“Now, seeing you exhausted… it’s upsetting,” he admitted that in a tiny voice, all his anger at Calvin gone. “I want to fix you and I can’t.”
Ray took a breath, then let it out. He turned his head to bury his nose in Cal’s hair. “This helps.”
“Aw,” Benny cooed dramatically.
Cal huffed. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“As a matter of fact…” Benny handed his laptop to Calvin, got up, and stretched to make his joints pop. “I promised to give Divinity a ride to work.” That explanation was apparently for Ray. “I’ll come back later. Calvin, thank you again for letting me borrow your car.”
“Be careful.” Ray frowned and meant it. “Stay sharp.”
“Aw.” Cal said it this time, genuine and quiet.
Benny gave Ray a searching look, then shared his frown. But he nodded. “I doubt they’re desperate enough to look to me. They might. Maybe. If things took a turn. But, judging from today, they’re focused on figuring out what went wrong with you—with the spell. Just like we are.”
“But,” Calvin interrupted sternly without looking up from his reading. He was rubbing his forehead. Ray assumed he had glasses somewhere he wasn’t wearing.
“ButI will be careful and keep my phone with me,” Benny finished patiently, and patted his pocket for good measure.
Cal wasn’t getting up, so Ray couldn’t even walk Benny to the door. He wasn’t much help to them at all, really.
He met Benny’s gaze. “Would you like me to work on your cases, your cases with Cal, I mean, while you do all this for me? I ought to do something.”
“Aw,” Benny said again, less dramatically but still sincere. “Sure. Thank you. But only if you keep eating and it doesn’t make your headache worse. Otherwise, Cal will tell Divinity all kinds of embarrassing things about me.”
“It’s true,” Cal agreed. “Bens and I discussed it already.” He lifted his head from Ray’s shoulder. “But call or message when she’s at work and when you’re on your way here, so we’ll worry less. Especially this guy.” He flopped back against Ray.
“It’s instinct,” Ray informed Benny stiffly, his face and neck strangely hot.
Calvin snorted. “Oh, we know.”
“You want pack, I’ll show you pack,” Cal offered nonsensically, but hopped up and out of Ray’s lap, a somewhat painful procedure on Ray’s end. He walked Benny to the door and then get caught up in the files waiting for him in the printer.
Ray looked over at Calvin, also back to work, and sighed before getting up to start going through the work files in Benny’s shoulder bag.
Chapter Twelve
CAL DID NOT stop for meal breaks. He simply consumed as he worked, putting Ray vaguely in mind of locusts, although he kept that idea to himself. Calvin got up for some of the jerky, which was made from turkey, but gave most of the bag to Ray. Ray decided to try to follow Cal’s example, if only to avoid more sudden, suspicious stares as, in the middle of taping papers to the walls, Cal would remember Ray’s headache and glare at Ray until Ray ate something.
Benny kept organized notes, with Cal’s additions scrawled all over the corners and margins. The pair of them had two separate open cases, plus whatever they might have been doing for the PD. One was the case Ray had seen a part of the day before. The other was about the city stonewalling a property owner’s attempted renovation plans by burying them in permit requests and pushing back meetings. Ray spent several hours just getting up to speed.
The light shifted out in the yard, from afternoon to late afternoon. It didn’t look windy. The warmer fall weather would hold another day. Ray’s headache didn’t go away, although he kept that to himself. Benny called as he was supposed to. The sky began to subtly darken to a different shade of orange.
Then Cal paused to check his phone, hummed to himself, and finished rearranging some of the print-outs—something he had already done several times, trying to discover an order that suited him.
When he was done, he announced, almost calmly, “Oh, Mom is here. I guess they are outside. She doesn’t say who ‘they’ are. Her ride, I suppose.”
“What?” Calvin asked in a faint voice, rising to his feet and nearly sending Benny’s laptop tumbling to the floor. He glanced from his son to the windows, as if, for a moment, the legendary Calvin Parker was debating making a run for it through the backyard. “Lis is here? Now?”
Ray stood up with him, searching for the threat before he realized the threat was the half-fairy watching his father with narrowed eyes. The events of that morning had made Cal decide enough was enough. This was what he’d meant.
Ray opened his mouth, then chose the better part of valor and closed it again.
Calvin looked pissed, but not for long. His gaze was already straying toward the door. “Does she know I’m here?”
“Oh yes.” Cal was mean, but not cruel. “Although not what happened this morning, what you did. Not yet.”
“Callalily,” Calvin murmured, then nothing else.
