Page 43 of The Fantastic Fluke

He turned away, toward the front of the shop. “You’re going to get yourself killed too, if you don’t get rid of that fox and stop this.” Then he spun back, jaw set and eyes flashing—it was the most real emotion I’d ever seen from him. “Do you have any idea how happy I was when you didn’t have magic? I started sleeping at night again. Didn’t have to worry about us being slaughtered anymore.”

The air felt punched out of me, and I leaned against the counter for support. After that single moment of shock, though, something hotter and angrier rose up in me. I pushed off the counter, hands fisting at my sides. “Then why did you punish me for it, Dad?”

That seemed to deflate him like a balloon with the air slowly hissing out of it. He slumped forward, head down and eyes on the floor.

I wanted to ask why he hadn’t talked to me, figured things out—hell, maybe even left town. But he wasn’t confessing that he’d secretly loved me and been an excellent father. Just that my existence had frightened him.

“What about the Adlers?” I asked. I still wasn’t sure which of the couple in the photo he’d been stalking like a damn creep, so I treated them like a unit.

He shrugged and turned away, waving airily. “You can try to warn her if you want. It’s more likely to get you attention, havethemcome for you.” Them. Was he still frightened of whoever “them” was, or did he not know much about the murderers who were stalking arcane mages? “That’s if she’s even alive. Would the creature have come for you if she was alive? Or that gun-toting lunatic of yours?”

Which was a good point, if sad. It was probably too late for Ms. Adler. As hard as it was, I held his eye. “Why wouldtheycome for me for trying to help her?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Why? I thought you had it all figured out. Isn’t it obvious?” He motioned to my hands. “You tried to get between them and their last target, and nearly got stabbed for your efforts. Do you think they would even try to avoid hurting you now that you’re not twelve?”

Their last target? My father had never been an emotional man, but even knowing him, that level of coldness surprised me.

“She was my mother, you asshole,” I snarled at him, just as a noise from the front of the shop nearly made me jump out of my skin. It was Fluke, bag of treats held in his mouth, nose pressed against the glass. Little dork.

I was gonna have to clean the door.

I headed up to the front and unlocked it, looking at first Fluke and then Gideon. Gideon was staring at my father, so I knelt down next to Fluke. “How’d it go? You buy yourself some treats? Did they give you the right change?”

He turned his head so I could see the tiny pouch on his collar, which jingled with change. It had a dollar and some coins, and a receipt for the treats.

I leaned in, gave him a good scratch with both hands, and grinned. “Great job, buddy. I guess this means you deserve a treat, huh?”

Gideon snorted. “You’re gonna spoil that fox.”

“You’re the one who suggested it.”

“I suggested you have him buysomething, not treats for himself.” Gideon looked at the bag, then me, eyes narrowed and shaking his head, like he was deeply disappointed with my lack of imagination.

Truth told, I simply didn’t have the money for Fluke to go out buying frivolous stuff. I shouldn’t have gotten more treats, but Gideon was right that Fluke needed training as much as I did, and letting him go out with a ghost was as good as a set of training wheels.

“Maybe next time,” I suggested. I figured Gideon had heard enough about my money woes. He didn’t need me to rehash them.

I stood, pretending my knees didn’t creak as I did. Gideon tipped his chin in my father’s direction. “What’s with him?”

I glanced only briefly at my father, then back at Gideon. “Apparently he knows all about the people who are murdering arcane mages. He thinks I should quit. Run away. Get rid of you and Fluke and go back to only pretending my life isn’t crap.”

Behind me, my father scoffed. “Your life was fine. You had a house. A job. Everything you needed.”

Gideon shook his head and pressed his palms into his eyes in frustration. “This man. He’s gonna kill me, and I’m already danged dead.”

“No, you’re going to kill him,” my father insisted, and it was the most overtly protective thing he’d said in my entire life. I turned and stared at him in surprise.

But Gideon’s next words flipped my whole world upside down.

“If he’d shown the talent when he was younger, were you gonna hand him over to them? Find them, offer him up? Maybe suggest you should get paid for doing their dirty work?”

My father didn’t answer, just turned and walked away.

My father.

I sat on the couch, staring into space, and forgot to turn on the open sign until the first customers came into the shop half an hour later. Gideon and Fluke sat next to me, one on either side, neither saying a word. Just being there.

Around eleven, when the early morning buyers had grabbed their new releases and gone, and I was back to sitting on the couch, this time with a book and Fluke curled up half on top of me, Gideon cleared his throat. I looked up at him, eyebrows up.

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