Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) by Susan Fanetti Read Free Book Online

call and smiled at her daughter. “It’ll be here in about twenty minutes. You want to help me get dishes ready, Lucie?”
     
    Lucie set the book aside and scooted off the chair. As she and Trick went to the kitchen—hand in hand, no less—Juliana understood that she had to get control of what was happening here.
     
    They couldn’t be friends with Trick.
     
    She sighed and picked The Hobbit up from the arm of the chair. Scanning the books to find the place it belonged, she let herself lament the spiral she seemed to be in. They’d just moved here. She’d been looking for a safe place. But all she’d found was a different kind of danger.
     
    And now she’d signed a lease, and Trick lived within sight of their front door. How was she supposed to separate him from Lucie and her?
     
    Juliana found an empty space on a low shelf, just to the left of The Lord of the Rings series, and slid the book where it obviously belonged. A casual scan of the spines of his books indicated that Trick’s reading tastes were wide-ranging and eclectic: fantasy, mystery, science fiction, classic literature, military, philosophy, history, biography, religion—and that was just what she’d noticed.
     
    Yeah, she really liked him. She wanted to sit down with him over a nice meal—just the two of them—and talk. But she knew that friends wouldn’t be enough. Knowing him better would only make that more true. So, then, they couldn’t even be friends.
     
    She’d have to be forthright with him, she decided. Since they wouldn’t be able to avoid him, she’d simply tell him that they couldn’t be friends. Lucie had only just met him. If they didn’t go out of their way to see him, or vice versa, it wouldn’t be long before he was just another neighbor to her in this large complex full of strangers.
     
    So she’d tell him. After dinner.
     
    Which she’d pay him back for.
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    They’d had a lovely dinner, during which Lucie, after tasting Trick’s curry, had announced that tofu was her favorite food. After they’d all three cleaned up, Juliana said, “Well, mija , it’s time to go. We have to do our Sunday things.”
     
    They spent Sunday evenings getting ready for their week—figuring out their outfits and planning their meals. Weekdays were busy from dawn to dusk and sometimes into the night, and Juliana had figured out early on that the only way to manage it all on her own was to be highly organized. Her adult life had begun in a chaotic vortex; now she kept everything in tight control. As much as she possibly could.
     
    “Well,” Trick broke into her thoughts, “Thank you both. It was nice to have company tonight.” He’d spoken as they’d all walked into the living room, toward the front door. Something seemed to occur to him, and he said, “One sec,” and turned to his books. He pulled one out and brought it over: a slim, tattered paperback titled The Phantom Tollbooth . He handed it to Lucie. “Do you know this book?”
     
    Lucie took it and studied the cover. “The Puh-puh-hantom…” She looked up at Trick. “These words are bigger than me.”
     
    Juliana crouched to Lucie’s level and took the book from her hands. “It’s a PH like in Stephanie’s name. It makes an F sound.”
     
    “Phan-tom. Phantom. Oh! Like a ghost!”
     
    “That’s right,” Trick said. “Phantom Tollbooth. A tollbooth is a little building where people pay money so they can take a trip. It’s the first book I remember really liking. I was older than you. I wasn’t as good a reader as you when I was little. But you can have it if you’d like to try it.”
     
    “Okay, thank you,” Lucie said, politely. She was too young to be touched by the depth of Trick’s gesture, and the book was tattered. Not especially appealing to a four-year-old, not even one so precocious as her little girl.
     
    But Juliana was touched by the gesture. Too touched. She kept hold of the book and stood up. “ Mija, why