Page 48 of Deja New
TWENTY-FOUR
Sherlock yanked John forward by his jumper and claimed his mouth, his plush lips slanting over the smaller man’s—
“No update, I assume?”
“I wasn’t reading BBC’sSherlockfanfic!” Angela slammed her laptop closed. “If. If you were wondering.”
“I understand.”
“Well, maybe just a couple of pages.”
Leah smiled, one hand on a slim hip, the other holding on to the doorjamb as if unsure of her welcome. Which meant Archer had given her an earful.
“You don’t have to hover, c’mon in. And you know Archer has frequent bouts of clinical insanity so you should take whatever he says about me with a metric ton of salt, right?”
“Archer told me you work hard to take care of the family and deserve your privacy.”
“Sometimes his insanity is more benign,” she admitted.
Leah laughed and let go of the door. “You’re a bundle of contradictions, did you know?”
“I didn’t, actually. What’s up?”
“Several things, but I don’t want to interrupt your—”
“Don’t say ‘work’ with quotation marks, implying I wasn’t working,” Angela warned, smirking. “I won’t have it.”
Leah grinned back and took the chair opposite the desk. “Your disgusting*fangirl secret is safe with me. Surely you must know that as the Babe Ruth of Insighters, it’s literally my job to keep secrets.”
Angela groaned and buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry. They are awful. We’re awful.”
Leah waved that away. Though her tone was light, Angela thought she looked pale and strained.Just the pregnancy? Or the stress of being in the vicinity of a murder of Drakes?
“It’s fine. Are you the only Insighter your family’s produced?”
“Well, so far. We’re not all done having kids yet. Heck, some of us haven’t even started. You and Archer are way ahead.”
Leah put a hand on her stomach for a moment. “Yes, well. It’s not a contest. Or a race.”
Angela snorted. “Good thing, because as far as I can tell, your fiancé is the only actual adult in the family. Besides my wrongfully convicted uncle... No, wait, he frequently throws ‘I’m not speaking to you, so don’t you dare come visit’ tantrums, so I stand by the original assessment.”Who would have thought?
“Paul was telling me about his girlfriend—”
“Oh, that... that won’t last. He goes through women like a cat goes through cat litter. Ashortcat.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“Not for a while.” She held up a hand, traffic cop-style. “And before you say anything, it’s not the work and it’s not the murder. I’ve got other priorities, is all. So when I do date, they don’t get my obsession and I don’t get their ‘but tons of people get murdered every day and this happened ten years ago, so can we fuck now?’ indifference. Or the Horde runs them off. Usually both. It’s too exhausting to fix.”
“‘Fix’?”
“Look how we live.” She made a gesture encompassing the house. “More than a half dozen people in a 2400-square-foot house. Most of us are legal adults. None of us have lived away from home for very long. Or if we do, we always come back. Archer was the first who didn’t. And before you blame my mom—”
“I wasn’t going to,” Leah said mildly. “Though it’s interesting that you immediately went there.”
“It’s not just that she’s... y’know, shattered.”
“Is she? Forgive me, because I haven’t known any of you very long, but her grief... it’s almost vengeful in nature.”
