Page 66 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
“Kai,” Lila replied.
“Kai’s Korner?”
“No.”
“The Kai Kubby?”
“Absolutely not. I’ll commit homicide all over you if you so much as try.”
“My point,” Devoss replied, and it was hilarious thathesounded exasperated withher, “is you could fix this up and it’d be super nice.”
“But why?”
He spread his arms to encompass the small dark building. “To have a sweet little den that nobody knows about.”
“It’s a shed, Devoss.”
Again with the arm spreading. “So? Look at it! It won’t be hard to fix up.”
“It’s dark.”
“Low lighting,” Devoss corrected.
“Crowded.”
“Cozy,” Devoss insisted.
“It smells like grass and dirt.”
“True,” he admitted. “But my point stands, it’d be easy,einfach,facile. You wouldn’t even know you were sleeping in a shed! Or if you had people over, you wouldn’t have to have them inside bugging you. They could just hang out here.”
Wow.She didn’t want to think why the kids were so excited at the prospect of out of sight, out of mind in a stranger’s shed, possibly indefinitely. Why they feltluckyto be in such conditions. Shewouldthink about it, of course. She just didn’t want to.
Daniels, she just realized, had been engrossed inElfquestVolume Two during the entirety of the She Shed chitchat. She must have felt Lila staring because she looked up, grabbed her pad, scribbled.
These are great #!#??# books.
“Huh. You swear like a cartoon character.”
She’d seen the teenager flipping through them—Lila had her books out of boxes in the living room, but not yet on shelves—and had tucked a couple of volumes into Sally’s shopping bag. And it was nice to see a teen reading an actual paper book. Lila loved her Kindle while acknowledging it had spoiled her. Last week she tapped an unfamiliar word (diffident, which she always confused withindifference), and when the definition didn’t obligingly pop up, tossed the book aside and sulked. Five seconds later, she realized it was a paperback.
“I’ll think about the shed thing,” Lila promised. “But you guys know this is a stopgap measure at best, right? Sooner or later, you’ll have to face the combined wrath of Macropi, Garsea, and Oz.6I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Which you might end up being; we’ve only known each other a few days.”
“How come you call everyone by their last names except Oz?”
She blinked. “I…don’t know.” Huh. Was that something she should worry about? Was it ponder-worthy? Was there some sort of hidden meaning in her unconscious need to call OzOz?
Naw.
“He’s into you,” Devoss added. “Just so y’know.”
“You mentioned that.”
“Are you guys going out?”
“No.” And why did saying that make her chest hurt? Actual, physical pain, like someone had slugged her in the sternum? “And no to this.”
“This?”
