Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 48407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48407 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
You have no idea. “I don’t know what you mean, Ms. Vigue. Did you have any other questions?”
“I will come straight to the point.”
“I wish you would.”
“Can you guarantee that your child will not snap and attack his classmates?”
“Absolutely. He is very much like his father. It’s important to him that his resorting to violence is viewed as a deliberate choice rather than a loss of control on his part.”
She blinked at me.
No matter how much social outreach shapeshifters did, other humans never forgot that each one of them was a potential spree killer-in-waiting. I had expected better from a person who worked with children.
“Since we’ve decided to be blunt, if my child decides to go on a rampage, the combined security of your school won’t be able to stop him. If something alarming happens, which it won’t, you will call us, and either I or his father will come and take care of it.”
“Are you suggesting that we make no effort to contain him?”
“Conlan won’t attack you if you don’t present a threat. Your best strategy is to sit still and look down. Don’t run because he will chase you, and he is very fast. Cringing and urinating on yourself will also remove you from his target list.”
She blinked again.
“As I said, this is highly unlikely. Your vibrant student body will be perfectly safe. Now I have a question for you. Did the school send you here or did you take it upon yourself to conduct this interview?”
“As Vice Dean of Students…”
Just as I thought. She came on her own. I gave her my pretty smile. Ms. Vigue went silent mid-word.
Normal was overrated anyway.
“I’m so glad we had this chat, Ms. Vigue. Would you like some iced tea for the road?”
Three minutes later, I stood in the doorway to the main building and watched her get into her Chevy Malibu and roll down the road heading west. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The air smelled like sea and sun. It should’ve been calming, but it wasn’t.
The past few days brought one minor calamity after another, starting with the floor in the utility room caving in and getting worse from there. Ms. Vigue’s visit was just a rotten cherry on top of this cake of woe.
My husband, my son, and I had toured the school, and all three of us liked the teachers and what they were teaching. We had liked the administrative staff for the most part as well. The same couldn’t be said about the Office of the Dean of Students. I had met three members of it so far, including Ms. Vigue, and every one of them tried my patience. I wouldn’t have had a problem reassuring them if they had made the slightest effort to communicate with us on equal terms.
I needed to vent some steam in the worst way.
My son emerged from behind the wall with an unfamiliar boy in tow. Conlan was large for his age, with my dark hair and his father’s gray eyes. The boy next to him was about the same size but probably a year or two older, maybe 9 or 10. Thin, dark haired, with bronze skin and brown eyes, he seemed like he wasn’t sure what would happen next. A bit jumpy.
Conlan stopped in front of me. “Hi, Mom. This is Jason. He is Paul’s nephew.”
Paul Barnhill was our general contractor. Jason gave me a hesitant wave.
“Can we have some sandwiches?” Conlan asked.
When it came to making friends, my son took his cues from his father. Food first. And he knew where the fridge was and had been making his own sandwiches since he was 2 years old.
“Absolutely.”
“Thank you. Jason’s brother was kidnapped.”
Ah. So, it wasn’t about the sandwiches.
Conlan turned to Jason. “Come on.”
The two of them went inside. Grendel, our mutant black poodle, trotted out from behind the wall, gave me a lick on the leg in passing, depositing a small army of foul-smelling bacteria on my thigh, and bounded after them.
Food had a particular significance to shapeshifters. They didn’t share it with just anyone. Conlan brought Jason to me, made sure I saw Jason’s face, made sure that I knew he was about to make him a sandwich, and then informed me that Jason had a problem. A problem I now wanted to know more about, because Jason wasn’t some abstract child my son casually knew but someone he accepted and wanted to share a meal with.
“Kidnapped” could mean a lot of things to a 9-year-old boy. The first night after we moved in, a half-naked Conlan informed me that Grendel had been kidnapped by pirates. I grabbed my sword and ran to the shoreline, to find Grendel in a boat tied to a beached tree, floating 5 feet away from shore and barking his head off, while a Jolly Roger my son drew with wall primer on his black T-shirt flew overhead. But we lived in unsafe times. Real kidnappings weren’t uncommon, especially if the victim was, in Ms. Vigue’s words, “vibrant” enough.