Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

So instead he said, “We’re going to be okay, Patience. We’re going to win the war and make it through, and four days from now we’re going to hold our boys again. And after that, we’re never going to let them go, ever again. Because we’re a family. And I don’t care what the writs say, there’s nothing more important than family.”

There was a time when he wouldn’t have said that, and she wouldn’t have believed him if he had. It was a sign of how far they’d come since the bad days between them, how solid they were together, that she relaxed against him, letting out a watery sigh. “I know. I just . . . I needed to hear that. I needed you to say it.”

He brushed his lips across her cheek and then, when she leaned in, he found her lips. The kiss started soft, more an affirmation than any effort to incite, but then she touched her tongue to his, and things got more serious. Magic kindled low in his gut and flared out from there, making him very aware of his own body, and hers, and the fact that they were alone in their suite, with nobody expecting them to be anywhere for a couple of hours.

Hello, afternooner, he thought, and grinned into the kiss.

But at the same time, he knew that could wait. The heat was always there between them, more now than ever before, and the anticipation would only add to the thrill of making love. So, easing away, unable to wait any longer, he tore open the envelope and dumped the contents onto the coffee table, next to the laptop he had there, ready and waiting.

Smaller envelopes cascaded out—those would be letters from Jox and Hannah, updating them on the more serious stuff the twins didn’t necessarily need to know about, along with the flash drive and a fat folder, which would contain printed-out photos, schoolwork, and letters from both boys.

Each care package had a different theme, which was announced by artwork on the carefully selected folder. Last time around, Braden picked Transformers. This time, Harry had gone with dinosaurs. The folder had an ominous background of darkness, ferns and mist, with a cartoon T. Rex giving a big cartoon “Rawr!” Across the raging Rex’s stomach, two very different hands had written I want a brontosaurus burger and Look out for the meteor!

Brandt chuckled, though the sound cracked at the end, catching against the lump in his throat.

“Oh,” Patience breathed, and reached for the folder. But then she stopped herself, and pulled back. “No. Let’s do the video first.”

“You sure?” Usually they eased into it with the photos, so it wasn’t such a shock seeing the boys, and realizing all over again how much of their childhood they were missing.

“Positive,” she said, but he was already fitting the flash drive into the laptop, and feeling his heart bump unsteadily as they waited for the video to open.

Moments later, the window popped up and a boy’s face filled the screen—just a nose and a gap-toothed grin. Then he pulled back from the in-computer camera to reveal unruly dark blond hair and a face that looked so much more grown-up since the last video they’d gotten. His green tee had a cartoon T-Rex on the chest and a smudge of something on one sleeve.

That, and the off-kilter collar made the ID a cinch. “Braden,” they said in unison, and shared a quick grin.

Then the image shifted and Harry’s face came into view—each feature was identical to his brother’s, the both of them a mixture of the best of both their parents. His blue brontosaurus tee was clean and perfectly adjusted, his hair neatly combed, his features solemn. His eyes, though, glittered with excitement and the devilishness that appeared in him just often enough to keep his brother on his toes.

The two leaned in together and mugged for the camera, giving a ragged chorus of, “Hi, Mommy! Hi, Daddy!”

“They’re so handsome,” Patience murmured tightening her grip on his hand. “Just like you. But oh, they’re growing up so fast.”

“I know.” He brushed his lips across her temple. “But they’ve got plenty of growing up left to do, and we’re going to be right there with them.”

Harry disappeared from the screen while Braden launched into a story about a winter festival at their school, and how his class had done face painting, while Harry’s had done a ball toss.

Pulling Patience closer against his side, Brandt settled in to enjoy the show, which the ticker at the bottom said was twenty-four minutes long.

Twenty-four minutes to spend with their boys. Gods, how they needed this.

The prior videos hadn’t had any real pattern. One had been shot at a nameless country fair, and had included a now-famous scene of Jox wobbling his way off a roller coaster and doing a near-violent “cut the camera” motion as he headed for some bushes. Another had been on a white-sand beach that could’ve been anywhere on either of the coasts. That was one of the keys to the video editing, that nobody—not even Patience or Brandt—should be able to use the images to figure out where the winikin were hiding with the boys.

This was a rare indoor-set video. The background seemed to be their current home, though all that was really visible was a wainscoted wall and a mantelpiece sporting family photos—including one Brandt recognized as having been taken the last time the boys had been at Skywatch, with the whole family in the frame—along with a couple of trophies and Hannah’s trademark bric-a-brac, heavy on the lavender.

Braden was still talking, going on about a bake sale table with huge brownies and the mean lady who had been taking the money, when there was a scuffling noise in the background, then the thud-thud-thud of footsteps.

“Got ’im,” Harry’s voice said from off camera. “Did-ja tell them about the booth?”

“I was waiting for you,” Braden said with an eye roll, but then grinned maniacally into the camera. “Like he said, there was a booth at the fair, from the human society. They were doing a ’doption drive!”

“Ahem,” said another voice, interrupting. Braden looked up and shifted aside, and Jox came into view. The former head winikin looked good, wearing a long-sleeved green polo, a green baseball hat made to look like a dinosaur’s head, complete with fierce eyes and cloth fangs coming down off the bill, and a shit-eating grin that didn’t look anything like the tense, stressed expression he used to sport 24-7. There were shadows there, yeah—hell, they all had shadows these days. But there was an evil sort of pleasure, too.

Jox leaned in to the camera and said in a stage whisper, “In case you’re wondering, that would be ‘humane society.’ And you can probably guess the rest. For the record, Hannah was the one who caved.”

“Baloney!” An elegant, purple-manicured hand came into the screen and poked him in the shoulder. “You were just as bad as the boys, with the big sad eyes and the ‘we’ll take good care of him’!”

“Uh-oh,” Patience said, covering her mouth with her free hand. “They didn’t.”

Jox disappeared as Harry and Braden both came back into view, hauling between them the squirming body of a half-grown black dog. It looked to be about the size of a cocker spaniel, but had the wiry hair of a schnauzer. Or maybe a Brillo pad. Its feet were fuzzy, its head triangular, and its belly was unappealingly naked.

“They did,” Brandt confirmed.

Harry, who was in charge of the front end, had been holding the pup’s muzzle shut. Now he let go, and the animal let loose with a string of half-hysterical yips, while thrashing its head side-to-side in an effort to lick Harry. Or maybe consume him.

Probably lick, Brandt decided. Jox and Hannah might’ve succumbed to puppy breath, but only if they thought it was safe.

And, what the hell. It seemed like they had a dog, like it or not.