by Amy Star
With one more goodbye, Ainslie hung up the phone and tossed it towards her pillow.
Carrie was ridiculous. She knew that. Endearingly so, most of the time, but she could be a bit of a handful from time to time.
Despite that, the thought was pretty firmly lodged in Ainslie’s head after that. Malik was very attractive, and he seemed to be a gentleman as far as Ainslie could tell. He wasn’t exactly fully human, but so far that had hardly even caused any disruption, so it didn’t really seem like a problem. (Admittedly, that on its own it was a strange thought, and Ainslie was self-aware enough to acknowledge that.) And he was single. True, Ainslie knew he had been married and that his wife had died, but nothing he had said or done had implied that he was still pining after his late wife.
When it was laid out like that, Carrie’s idea sounded deceptively harmless.
With a groan, Ainslie groped about for her pillow and dragged it over her face, until she shoved it aside only a few seconds later and rolled over, instead burying her face against it. She grumbled under her breath for a few moments and battered one fist halfheartedly against the pillow, before she went limp, arms draped loosely over the pillow on either side of her head.
She should have known better than to mention to Carrie that her employer was hot. Oh, sure, even if she had never brought it up, Ainslie would still have been aware that Malik was nice to look at, and she would still have most likely daydreamed about what it would be like to kiss him, among other things. But it would have been something she could laugh at. It wouldn’t have been something that seemed quite so tempting.
With a drawn-out sigh, she stretched a leg out to close her laptop with her toes and then dragged her blanket over herself. She rolled onto her side and curled up, tugging the blanket over her head.
It took longer than she thought it would to fall asleep that night, and when she managed it, her dreams were odd, to say the least.
She dreamed of a wolf and a bear frisking in circles around her while music played far off in the distance, getting softer and sadder as it got farther and farther away, even as Ainslie tried to follow it without tripping over the wolf or the bear.
When she woke up the next morning, she felt strangely unsettled and she wasn’t even sure why. It hadn’t been a bad dream. Nothing bad had happened to her. It was as if someone had taken a running nightmare and stripped away the danger and foreboding. All the same, though, it left her feeling out of sorts.
As she showered and got dressed, she did her best to put it out of her thoughts, so she could function just like normal as she woke the girls and headed down the stairs to begin the day.
CHAPTER SIX
Malik was in the kitchen already, readying various simple breakfasts. He glanced over his shoulder only briefly as Ainslie entered the room, and he offered a crooked smile before he turned his attention back to the food.
“I promised the girls I would take them shopping tomorrow—well, I promised Andy because she needs things for a school project, and then Lily and Paisley worked their brainwashing magic, but the net result is the same,” he explained, glancing at her sidelong as she came to lean against the edge of the counter. “In town, not in the city,” he added, clarifying before she could even ask the question. “You’re welcome to come along if you’d like to.”
Ainslie found herself nodding before she was even fully aware of it. “Sure,” she agreed. “I don’t see why not, if you don’t mind.”
Mostly she just wanted to see how the girls behaved with Malik outside of the house. She hadn’t seen it yet. If she thought about it, she had barely seen how Malik interacted with his kids at all. It seemed like he was always in the den or out of the house if he wasn’t having some sort of meal with them (or at their grandparents’ house, apparently).
Malik smiled again, lopsided and boyish, and nodded in agreement.
That seemed to be the end of that conversation, and Ainslie detoured to the fridge to grab a pair of lunch boxes before she wandered back out of the kitchen, dodging around the train of girls as they made their way into the kitchen.
Ainslie ground to a halt when she nearly walked straight into Maria. She blinked for a moment, staring at her in confusion. It wasn’t that she had forgotten about Maria, but just that she had barely seen Malik’s personal assistant after that first day, as if she was some sort of ghost who just flitted in and out whenever it was the most convenient.
“Hi,” she greeted belatedly.
“Hello,” Maria returned pleasantly, linking her hands together in front of herself. “Long time no see,” she added. “How have you been settling in?”
“Pretty well,” Ainslie assured her, waving it off with a flippant gesture of one hand. “I’m getting along pretty well with all the girls, and I figure that’s the most important part.”
Maria’s smile seemed a bit too practiced, but Ainslie supposed she couldn’t blame the woman for being polished. It wasn’t like they were required to be friends with each other, considering they had barely even seen each other.
“Will you be going on tomorrow’s shopping trip?” Ainslie wondered, feeling slightly unsettled by the professional pleasantry being aimed straight at her. She had spent too much time around small children; she had gotten a bit too accustomed to emotions being toted along on everyone’s sleeves.
Maria laughed, quiet and brief. “No, that seems a little unnecessary,” she answered. “I have enough work to keep busy even if Mr. Carson isn’t around at the time. Have a good day.”
