by Amy Star
Ainslie tipped her head to one side. “Are you alright with that?” she wondered slowly. The girls’ thoughts on the matter were important to her, after all. Malik was their dad.
For a moment, Andy seemed stuck, as if she was thinking too hard and everything was just going in circles. Finally, though, she sighed and turned her head to lean her chin on top of Christopher’s head.
“I guess it’s okay,” she mumbled, running one hand down the cat’s back from the base of his skull all the way down to the base of his tail. “I mean, it’s sort of… weird.” She didn’t elaborate on that, but Ainslie could understand why it might seem weird for the nanny and her dad to be together. “But it’s okay.”
It was a relief, of course, but Ainslie didn’t have any time to say as much before Andy was carrying on, a look of determination on her face, as if she had to say the words right then and there or else she would never say them again.
“I mean, he hasn’t really had… anyone, since Mom died. And, I mean—she was my mom and I love her, but I worry, you know? That he’s just never even going to bother looking for someone.” Andy didn’t sound like she was only twelve-years-old just then, and Ainslie couldn’t help but to wonder just how long she had been worrying about it. “And I like you,” she continued, her words picking up speed as she spoke, giving them no time to stall and giving herself no time to rethink whatever she was going to say. Evidently it was quite important.
“And you seem… good for him, I guess? I don’t know. He’s happier, at any rate, and I figure that’s important.” By then, she was mostly talking to Christopher’s back, rather than looking at Ainslie’s face. “So…” Finally, it sounded as if she was winding down, her words beginning to come to a close. “It’s a little weird, but it’s okay. I’m glad he found someone.”
Evidently content to leave things at that, Andy ducked her face against Christopher’s fur and backed out of the room. Ainslie let her leave. If she expected a thank you or anything else, then she likely wouldn’t have beaten such a hasty retreat.
There was a warmth in Ainslie’s chest as she stared at the empty doorway. She felt… touched. Andy could be prickly at the best of times, and Ainslie would be lying if she said she hadn’t been worried about how the girls would react when they found out, Andy especially. And while it was a bit of a disappointment that Andy had simply put the pieces together, figured it out on her own, and confronted Ainslie on it, it had still gone far smoother than Ainslie had ever expected it to go.
And if Andy was so willing to accept that her father was in a relationship (were they in a relationship, though? Ainslie wasn’t sure, though she wanted to think that they were) then it boded well for how Lily and Paisley would react, assuming they weren’t really old enough to understand the implications. Of course, Ainslie had been working with kids long enough to know not to underestimate them.
*
Malik would be home from work soon enough. Which meant he would be around and Ainslie could leave the house for a little while. She had already decided that it was time for her to actually have a chat with Maria. She had put it off for long enough, and it wasn’t as if she was going to figure out the entirety of whatever was going on if she plugged her ears, stuck her head in the sand, and ignored everything.
Even so, she was worried.
Pacing back and forth along the length of the upstairs hallway, she dialed Carrie’s number into her phone and brought it to her ear. It rang for only a moment before Carrie picked up with a spritely, “You’ve reached the Swamp Water Cafe. If it smells like a bog we make it here. What can I do for you?”
Ainslie rolled her eyes. “Really?”
Carrie snorted out a laugh. “Seriously, what’s up?”
“I’m going to talk to the PA once Malik gets back from work,” Ainslie stated bluntly.
Carrie let out a joyous whoop, and Ainslie could just imagine her pumping one fist into the air in excitement. “Great!” she declared. “What’s the catch?”
“I’m worried,” Ainslie returned, practically whining as she said it. “She knows Malik a lot better than I do and she already doesn’t like me. What if she does something to turn him against me?”
“Ainsliiiiie,” Carrie whined, drawing out the last syllable of Ainslie’s name. “She’s the one in the wrong here! He already knows that. Everything is going to be fine.”
Carrie sounded so sure as she said it, and Ainslie took comfort from that. Just in time, too, as she could hear Malik coming in the front door. Which meant it was about time for her to go.
*
The drive to Maria’s house wasn’t particularly long; she lived just outside of Grey Chapel. Her house was small, off white, and unadorned and her landscaping was minimal. Ainslie would never say it out loud, but the first word that came to mind to describe it was boring.
Ainslie parked on the street in front of the house, since parking in the driveway seemed strangely presumptuous, and she sat in the car for a few long moments before she took a breath and got out of the car. She made the short trek to the front door at a jog and knocked quickly, knuckles rapping rapidly on the door.
For almost a full minute, she simply stood there, until finally the door opened. Maria blinked at her, bemused, before she offered a slow, “Hi…?”
“Ah—hi.” Ainslie cleared her throat. “I figured we should have a talk with each other. Can I come in?” She gestured expectantly at the door. “I promise I won’t take up too much of your time.”
