“You two want to come with? There’s something I want to bring up. Natalie, your input would be appreciated too. That second role of yours you mentioned.”

“I was going to stick with Kenzie and make sure she’s okay. I don’t know if I’m still a de-facto guardian, because things are so hairy and she’s at the children’s place now, but nobody’s told me to stop.”

“You should go,” Kenzie told her. “Catch up with the others. You need a break from me, and I’m going to sit down and spend fifteen minutes getting caught up on my tech and all the data that’s rolled in while I’ve been gone. I won’t be doing anything.”

“I don’t want you bending over or crawling under the desk,” Natalie warned.

“I won’t. I’ll make Rain do it.”

“Be nice to Rain,” Tristan said, sounding like a stern mom.

“I am! He enjoys helping as much as I do.”

Tristan put a hand on the back of Kenzie’s head, steering her inside. She had two feathers stuck through the single ponytail at the back of her head. No hairpin, either.

I grabbed my coat, and we got ourselves sorted, with the others changing or organizing their things while I made sure I took down all orders on paper. Ashley was in for our walk, even though she still hadn’t fully mended.

S.P.I.N.E. A plan for going about this. I was pulling from lessons imparted by my family again. This particular lesson had been from Uncle Neil, and my heart was heavy with the memory of how he’d died, and how it tied into the acronym.

‘S’ stood for schedule, setting the context for the discussion. It was what I’d spent the most time wrestling with over the past few days. How to approach this. All at once? One at a time? What was the best venue for it? Schedule mattered the most because I could do everything else right and screw up here, and group dynamics, interruptions, or the tone of things could spoil it all.

“How was your vacation with your boy?” Tristan asked. He was asking Natalie.

“He’s not ‘my boy’. It was nice.”

“Did you tour the sights?” Tristan asked. “I guess there aren’t many sights, with the city being new.”

“We hung out. We drank, we completed a one thousand piece puzzle.”

“I hope you did more than that,” Ashley remarked.

“I don’t think I’m going to talk about that, thank you.”

“It sure sounds to me like he’s your boy,” Tristan said.

“Victoriaaa,” Natalie said.

“Yeahhh?” I asked, drawing my voice out in the same way.

“Did you ask me along just so you could throw me to the wolves?”

“I’m not a wolf,” Tristan said.

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Ashley said.