“It’s a plan.”

I settled back to wait until Timmy woke up. I took out my notebook that tells me when to breathe, as I called my giant to-do list. I tried, without much success, to find a few items in the to-do section that could be done while waiting for a napping child to wake. Clearly, before embarking on motherhood, I needed to get better at making good use of small windows of time when I couldn’t go anywhere. And also at rearranging my life at a moment’s notice.

Timmy finally awoke around two-thirty, but thanks to diaper changing and snacks and such, it was closer to three-thirty by the time we hit the road, and I was overdue for some adult conversation.

Twelve

I found a shady spot in the Mutant Wizards parking lot and led Timmy inside to find that the reception room had altered dramatically since last week. The furniture was unchanged, but it had been rearranged in a much more efficient layout, and most of the clutter and tchotchkes had gone. The waiting room now looked chic, modern, and uncluttered—exactly the sort of decor I’d always thought we needed for the reception room in the first place. And a lot easier to keep Timmy safe in, for that matter.

“Morning, Apple,” I said to the receptionist. “I see you’ve been doing some redecorating.”

“More like undecorating,” Apple said, with a sniff. “I told Jack I was sick and tired of seeing all those bamboo flutes and Chinese dragons all over everywhere, and I was going to put them in a closet for a while and see if anything horrible happened. And so far nothing has.”

“Not a believer in feng shui, then?”

“Feng shui’s okay within reason, but the place was starting to look like a souvenir stand in Chinatown.”

“No kidding,” I said. And then I felt a stab of guilt. I reminded myself that family honor didn’t require me to defend Rose Noire’s feng shui expertise—she’d installed the flutes and dragons and hundreds of other feng shui cures after we’d had a murder on site. And it was true that Mutant Wizards had not experienced any further homicides, but then neither had any of the buildings in town that Rose Noire hadn’t feng shui’d. “I’m glad you kept the fish tank, though,” I added.

“The guys like the fish tank,” she said.

So did Timmy. He hadn’t made a sound since he’d walked in and spotted the tank. He was now six inches away from the glass and staring avidly—about the longest I’d seen him stay in one place when not asleep or securely strapped in. I scrutinized the tank, but it looked fairly sturdy and well balanced. Though I noticed that even the fish tank had changed.

“Different fish, I see.”

“Piranha,” Apple said. “A lot more interesting. Especially at feeding time. The guys love that. You want to see Jack, right?”

I nodded and went over to keep a closer eye on Timmy. At the moment, he had his nose plastered against the tank and was staring cross-eyed at the deceptively ordinary-looking fish inside. But I wouldn’t put it past him to find a way to put his head into the tank if I turned my back on him, or perhaps pull it down on top of himself. And I reminded myself that telling Timmy to stay away from the tank would almost certainly make him more interested in it.