Maria seemed suspicious, which didn’t really bode well, but dutifully she stepped back and ushered Ainslie into the house.
The inside of the house suited the outside, and Ainslie couldn’t help but to assume Maria didn’t spend much personal time at home. But that wasn’t what she was there about.
Maria looked like she was going to offer tea, but Ainslie didn’t give her a chance. There wasn’t much of a point in pretending at civility that wasn’t actually there. Without wasting any time, Ainslie simply launched into it.
“I know you were in my room while all of us were gone,” she stated bluntly, and for a moment Maria looked at her like a startled hare. “I’m not going to ask why,” Ainslie continued, because she suspected she wouldn’t get an honest answer, “but I just want you to know that I am aware it happened and I don’t think it’s okay.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Maria took a deep breath. Before she could reply, though, a phone began to ring in a different room. Slowly, Maria sighed. “Just wait here,” she stated, before she breezed past Ainslie to answer the phone. The door closed behind her, keeping Ainslie from listening in on the conversation.
Instead, she began to mosey around the room, if only because it was something to do while she waited. She wasn’t even looking for anything in particular; it was mostly luck and idle curiosity that led to her peering over the papers on the desk.
It seemed like she was trying to broker some sort of trade between herself and another client, though everything about him and most of the messages’ contents seemed to be in some sort of informal code.
It seemed that the client wanted subject grey for something or other, but Maria was trying to convince him to take subject black because subject grey was still too small and would be for quite a while yet, while subject black had recently reached an appropriate size for whatever it was the client wanted.
The client was adamant, though, in wanting subject grey, even if it meant that Maria had to use more than one subject to finish the project.
Ainslie couldn’t tell what any of the correspondence was about, but it left a bad taste in her mouth. She glanced towards the door to make sure Maria wasn’t coming back yet, and she began leafing through the messages, taking pictures of them with her phone. Malik knew Maria far better than she did; he might have some idea of what the messages meant.
(She supposed she might get in trouble for poking through Maria’s things, but considering everything else that had been happening, that concer
n seemed rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things.)
The door began to open again, and Ainslie shoved her phone back into her pocket and stepped away from the desk, making her way back towards where she had been standing when Maria left to answer the phone, so it looked as if she had done little more than rock back and forth in one place for a bit.
Maria sighed and pulled the door closed again as she stepped back into the room. “Sorry about that,” she offered, all polished politeness once again, though it wilted slightly as Ainslie just blinked at her expectantly. Lifting a hand, Maria pinched the bridge of her nose before she dragged her hand down her face.
“I owe you an apology,” she stated finally, her hands falling back to her sides for a moment before she linked them together behind her back. “I had no business invading your space while you weren’t there to invite me in, and I have no business letting my personal feelings towards you or the Carson family get in the way of me doing my job. I promise you, I won’t let it happen again.”
Slowly, Ainslie nodded, offering a low, “Alright,” in return. “Then I guess that’s that.” Even so, the apology didn’t quite sit well with her. It seemed too practiced, as if Maria was simply saying what she knew would sound the politest, rather than offering words with any sort of real meaning behind them.
But Ainslie didn’t want to linger to try and wrestle a real apology out of her, especially when just thinking about it in those terms made her more and more sure that she was just being overly paranoid.
Besides, she had the photos on her phone and she wanted to show them to Malik. She didn’t know what they meant, and she didn’t even know if he would understand them, but either way, they didn’t sit well with her.
She left after a brief, stilted goodbye, heading back across the yard to the street, where she climbed back into her car. The drive back to the Carson house seemed to pass in a flash, and Ainslie could hardly even remember any of it past the moment she had turned the key in the ignition. Her thoughts had been rather occupied, she supposed.
Malik was in the middle of making dinner as she stepped inside, though. She would wait until the girls were in bed before she brought up her concerns.
*
Malik rubbed the back of his head with one hand, staring down at Ainslie’s phone as she scrolled through pictures. Every so often he had to tell her to slow down so he could zoom in on something, but on the whole he seemed to be keeping up just fine.
Or at least he was keeping up about as well as Ainslie’s was, she reflected to herself as Malik shook his head and shrugged helplessly.
“It makes about as much sense to me as it does to you,” he replied, folding his arms over his chest and shifting his weight to one side. It wasn’t the response Ainslie had been expecting, but at least it made her feel a bit less like an idiot for not understanding the coded messages.
“But it is weird, right?” Ainslie asked, just to make sure she wasn’t going crazy. She supposed it was entirely possible that she was just being overly paranoid.
“It is weird,” Malik agreed without a hesitation. “And sort of… ominous,” he added, making a face when the words didn’t come out quite the way he wanted. With a sigh, he pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers before he dragged his hand down his face.