With one more polished, perfunctory smile, Maria sidestepped past Ainslie and headed into the kitchen.
Listening to her and Malik speak to each other, it was a bit odd, how much more naturally Maria spoke with him. Or not odd, considering Maria had likely known Malik for quite a long time by then, but the contrast was still startling.
Shaking her head slightly, Ainslie headed into the living room to make sure Lily and Andy hadn’t forgotten to pack anything for school that day and to put their lunches into their bags.
She more or less forgot about the chat with Maria entirely after that. Maria left with Malik as he headed to work, and Ainslie could guess from experience that she wouldn’t be seeing her again that afternoon, or possibly even that week.
The day passed normally after that, as Ainslie kept Paisley busy and entertained and coached her through her daily lessons, and as she helped Andy and Lily with their homework after they got home.
The three of them were bent together over the kitchen table while Paisley scribbled across the pages of a coloring book at the opposite end of the table when Malik got home, and Ainslie glanced at him just long enough to see an impossibly fond look on his face before he cleared his throat and glanced away.
On the whole, it was a pretty average day. Maybe that should have been strange, that a day could still qualify as average when two of her three charges were capable of transforming at will, but if it was supposed to make everything permanently weird, then that was a memo that Ainslie hadn’t received. The girls were still the girls. That, at the very least, had not changed.
Granted, knowing that secrecy was no longer a necessity, Lily and Paisley were rather liberal about transforming whenever they so pleased. It wasn’t entirely free from any and all strangeness, of course, but it was nowhere near as strange as Ainslie had expected it to be. She suspected it would be a different story if they were older and larger, but she supposed they were at just the right size for a newcomer to get used to the idea without much of a hassle.
*
Malik worked from the den the next day, so that as soon as Lily got off the bus, all three girls could be rounded up and loaded into one of the cars.
“Shotgun!” Andy called, as Ainslie was busy strapping Paisley into her seat.
“Not on your life,” Malik returned without missing a beat. “You know you only get that in the two-seater because it’s the only option, and we’re not cramming Ainslie into the back like a sardine in a can.”
“You’re smaller,” Malik replied easily, not swayed by her attempt at logic.
“What’s a sardine?” Paisley asked as Andy rolled her eyes and hopped into the back seat.
“A tiny canned fish,” Ainslie replied, checking that Paisley was strapped in correctly. “It’s really salty and really gross, but some people like to eat them.”
Paisley’s opinion on that was a succinct, “Ewwwww.”
Ainslie tapped a finger against the end of Paisley’s nose. “Exactly.” She closed the car door and rounded the car to the passenger side, where she climbed into the front seat.
Malik turned the key in the ignition and began to pull the car out of the driveway.
*
Ainslie spent most of the drive into town turned in her seat to face the back, keeping Paisley and Andy distracted so they would stop poking and prodding and wheedling at each other before Lily, stuck in the middle seat between them, went absolutely crazy.
Luckily it wasn’t a particularly long drive to get into town.
Grey Chapel was, as could be expected of a town reasonably far out into the country, not especially large. Entire sections looked as if they had been plucked out of a Victorian era catalogue, while other sections looked like shrines to masonry. It was quiet and tended to be sleepy and nothing exciting every really happened aside from the occasional car accident, and as a bona fide city dweller, Ainslie was mostly familiar with it because she passed through on occasion when she wanted to go visit her parents. It was not the most fascinating place in the world, to put it shortly. But Main Street had a string of shops that were locally owned and generally fairly well stocked, and it was a good alternative to driving all the way into Crestholme just to do a little bit of shopping.
Well, it was supposed to be a little bit of shopping. At a guess, Ainslie was willing to assume that it would not stay at a little bit of shopping. Paisley and Lily could be quite persuasive, after all.
Malik pulled the car to a halt in a parking space along the edge of Main Street and cut the engine. He turned to look into the back seat and stated very meaningfully, “Remember, there is to be no transforming while we’re here. If either of you start getting too excited then we’re taking you back outside to calm down again, and if you get separated and Ainslie and I lose track of you then you’re going to be in trouble. Understood?”
“Got it,” Lily sighed.
“Yep,” Paisley agreed, the P popping loudly.
It was not a conversation Ainslie ever expected to play audience to.
Malik nodded once. “Right. Let’s get going.”
As Andy and Lily practically flew out of the car, Malik began unstrapping Paisley from her seat, leaving Ainslie to take Lily’s hand.
“Meet you at the shop!” Ainslie called over her shoulder as Andy took off down the sidewalk and Lily practically galloped after her, towing Ainslie along in her wake, like the tiniest buffalo.
Ainslie had never actually spent any time in Grey Chapel, so she had no idea where they were supposed to be going. That was not a problem that Andy was experiencing, as she charged ahead like she was being guided by a sonar, only slowing when she came to the appropriate storefront.
