I wasn't on it, probably so they could all complain about me without hurting my feelings.
Given the state of Ben's hands, Auriele had offered to send out the report, but he'd said that computer work was his duty, and as he still had ten fingers, he figured he could complete it.
He leaned forward and sipped his cocoa without touching the hot cup.
"It's instant," I apologized.
"My stash of spicy real stuff went up with the house." I wished I hadn't said it as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
I had been doing just fine at forgetting that out in the darkness beyond the kitchen windows, my house was a pile of black scraps.
"It's chocolate," Ben said.
"At this point, that is sufficient." Silence fell, and I remembered that I was supposed to be running this.
It reminded me in an odd way of the time I'd had to take over my sister's Girl Scout troop when my mother had been sick.
Fourteen preteen girls, a tableful of werewolves-- there were certain monstrous similarities.
I ran my hands over my face.
"So what else needs to be dealt with before we can go to bed?" Darryl folded his big hands on the table.
"The fire marshal hasn't made it out yet--but the firemen seemed pretty convinced it was the wiring.
The fire started near the fuse box in the hall.
Apparently, the old manufactured homes sometimes go up like that, especially the first few weeks the heating system kicks in in the winter." He glanced at me.
"Do we accept that, or have you been riling people up again?" He might owe his ebony skin and his size to his African father, but he could do Chinese inscrutable better than anyone I'd ever met who was wholly Chinese instead of just half.
It was hard to tell whether he meant the last sentence as a joke or a justifiable criticism.
"It was the fae," I said with a sigh, bumping the nearest table leg halfheartedly with my ankle.
"What--all of them?" asked Ben humorously.
I slid down in my chair so I could reach past Jesse and kicked his foot, which was more satisfying.
"No, not all of them," I said, after he yipped with mock pain.
"You just bring us one damned thing after another don't you, Mercy," said Mary Jo, looking out the window.
"Bitch," said Ben.
It seemed to be his word of the day--which was better than the usual assortment.
He hadn't actually sworn much around me that day, if I didn't include the time while Samuel was fixing his hands.
And if the only words that counted were the ones that got movies an "R" rating.
I wondered if it was coincidental, if he was trying to improve himself--or if I hadn't spent enough time with him.
Mary Jo's lip curled.
"Suck-up." "You have some nerve throwing stones," he told her, "when you just sat there and watched them set fire to Mercy's house." "What?" said Darryl in a very, very soft voice.
But Mary Jo wasn't listening to Darryl.