Fen shook his head. “It’s your first night with Mom. I’ll be fine.”
“He needs to run since he won’t do the other thing,” Evan said firmly.
“Your dad and I are fine. We spent the whole afternoon together.” I didn’t want Trent to go but I had a few things to deal with here, and it was easy to see not running on the full moon was having an impact on Fen. The last thing I wanted was him out there alone. “Go and have a good time, and I’ll see you tomorrow for breakfast. I’ll catch you both up on everything we get done tonight.”
Fen frowned. “Are you sure?”
I got into his space and brushed his hair back like I used to when he was a kid. “I am sure. Evan will help me with the investigation.”
Evan gasped slightly. “I get to investigate? I usually get put on the sidelines.”
“Uhm, not with me you won’t. Or your mom. You should understand the chicks are back, and we’re going to take control,” I replied. The queen and I didn’t sit on the sidelines. Our daughters wouldn’t either.
Evan grinned and picked up the backpack again. “Excellent. Then I have questions about the book. I hope you don’t mind I looked through it. I didn’t get far because the words disappeared the minute Fen looked over my shoulder.”
“The words disappeared?” Jamie asked.
Nate’s eyes went wide. “I thought we needed that book. Should we be panicking?”
I waved off the fear. “Nah. She’s just shy and she doesn’t like men.”
“That book is rude,” Fen declared.
I hadn’t even thought about the fact that Evan and I would be the only ones who could read the sucker. I’d worried about taking the queen’s baby girl with us, but I now realized I totally needed her. “They’ll come back. It can take a while though.”
“Maybe it’ll go faster if we do some feminine things around her,” Evan suggested.
“I don’t think doing mani pedis is going to help anything,” Casey said with a sigh.
“I was thinking more along the lines of kicking the guys’ asses. She might appreciate that,” Evan offered. “I could use a sparring session. I don’t get to work off my sexual tension in wolf form.”
I liked the way that girl thought.
Both of my brothers put a single finger to their noses and said in harmony, “Not it.”
Casey frowned. “Well, I’m not it.”
“Spoilsports.” Evan pulled the backpack into her hands and settled it on her back. “Come along, book. We’ll follow Kelsey around and watch her baddassery and solve a crime while the boys play with microscopes and run around the woods. We have to find a murderer.”
Yep. Woman’s work.