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Roolnai reflected, even as he agreed, that it seemed he had something in common with even the most barbaric of human monsters.

Chapter Twelve

Sandy Swaim was in the minority among O’Neals and Sundays. She actually liked the present day “outside world” away from Edisto. If the O’Neals had a flaw, it was a tendency to hide away and go hermit. Sandy liked getting to know new people, and she had an open, natural manner that put the people she met instantly at ease. Her highlighted hair bushed out around her head in curls, around a fresh, bright face with adolescent puppy fat giving it a youthful glow.

Youthful was the key there. In Sandy’s case, you really were as young as you felt. Her optimistic and curious attitude towards the world had lasted despite all the odds against, and was probably the deciding factor in securing her a spot on the juv list as a trained safe house operator. Her eyes really were as young as the rest of her, in a way that no lapse could ever betray. She’d had something else going for her, too. Having been born destined for a libido that was sluggish in the extreme, juving had given her a new lease on life in that department, too, by making her “normal.” Again, no lapses could reveal a juv “tell” she simply didn’t have.

The catch was that warming up romantically had handed her a problem she hadn’t expected. She’d fallen in love and married, which in their case meant enduring separations that could only be considered short and fleeting when looked at in the context of a juv lifespan. Juv parents or not, human children still grew up at the same rate, which meant she spent a lot of time functioning as a single parent and reminding the children that they did have a daddy and that, yes, Daddy really wished he was here.

Right now, she didn’t know whether to be more worried about Mike than before, or not. On the one hand, he wasn’t going out with DAG on missions to quash pirates and terrorists right now. On the other hand, he was back on that damned island with her crazy in-laws who now had their hands on the rest of DAG, practically, and Sandy could no more imagine O’Neals having troops and not using them than she could imagine water not being wet. Sure, in a better world. But in this one? O’Neals plus private army was quite possibly scarier than having Mike going all over the world putting out fires for the government. Maybe. Maybe they’d settle down to something safer and more reputable, like smuggling.

One thing she knew for sure. Florida in January was a better place to be than South Carolina, even if she wasn’t at the beach. God knew why Disney World had been the first big tourist draw to reopen in Florida, but it had.

New Orlando was a dinky place compared to Charleston or Norfolk, not having port traffic coming through. Land was cheap enough, and housing cheap enough, that living on waitress pay from Waffle House was just fine in tourist season — and for one group or another it was always tourist season in Orlando. The job wasn’t because she had no skills for a better job. Obviously she did. She was doing it. Her sucky cover pay made it a mystery to nobody whenever she had renters come and stay at random in her little house. The neighbors shrugged, clucked that it was a pity what single mothers had to do to make ends meet, and wasn’t it too bad such a nice girl had made the classic dumb mistake. She didn’t volunteer personal information, and the neighbors felt they could fill in the blanks well enough without prodding what were obviously sore spots.

The only thing she really hated about working at Waffle House was that her feet hurt so bad when she got off shift, and then she had to walk home since somebody had stolen her bike a week ago, but thankfully it was just around the corner -

The O’Neals had a name for Sandy’s sunny optimism. They called it “condition white,” and the same things that made her so hard to peg as a juv made it impossible to train out. Mrs. Swaim had over a decade of unarmed combat training and was hell on wheels in the dojo. She never saw the man who stepped out from behind the rose of Sharon vine and grabbed her, thrusting a stiletto up through the base of her brain.

Robert Swaim batted the tennis ball off the garage door again. They still called it a garage, even though the door had been made so it wouldn’t go up when they made the space into a guest room. Right now, three guests were sharing it. Mrs. Catt, and her two kids Karen and David. Karen was okay, for a girl. David was a little kid who had thankfully attached himself to his sister, Rose, and not him. David, in his turn, was incessantly followed by the youngest of the Swaims, his two-year-old sister, Sheely. Robert tried not to get too attached to guests, because they never stayed long, but Mom had told him these might be around for awhile.

Usually it didn’t matter that they didn’t have a garage, but the Catts had a car. Nobody much liked leaving it outside, but there wasn’t any choice, really. To Robert, it was just an annoyance he had to work around in finding room to work his skills.

Mrs. Catt was weird. She seemed to have two driving passions: soap operas and tarot cards. Mom said to just be thankful she was here, because it meant he didn’t have to watch Sheely and Rose every day after school, and they could save the money from Sheely’s day babysitter.

He was fine with the saving money and not having to watch his little sisters, but Robert honestly wasn’t sure he could take another evening of hearing that he or some other family member was in grave danger. That seemed to be Mrs. Catt’s specialty in her tarot readings. She said it wasn’t, but she was a nervous woman who jumped at small noises, and he figured it was probably because she did all that scaring herself.

Mom had finally gotten tired of the cards and asked her to quit, but Rose was all about it, and he could hear her inside asking for a reading. He thought about telling her Mom said no, but then he realized he didn’t have to be in charge and could keep practicing with his new racquet, so he bounced the ball and hit it again. He didn’t have to hurry, even if he decided to say something, because Mrs. Catt told Rose to wait until after her show. His watch said twenty after four, and most of those things ran an hour long — if she didn’t go right into another one. Mom should be home by then, anyway. He hit the ball again, trying to keep his wrist straight.

A squall of rain came in just before five, so he went inside looking for a snack. There was Rose, shuffling the big cards of Mrs. Catt’s deck. Mom was late, and he thought again about saying something, but she had cut them and stacked them and, really, if she gave herself a nightmare, maybe she’d learn.

“Is your mother often late getting in, Robert?” the woman asked him.

“Not very often. Maybe she got something from the store,” he said.

She looked out the window at the rain doubtfully. If Mom was in it, she was getting drenched. “I’d think she would have come and gotten the car,” the other mom said. “Well, if she’s not home in half an hour I’ll go ahead and start your dinner.”

She was kind of fat, so she huffed as she eased herself down on the floor to sit cross-legged in front of the deck.

He couldn’t see the attraction of the game, himself, but he did prop himself on the arm of the couch with his baloney sandwich and watch as the woman went into her now-familiar spiel, and she was in fine form, almost as good as a ghost story. Only this time, when she hit about the fourth card she did something he’d never seen her do before. She stopped talking and dealt out the other cards, bing bing bing. Then she turned dead white and looked up at Rose.

“Car. Get in the car, now,” she said. When Rose just looked at her funny, she smiled a strange, strained smile. “We’re going to Disney World! My treat! We’ll pick up your mom on the way, stay overnight, get new stuff, everything! Won’t that be fun?” She was trying to sound cheerful, but she really sounded shrill.