“I’ll put out an ad for a new personal assistant,” he decided. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it doesn’t seem good, and I would rather it not spill over into my house, whatever it is. Unless whatever she’s up to proves to be dangerous, she can hold onto her job until I have a new hire lined up.”
“Are you going to tell her?” Ainslie wondered, her words low and wary. Considering the events of the day, it would be impossible for Maria not to know that Ainslie was somehow involved in her being fired. And while Ainslie didn’t really know Maria, she at least knew that she would want to confront someone getting her fired.
“I’m going to tell her that I’m looking for a replacement,” Malik confirmed carefully, “but I think I’m going to keep the exact reasoning to myself.”
It made sense, Ainslie supposed. She just hoped no one would get in trouble for it. The last thing she wanted was Maria demanding some sort of confrontation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
To Ainslie’s confusion and surprise, there was no confrontation with Maria. It wasn’t that they never saw each other—she was still working while Malik searched for a replacement, so she was still at the house most mornings—but Maria simply… carefully pretended that Ainslie didn’t exist. They occasionally passed through each other’s orbits, but that was about it. Frankly, Ainslie was perfectly okay with that.
Time passed. She supposed eventually she would stop tracking time in terms of “when is the next full moon?” but for the time being, that was how she was keeping track of things. It would become normal eventually, but she suspected that would be a while down the line.
Two weeks meandered past. Fall was in full swing and Halloween came and went. Paisley dressed as a bat, Lily was a superhero, and Andy was about as glamorous of a Rockstar as Ainslie had ever seen. Ainslie simply donned a green cape that had a hood and was easy to move in and Malik dressed up as a cowboy, and all of them piled into the car to go trick-or-treating in Grey Chapel.
And time continued to pass after that. Malik and Ainslie kissed and held hands and she was able to distract him for longer and longer periods of time in the den, because once he was home from work he was supposed to feel like he was allowed to stop working. Nothing extreme happened—the closest they got to undressing was Ainslie’s hands up his shirt—but she was alright with that. She was content to take it slow. She wanted to do it right.
Malik deserved for it to be done right. For it to happen in a way that wouldn't disrupt his life or his family. And besides, Ainslie didn’t want it to seem like she was just trying to swoop into the girls’ lives. She adored Andy, Lily, and Paisley, and they deserved better than that.
Besides, she was content. She was happy. Even Carrie commented on it on the phone from time to time. Considering she seemed to be allergic to emotions and examining them most of the time, if Carrie was actually bringing it up then Ainslie supposed it was pretty hard to ignore.
So she was willing to count herself lucky.
*
There were two weeks until the next full moon. Fourteen days. Absentmindedly, Ainslie pondered plans for Thanksgiving. Malik had mentioned it a few times. Never very seriously, but enough that Ainslie still knew it was something the family celebrated.
Personally, it was her favorite holiday. Christmas had never seemed so important without her family around. They were so rarely able to come together from so many corners of the country. On Thanksgiving, it was more excusable to include found family rather than just blood family or married family.
Malik found her in the kitchen scrolling through recipes on her laptop at the table. She didn’t even notice him at first, until he came up behind her and leaned over her, his hands folded on top of her head and his chin resting on top of them.
“I don’t think that’s how an armrest is supposed to work,” Ainslie observed eventually. “But I could probably be wrong.”
“Obscure were-animal tradition,” he stated earnestly, nodding against the top of her head.
Ainslie rolled her eyes and reached back to swat at his shoulder with the back of one hand. “You are so full of shit,” she informed him wryly.
He didn’t object to that statement, but Ainslie was pretty sure no one appreciated how full of shit Malik could be quite as much as Malik did.
He started pointing out a few links to recipes that looked good. He felt no need to move from his spot behind her and Ainslie felt no need to dislodge him.
*
There were thirteen days until the next full moon, and Ainslie found herself quietly wondering why most calendars automatically had full moons and new moons marked on them. It seemed like the sort of thing the average person wouldn’t really need to kn
ow. Maybe there was more influence from were-animals in the world than she was aware of.
She was contemplating that line of thought in an aimless, meandering way in the morning when Maria stepped into the kitchen.
They stared at each other for a long, drawn-out moment. Slowly, Maria pasted her polite, polished, perfect smile into place and asked, “How is your morning going so far?”
Ainslie cleared her throat. “Pretty well,” she supplied. “You?”
“Just fine,” Maria assured her, and her smile seemed to get even more polite. “I just need to get started compiling some important information for whoever takes over for me.”
It was meant to be a jab. That was pretty clear. But Ainslie wasn’t going to rise to that bait. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t apologize. She just nodded her head in a manner that conveyed that she thought that was a perfectly good idea.