Sophia flushed. Embarrassment or crush?

“I didn’t realize. Thank you for making me aware of it. I’ll make a better effort to hide my disgust in the future.”

She was the most serious kid I’d ever met. “But why the disgust?”

“Ascanio Ferara is the devil,” Sophia announced. “One day he’ll get what’s coming to him, and I hope to be there.”

A shadow swooped down on my lawn. I caught a glimpse of crazily large red wings, just before they vanished, and a tall man strode to my front door. Marten sat up and smiled.

A careful knock sounded. I opened the door. Christopher Steed stood outside. He wore a light grey suit that fit him like a glove. Tall, pale, with platinum blond hair, he had one of those refined faces that looked elegant no matter his expression. His sharp eyes locked on me.

You don’t know me. We’ve never met.

He stared at me for five long seconds. “We lost your child. My apologies.”

“Marten is resourceful.”

“I suspect she’s much more than that.”

That made two of us. “Please come in.”

I added another cup to the table. Christopher took the chair next to Marten. She gave him an angelic smile.

“We were talking about Sophia’s disdain for Mr. Ferara.”

“Ah.” Christopher allowed himself a small smile. “By all means, continue.”

“It’s like this,” Sophia said, as I poured tea into the cups. “I have a group of friends.”

I put a jar of honey in front of Christopher and set a small bottle of cream next to it.

“We are a very capable group.”

Christopher hid a smile and added honey to Marten’s tea. She gazed at him like he was the most wonderful person in the world.

“Most of my friends live in the same neighborhood, but one of them, Bea, lives with the Pack, in a Clan House.”

Baby B, Raphael and Andrea’s daughter.

“Her parents are what you might call overprotective.”

Andrea and Raphael? Overprotective? Raphael gave Baby B a dagger for her second birthday and then laughed when she tried to stab him with it.

“When Bea doesn’t return to her Clan House on time or when she forgets to tell them where she’s going, they send Ascanio to fetch her. And since we’re usually together, he takes it upon himself to fetch us as well.”

“For which your parents are deeply grateful,” Christopher said.

“That’s beside the point, Father. The point is, he isn’t my babysitter, or Conlan’s, or Mahon’s and Ricardo’s. He isn’t in a position of authority over me. He simply decided to be insufferable.”

“The tea is exquisite,” Christopher said.

“I’m glad you like it,” I told him.

Sophia took a sip. Marten got a hold of the honey jar and was busily spooning honey into her cup. At this rate, she’d end up with honey tea syrup.

“You’ll have to drink some of the tea to make space,” I told her.

“For example,” Sophia said. “One time we went to play in the sewers.”

Marten stopped with her spoon in midair. “The Impala Worm is in the sewer.”

“We were being very quiet. It was perfectly safe until Ascanio found us and yelled at us, and of course, the Impala Worm showed up. He didn’t have to fight it for half an hour, and he didn’t have to almost drown. He created this situation and then chose to be dramatic about it.”

I stared at her. “How old were you?”

“Nine.”

Conlan would have been six. Mahon and Ricardo would have been five. Oh my gods.

“Then there was another time we wanted to go to Savannah for the pirate festival. We would have been back by morning. And all of us could swim. The boat was sinking very slowly, so there was no reason to panic.”

“I feel like you skipped a part. How did you get on a boat?” I asked.

“We took a ley line to Savannah, but it doesn’t go straight to the city.”

Ley lines were persistent magic currents. They lasted even during tech, although they lost a lot of their speed. The ley line was like a train track with a continuous train running at high speed.

To travel on a ley line you had to have some kind of platform, a raft of metal, plastic, or wood. I’d ridden ley lines on old doors and one time in a very large Styrofoam cooler. Anything worked as long as it separated you from the current. The magic of ley lines sheared anything living, and walking into one would leave you without your legs. That’s why the government put up billboards with graphic pictures of bodies cut into pieces by ley points.

The points were another fun ley line feature. The current wasn’t continuous. It had breaks called ley points, and when you reached one, the current ended abruptly and jettisoned you out. You had no choice about it.

“I know that ley point,” I said. “It dumps you in a salt marsh.”

Which was why most people shipped goods from Atlanta to Savannah by cart or car. The ley line that led from Savannah to Atlanta was just fine, but that was the post-Shift world for you.

“We didn’t know that bit,” Sophia said.

“So, it dumped you in the middle of the marsh. Was it dark?”

“There was some light.”