Page 4 of Fangs, Frost, and Folios
“We can pose as experts working for the solicitor’s office.”
“An easy enough ruse, particularly for you.”
Beatrice looked up the stairs. “Would we be gone for Christmas? Sadia is driving me crazy right now, but I don’t want to abandon our child on her holiday break.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Gio.”
“If we leave, she might find enough grace in her twelve-year-old heart to miss us.”
Beatrice knew he was speaking from experience. He’d raised two boys to adulthood, and neither had cut him off or gone to jail.
At least not for any length of time.
“I think if we’re efficient, we’ll be back in time for the holiday.” Giovanni rubbed her back. “But, of course, she will be finished with school next week.” He looked at Dema. “Any plans for the holidays we should know about?”
Dema squinted. “As I don’t celebrate Christmas except in the secular way that everyone in this country celebrates the red-coated festival of capitalism, you know I will be around. Also, I believe Zain told me he was visiting family at the New Year, not on Christmas.”
“And we all know that Zain is the only person Sadia listens to these days,” Giovanni said. “This is perfect.”
Their house manager was in his late twenties and the only “cool” person in the house according to their twelve-year-old. Dema was a nagging older sister who worried too much. Her parents were clueless, of course, despite the literal centuries of collective life experience they had accumulated.
“I have an idea,” Dema said. “You two go to England to look for the lost book—”
“Play.”
Beatrice cocked her head. “Folio, perhaps?”
Dema sighed. “All the book nerds go to England. Sadia stays here with me and Zain, and you call Ben and Tenzin so they can spend the holidays with her and she’ll have family around if you two get delayed for any reason.”
Beatrice looked at Giovanni. Her husband was nodding his approval.
Adventure. Intrigue. Dusty stacks and hidden corners.
Beatrice felt her blood start to move.
“When do we leave?”
Tenzin stared at her wall of swords, contemplating where to put the new one she’d ordered for herself from her dealer in San Francisco. It was a seventeenth-century Indo-Persian short sword with a jeweled inlay on the handle, and she had lost a similar weapon two centuries before.
Did she need another sword?
That was an idiotic question. Of course she needed more swords.
Ben walked into the living area of the loft with a green bird perched on his shoulder. “Did you let the birds in the house?”
Tenzin blinked and opened her eyes wide. “No.”
Layah and Harun had been staring at her in the roof garden, loudly chirping and letting her know they did not approve of the winter weather and overcast skies despite their well-heated tropical enclosure.
Tenzin had let them jump onto her shoulder in a moment of weakness. She hadn’t reallyletthem into the house. They just kind of followed her, and she didn’t stop them.
Ben leaned against the doorframe. “So a stranger went up to the roof garden, let them out of their enclosure, and brought them down to the apartment?”
“Maybe they broke out and came to find us because they missed us.”
He closed his eyes. “There’s bird shit on your armor in the hallway.”
