This time Michael snorted. The oldest, Michael was the only one who inherited their father’s coloring of dark brown hair and eyes while she and the other brothers favored their mom. He also inherited their father’s stubborn streak and overdeveloped sense of responsibility, leading to the nickname Dad Two while they were growing up. “No boy would ever have dared climb through your window, Ris. Remember when you hit puberty? Dad started to clean his guns on the front porch.”
“Hell yes, I did. You look like your mother, who was only the most beautiful woman to ever be born. I saw her for the first time when she was sixteen and I was seventeen and I remember exactly what I wished I could be doing to her. No way any little punk was going to think those things about my daughter.”
“Dad!” Larissa protested.
“Well, it’s true.”
Any parent could embarrass their kids during the teenage years, but only a true virtuoso could embarrass them into their twenties and beyond.
She opened her mouth to force out some sort of retort – what, she didn’t know – but her dad’s focus wasn’t on her. He was looking to the left of her, where a picture of Lauren Miller hung on the wall, frozen forever in the prime of her life.
Guilt, thick and familiar, churned through her body and soured every cell it enveloped. Even after all these years her father’s love for her mother was undimmed. It was the stuff of fairy tales, but because of her the fairy tale was cut short.
Her, and the Great Collision.
And now she was going to stir up bad memories, talk about things they avoided in this house. Gods knew she didn’t want to hurt him, but she couldn’t think of who else to talk to.
Larissa kept her head down and mouth full for the rest of the meal, letting the brothers talk. The meal was winding down; spoons clinked against flatware and a good portion of the side dishes were gone. It was now or never to start asking questions.
She wiped her damp palms against the legs of her jeans and began. “Dad, do you know what would happen if the city was ever attacked?”
Her father paused in bringing the cornbread to his mouth. “What do you mean?”
“Attacked. Like by a group of wizards, or some magical creature, or whatever.”
Jack waved his spoon in the air, dismissing the possibility without words. “We’ve got wards to protect us.”
If only you knew the folly of that statement. “But what if the wards failed?”
“They wouldn’t. Believe me, we go through a lot every year to get them renewed.”
Had she really been this complacent that she never thought to think beyond these answers before? Why did it take getting attacked to ask these questions? A five-year-old wouldn’t accept these types of simplistic answers, but she had, all of her life. “Isn’t there a back-up plan?”
The lines bracketing Jack’s mouth went from charming to hardened as his lips thinned. “Baby girl, what’s this about?”
Her father’s tone roughened, taking on that edge that said to anyone who knew Jack Miller they should back off.
Dad hated talking about anything to do with the New Realms, and Larissa hated to bring this up to him. In any other situation, she’d be shutting her mouth right now.
But the wards had failed, and there was a secret group of protectors of the city. Would this info be a surprise to Dad, or was withholding this information another of the ways Jack Miller protected his family, most specifically her? Larissa’s hands went up in supplication and she continued. “I’m curious. I got asked in class today about it and I realized I had no idea what the answer was. I figured it was something I should probably know.”
“Well, there’s nothing to worry about. The wards have held for over twenty years. They’re not going to fail.”
Her father dug into what was left of his chili, his signal that this discussion was at an end. Larissa rubbed the back of her neck. “Are there any exceptions to who can get past the wards or when?”
The spoon dropped from Jack’s hand, a loud clank resounding through the room, and the tension from the brothers was now palpable as they looked between her and Dad. “Larissa Joy, where is this coming from?”
His anger kindled a similar blaze in her. She wasn’t being unfair in her questions, and he needed to stop treating her as though she were eight. “I’m asking reasonable questions and you aren’t giving me any answers. Wards are magical barriers. So what happens if the wizard who set them is incompetent, or has been blackmailed or bought off? And magic is dispelled all the time. But you sit there and act like none of these are a possibility, that I shouldn’t concern myself over it.”