very quietly, Molly started chanting, “Please let it be Paris. Please let it be Paris. Please let it be Paris!”
Tabitha gave her an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry. It’s Vancouver. His cover story is that he wanted to check out the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and see if we could perform there.” She nodded as though this were of utmost importance. “It’s supposed to be very grand!”
Alas, Molly was obviously disappointed. “Really? Our first chance to travel, and it’s to Vancouver?”
“I love Vancouver!” Julia exclaimed. “Shopping, culture, theater—it’s all very urbane.”
Molly gave her a suspicious look. “Vancouver?”
“Oh yes. The food is to die for. You can eat out in downtown Vancouver every day of the year and still not visit the same place twice. And the stores! Granville Island, Gastown. There are some wonderful tiny souvenir shops and high-end fashion boutiques—”
“Fashion boutiques,” Molly said quickly. She was currently wearing a gauzy forest-green skirt topped with a sleeveless jacquard vest in palest cream. With her riot of sunset hair—replete with a few ringlets dyed in mermaid blue—she looked like a bohemian fairy princess, and she’d designed all those clothes herself.
“Vancouver is the cutting edge of the West Coast,” Julia told her, eyes twinkling, and while it may very well have been true, Hunter had to appreciate the way Julia helped smooth over Molly’s disappointment.
“Vancouver,” Molly said, nodding as though she’d had ultimate confirmation. “We can go.”
“So glad you approve,” Danny said blandly. He looked back to Tabitha. “So, do you think you could convince Artur to take Grace with him?”
“Well, yes,” Tabitha said, looking around the room. It was almost as though she were trying to figure out what everybody was doing there. “I just don’t know why everybody else would want to—”
Danny patted her hand. “Don’t worry, darling. There will only be a few of us—we need to see who is collecting these packages, right? And what’s in them.”
“You can’t steal them!” she said, her voice panicked. “If the person on the receiving end doesn’t get their… their”—she waved her hands excitedly—“their whatever it is, Sergei’s going to be upset. There’s no telling what he’ll do!”
“No, no, no, no,” Danny told her, his voice like butter. “Don’t worry, honey. Nobody will ever know