a snore coma.
“Were you gonna say something?” Devoss asked. “You’re just sort of staring intently at Oz.”
“I’m in,” she replied. “I’m helping you well-meaning but possibly incompetent dopes with this until Sally’s safe and we know what started the fire so the neighborhood is safe and you can all go back to your lives and my house is no longer at risk so I can go back to my herb garden and that’s how it’s going to be, so just be resigned.”
“But—”
“That shit isn’t funny, Oz. Kids could’ve died.”
Garsea spoke up. “No one here thinks arson is funny.”
“Excellent, glad we’re all on the same page.” For a change. “So what now? Wait for Sally’s dead dad to call again?”
Monorail! Monorail!
“Turn it down, please,” Macropi called.
“Monorailllllllll!”
“Not exactly.” Garsea excused herself, then returned to the kitchen with Smalls in tow. “We need to talk about that phone call from your father again, Sally.”
“Which?”
“Wait, what?” From Oz. “How many have you gotten?”
“And why,” Lila asked sweetly, “are you guys only now asking that?”
“Hey!” he replied sharply. “Do we come over to your house and tell you how to—never mind, I just heard myself.”
“I told you.” Sally sounded as put-upon as any child hauled away from the television. “Daddy called and we talked about Lila—”
Lila blinked. “Uh, what?”
“—and Daddy said he was coming, but it would take time, so watch out for Maggie.”
Caro scribbled: Well, at least that doesn’t sound incredibly ominous.
“You don’t even need a sarcasm font,” Lila observed.
Oz was frowning. “When you say you and your dad talked about Lila, what does that mean?”
“Well. Daddy wanted me safe. But not with CPA.”
“Unless you’re talking about accountants, which we shouldn’t rule out,” Oz continued, “you mean IPA, right, hon?”
She nodded. “He said I had to stay in Switzerland until he could come. But not really Switzerland, just—a place that—that doesn’t pick sides? Where I could be safe? But IPA couldn’t be that.”
“So, instead a stranger?” Macropi asked. Then to Lila, “No offense, dear.”
“None taken.”
“Daddy said it was okay once I told him about the Stable who found me. You tried to help me, even ’cuz you thought I was a wild animal. And when I wasn’t, when you knew I was a Shifter, you kept my secret. And you didn’t kick me out when I came back.”
“So you’re all in my house because I’m not enough of a heartless wench?” Lila snorted. “Noted.”
“Anyways. Daddy said to go to you. And I figured he was right. ’Cuz it’s not just that you don’t have a side. It’s that you don’t care!” The girl beamed like she’d been given a grand gift. “At all!”
“So you’re all in my house because I’m not enough of an indifferent heartless wench. Got it.”
“Lila, you’re the first one of your kind I’ve spent any real time with,” Sally added.
“Yeah, you told me that.”
“I can’t wait to tell my folks! They’ll be so surprised.”
“Sally, did he give you any kind of time line? Did he tell you how long you’d have to stay? Or where he was? Or what happened?” Macropi leaned forward, almost vibrating in protective urgency. “And what about your mother? Was she—”
“Whoa, back up.” Oz held up his hands like he was being mugged at gunpoint. Which was tempting to contemplate and she might try it later. “Sorry, Mama, but I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
“Agreed.” From Garsea. “How did you even know it was your dad?”
“Because.” At the silence, she added impatiently, “He’s my dad. I know his voice.”
“Even if it was someone pretending?”
“But why would someone pre—oh.” Small shoulders slumped. “You still think he’s dead-for-real, not just playing.”
Garsea and Oz exchanged glances, and then Oz gently said, “We’re just trying to put the puzzle together.”
Sure. The puzzle analogy. Except they were trying to put it together in the dark with half the pieces missing and an arsonist waiting in the wings to torch it the moment they made even the smallest amount of progress.
Sally, meanwhile, had sidled over to Lila’s chair. Like any child trying to get out of an unpleasant conversation, she was anxious to change the subject. “Dev told me you’re a teddy bear doctor. Cubs send you their broken bears, and you get to fix them?”
Get to, not have to. As it happened, Lila felt the same way. “Yeah, I do.”
“You prob’ly like it.”
“I do. I set my own hours and the pay’s adequate and I hardly ever have to deal with people because it’s all mostly done through the mail.”
“You