It was a craft shop, as Ainslie learned when she and Lily stepped inside after Andy. Considering Andy seemed fully aware of what she needed and where she needed to find it and there was no worry of her transforming in the middle of the paint aisle, Ainslie was content to let her charge ahead while she and Lily explored at a more leisurely pace.
“Don’t you have a pack exactly like that?” Ainslie wondered wryly as Lily reached up to pull a box of one hundred and fifty crayons off of its hook on the wall.
Lily blinked up at her, trying with remarkable success to look innocent, before she grinned and left the box where it was.
The bell over the front door rang as it opened, joined by the familiar sound of Paisley talking in a long, unbroken stream, as if she was never going to be allowed to speak again if she stopped. Ainslie glanced over her shoulder and paused for Malik to catch up. Paisley was sitting on his shoulders.
“How did you get through the door like that?” Ainslie wondered slowly, glancing from how high up Paisley’s head was and how comparatively low the top of the doorframe was.
With a toothy smile, Paisley bent backwards until she was dangling from her father’s shoulders from her knees. Malik put up with it with a look of fond but long-suffering exasperation as she reached up to grab the back of his shirt to pull herself back upright.
“She didn’t want to come down just to climb back up,” he explained, tone droll. Shaking his head slightly, he moved on. “I’m assuming Andy has already set off on her own.”
“She’s somewhere towards the back of the shop,” Ainslie confirmed. “I’ve been keeping Lily from trying to convince me to buy things she already has.”
Malik huffed out a breath of laughter. “A worthy cause indeed,” he assured her. “One that I’m terrible at myself.”
Bringing a hand to her chest, Ainslie’s tone turned overly earnest and playful as she assured him, “That’s what I’m here for.”
“Amongst other things,” Malik returned.
Pleasantly, Ainslie agreed. “Amongst other things.”
*
Dinner was a surprisingly brief event at a cafe on Main Street. The food was good and none of the girls seemed to have any complaints, but Andy seemed eager to get home and the cafe was sedate enough that Lily and Paisley started getting bored pretty early on.
Ainslie didn’t mind, and Malik didn’t seem to mind either. Not every excursion out of the house had to be a grand event.
*
It was dark by the time the car pulled back into the driveway, and both Paisley and Lily had fallen asleep in their seats, though Andy remained wide awake as she played on her phone in the dark.
“I keep trying to tell her that’s bad for her eyes,” Malik grumbled, though there was no heat to his words. “She never seems to care.”
“That’s because it’s a myth, more or less,” Andy replied without looking up from her phone even as she unbuckled herself. She heaved the back door open and hopped out of the car.
Ainslie snorted and climbed out of the car, rounding it to the back of the car to begin unstrapping Paisley from her seat.
Reluctantly, Lily stirred and woke up, and in a daze, she crawled out of the door that Andy had left open, and she slammed the door shut. She shuffled after Andy, eyes only half-open, and somewhere between the car and the front door she yawned so hugely that Ainslie could hear her jaw crack.
The front door opened and banged closed once again by the time Ainslie had Paisley unstrapped, and she fell into step beside Malik as they headed back into the house. They were quiet as they walked. The silence between them was calm and there was something strangely soothing about it.
Malik held the front door open and Ainslie carried Paisley inside and up the steps to deposit her in her bed. Rather than go through the hassle of waking her back up just to go back to sleep solely for the purpose of putting her pajamas on, Ainslie simply removed the girl’s shoes before pulling the blanket over her.
She poked her head into Lily’s room to check on her, and smiled unconsciously at the sight of her in her pajamas, already passed out on top of her blanket. Ainslie crept quietly into the room to tuck the blanket over her before creeping out just as quietly.
She poked her head into Andy’s room next, to see her sitting up on her bed, dressed in her pajamas but still fully awake, her head only scant inches away from the ceiling. She was holding her ukulele and had a pencil tucked behind her ear, and she was scowling vaguely at the wall. She hadn’t even noticed Ainslie’s presence. Ainslie ducked out of the room again without bothering her.
Heading back down the stairs, she turned towards the den. Th
e door was open, and predictably, Malik was inside. He glanced up with a crooked smile when Ainslie knocked her knuckles against the doorframe, offering her a wry, “Come in.”
Ainslie strolled in, her arms folded over her chest. “Paisley’s asleep. Lily’s asleep. Andy’s ready for bed but got sidetracked by one of her instruments.”
“That sounds about right,” Malik replied, his tone affectionate.
“And you’re at your desk again,” Ainslie carried on, “just like always. That sounds about right.”
Malik looked startled, just for a brief instant, before he smiled crookedly and laughed. “I suppose it really is that often,” he mused, and there was something slightly distant about his voice, as if it was only just occurring to him right in that moment.