That was the worst thing about getting back on the team. Her six-monthly regular courier slot to the moon would be given to someone else on light duty, and she’d have to find some other way to arrange time with James. Okay, Stewart. And of course she couldn’t explain why she wanted to keep the courier route. She couldn’t even ask to keep it. She’d been lucky to get it in the first place. James had been on Earth for conferences twice since Morgan was born. Unfortunately for her love life, she was probably going to have to wait until he could get down here again. Anything less wasn’t an option. In forty or so years’ work for the Bane Sidhe, she’d had enough casual sex to last multiple lifetimes. She’d denied it often enough, even to herself, but she’d been looking for “the real thing.” Having found it, she was hardly going to settle for less. Oh, if the fate of humankind was at stake, she wasn’t going to be a prude, but she’d also determined to say no to plans that involved her as a honey trap if it was just a matter of getting information faster or cheaper. Sure, sometime faster or cheaper might mean life was on the line. But more frequently than not, it wasn’t. Motherhood was an excuse for saying no. It sometimes meant they weren’t happy with her, but under the circumstances, she could live with that.
Still, it was good that Granpa owned the island free and clear. Before the split, her pay had been enough to keep a footloose single girl in beer and skittles, but hadn’t been anything to write home about. Since the split, if she hadn’t moved back home, she’d be struggling to make ends meet for herself, let alone the girls. It frustrated James that he couldn’t help, of course. But in her business, having more money than you ought was dangerous. Bosses were understandably paranoid about who else might be paying their covert operatives, and for what. Fortunately, since the smuggling was almost a public service to the organization, it was honest income. Enough for a bit extra for Christmas and birthdays, anyway. Saving the world was great for warm and fuzzy feelings, but the pay sucked.
She kicked at the sand and a bit of some scrubby creeping plant with one foot, frowning as the sand in her sneaker reminded her of the hole she had worn through the sole. Still, living in the next thing to paradise was a nice compensation on its own, thanks to Granpa. And if paradise was gritty and placid and boring, those were what made a good place to raise kids. Even if the Bane Sidhe had made her into a thief. At least every mission she went out on to steal something was one mission where she probably could manage not to kill anybody. That was something, wasn’t it?
She shoved her hands in the pockets of the olive drab windbreaker she’d pulled on over a faded red T-shirt and jeans. The fall wind was starting to cut right through the holes at her knees and back pocket. Time to patch this pair. She stepped over a dried palmetto frond that had gotten blown together with spanish moss and downed leaves.
The external walls of the little schoolhouse were plastered with tabby and screened with vegetation; the thin sheet of Galplas that surfaced the roof had been tuned to a camouflage pattern Shari had done up on her PDA. The windows, while clear, had been coated with a thin film that kept the sunlight from glaring off of them, although they still admitted daylight and allowed the children to see out. On the side closest to Granpa’s and Shari’s was one of the small concessions to color that the teacher and some of the mothers had insisted on — the children’s flower garden. Currently, there was a small carpet of pansies peeking mischievously out at the afternoon sunlight. It was another reason Cally picked up the kids herself in the afternoons whenever she could — the flowers were nice.
Most of the kids were out on the obstacle course by now. Well, okay, there was a seesaw and a rope swing, when somebody wasn’t climbing it. The monkey-bars and tower and such were all kid-sized, and the kids tended to attack everything from the cargo nets to the tower in no particular order, substituting random, chaotic enthusiasm for the single-mindedness of adult PT. Still, the O’Neals and Sundays and various children of Bane Sidhe families were the only children she’d ever seen play hide and go seek in ghillie suits. At four, Sinda hadn’t quite gotten the idea yet. She was sitting under the tree happily weaving flowers and bits of brightly colored construction paper into the new section of loose, unbleached cotton netting Granpa had given her last week.
“Mommy!” Morgan yelled, dropping off the rope swing and running across the packed sand. Sinda, whose head had jerked up as soon as she heard her sister cry out, wasn’t far behind her, having left her netting behind her on the ground. Cally crouched down and spread her arms, catching one girl in each, and enjoyed the best moment of her day.
“Did you two have a good day?” she asked, looking into one set of green eyes and one set of brown ones. Sinda’s honey-blonde hair hung around her shoulders in curls. Morgan’s straighter and shorter brown hair looked like she’d been rolling around in the sand.
She braced herself for impact as a little red-haired girl, liberally daubed with fingerpaint, crashed into the three of them. “Aunt Cally! Aunt Cally!” she squealed.
Cally picked up three-year-old Carrie, who was actually technically her aunt, weird as that was, and planted her on one hip. “Hiya, squirt!” she said.
“Come look at my Billy suit, Mommy!” Sinda started dragging her over to the now brightly decorated piece of netting, while Morgan said something about her books and ran inside.
Cally looked down at the netting as her four-year-old pulled it over her head like a scarf and preened at her. “It’s a very colorful ghillie suit. The most colorful one I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“Do you just love it?” Sinda asked.
“It’s very pretty. But isn’t it going to stand out when you play hide and go seek with the other kids?”
Sinda’s forehead wrinkled a bit. “I could hide in the flowers!”
“Every time?” Cally said.
Sinda nodded cheerfully. “I like flowers. They’re my favorite.”
“Okay. Are y’all ready to go to the store?” Cally asked as Morgan came back, a blue denim backpack slung over one small shoulder.
They walked across a path that had bits of pavement, indicating it probably had once really been a street, to the store. Privett’s Grocery was a weathered gray pine building, almost a shed, really, with a mud-brown roof of Galplas tiles and a couple of windows with big, gray, storm shutters latched open against the walls. A bright splash of color came from the fresh fruits and vegetables displayed in wooden carts on the front porch. The carts were obviously new, the boards the golden white of fresh, unweathered pine.
As soon as they got in the door, Carrie started struggling and Cally put her down. The girls drooled over the assortment of fudge behind the counter while she swapped her trade goods, incoming for outgoing, and picked out her own groceries. Shari’s cabbages hadn’t survived this year, so Cally grabbed a head of cabbage for coleslaw, and a bottle of lemon juice that must have been put up last year. A pitcher of lemonade would be a nice treat for everybody. She got each girl a small piece of fudge wrapped in rice paper, fighting the temptation to buy one for herself. Christmas was just around the corner, and it was going to be tight this year. Besides she was making brownies for dessert. Halfway down the steps she turned around and went back for the square of fudge. It was definitely getting to be time to do something about her salary.
Chapter Three
Granpa was quiet as he fought with the tie-downs on the tent-roof thingy they were putting up over the picnic table. Cally knew it said gazebo on the box, but she’d seen plenty of gazebos in Indiana — white, wooden, merry-go-round buildings without the ride. This was just a square tent roof with four poles and top to bottom mosquito netting. She got the zipper to work and zipped the mosquito netting from bottom to top outside her pole, moving on to the next one. Shari was grilling some hotdogs for the little kids, and had a shrimp boil going for the adults.