Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
But they were all facing the door. Each and every one of them. Little ears pinned back and down. Eyes bright.
I’d never seen all the kids on their best behavior at the same time.
Standing there with her arms crossed was Maggie, their teacher. She waved me in like she’d been expecting me.
I opened the door like I was going to the principal’s office, and every puppy tail started wagging. The blackest one of them all was the fastest, and I couldn’t help but blow a kiss at Duncan first before saying, very slowly and cautiously, “Hi? Is everything okay?”
Every pitch of “awoo,” from small squeaky ones to some much deeper, answered me, and it made me grin. I wish I could’ve saved it as my ringtone. It was so cute.
“Everything is fine,” Maggie answered. She was tall, around six feet, her build reminded me of a pin-up model, and I wondered again what kind of magical being she was. Then I asked myself why such a nice person could be on Spencer’s radar. That was another question on my list for Henri. “I made a deal with your fan club, and I promised to hold up my end of the bargain if they held up theirs.”
I scratched my cheek, not sure what half of that meant. “All right… what’s going on?” Had she said “fan club”? The tails in the room wagged even faster.
It was sweet Shiloh, still one of my favorite of all the kids because he was the kindest and most patient one, who spoke up. “We heard.”
He was in his human form today in shorts and a T-shirt for a popular kids’ video game. I could see the signs of his pretty, graceful mom in him when he was like this. He didn’t know it, but the thank-you card he’d made me for “saving his life” was on my nightstand. Phoebe had delivered it the day after we’d spoken at the diner.
I crossed my arms over my chest and hoped I didn’t regret the next question out of my mouth. “What did you hear about?”
“Love!” Duncan sent me, kind of surprising the hell out of me with the potency behind it. When had he learned how to do that? He’d started projecting louder and more clearly but not like that.
“About….” Shiloh’s big brown eyes widened in a way that seemed like he wanted me to guess.
“The gnomes?” I tried.
Pascal, who was beside my sweet buddy, made a farting sound. “No! You stood up to Dom!” he shouted, throwing his fist in the air like it was a battle cry.
“Yeah!” what sounded like a dozen different voices agreed.
“No yelling,” Maggie shushed them.
I just looked at them. “I stood up to Dom?” How did they know about that? How did he know about that? He’d been asleep.
Hadn’t he?
“Yeah! Everybody is scared of Dom,” Pascal answered at a normal volume with a nod like it was a fact.
“Nuh-uh, not my dad,” a boy around five added, one of the ogre children.
“Franklin’s not,” someone threw in.
“Not Henri,” another of the younger boys argued.
Pascal nodded so enthusiastically, I couldn’t believe how or why any of them could be so excited about me standing up to someone. Was Dom really that much of a jerk? Could his personality be so infamous that they were celebrating me talking back to him?
A terrible thought came to me. Had that MFer been mean to my little friends?
“How did you do it?” an older boy in the back shouted before wincing. “Sorry, I’m not yelling, Miss Maggie.”
“Thank you for apologizing, Jurgis.” Maggie’s expression toward me seemed apologetic. “I only promised them that they could ask you what they wanted but you were under no obligation to answer anything. It’s all they’ve been able to talk about all day.”
“My dad said Dom was so mad… and my dad was a Navy SEAL, and he’s more tough than almost anybody, and he doesn’t like him… and Dad said you didn’t do anything when he got in your face,” Pascal spit one word out after another, rapid-fire, his face so wide and innocent and excited. “You didn’t move. You didn’t blink. Nothing.”
I smiled, and then I smiled even wider. Because when you put it that way….
“How?” the little boy asked. “Why aren’t you scared of anybody? How can I not be scared of anybody? Because my mom scares me a lot. She scares my dad too.” He didn’t mention the river crone, and I had a feeling that was on purpose.
I laughed. This was exactly why I loved coming in here after work. The kids said the craziest stuff. “I’m a little scared of your mom too, Pascal. I’m scared of some things but not a lot of them.”
Definitely not people like Dom.
A couple of kids yelled, “Like what?”
Now that they asked, I couldn’t think of a single thing that would be relevant to them.