9. Violence isn’t a problem.
NINE
Violence isn’t a problem.
Quinn
To mitigate the damage the two children could do to my wallet and sanity, I waited until two hours from closing to take them to a bookstore.
With Sunny in tow, closer to closing time would help, too.
Explaining to the staff that the puppy was a police dog in training would help, and someone had possessed the foresight to provide a training vest and harness for the puppy in several sizes.
As expected, the instant the employees heard Sunny would be a work dog, they fell for her furry charms, and as I had the attention of the employees anyway, I recruited them to help with my purchases.
To do my duty as a book-providing parent, I needed to get them e-readers.
As gorgon whelps tended to be more careful with possessions than human children, I asked the employees to recommend their best models, and I splurged on good cases for them.
Once I paid for them, I took a few minutes to set each child up with an account and plugged in my credit card info.
“Perkins?”
“I have a feeling I’m not going to like what you’re about to ask me to do.”
I laughed and handed him Sylvester’s new e-reader, which had a blue cover because he loved the color blue more than life itself. “Yep. I don’t think I can operate two e-readers at one time. Can you watch Sunny, too?”
“Sure.” Perkins claimed the leash, and the puppy obediently sat at my friend’s feet. “Requirements for books?”
“If he wants to read it, get it for him. Just steer him away from the adult romance section.”
“Violence?”
“Violence isn’t a problem, and I’m capable of giving them the talk if there are adult-centric scenes.”
“Right. Incubus.”
I chuckled at that. “Yep. I had my first talk when I was two. I think I can handle giving it to them if it hasn’t been done already.”
Beauty tugged my hand. “Daddy doesn’t let us read out of the girly section for mommies, but we can read anything else.”
I translated ‘girly section for mommies’ as adult romance, and I fought my urge to laugh at their father’s description of the genre. “We’ll talk about why soon,” I promised.
“We’re too young.”
“Ah, you are, but there’s a reason why you’re too young, and you should know. If you’re old enough to ask the questions or be curious about it, you’re old enough to hear the answer.”
Both children stared at me with wide eyes. Smiling, I shooed Sylvester off, and it only took a word from Perkins to get the boy running across the bookstore to begin his rampage.
“He likes Nancy Drew,” Beauty whispered. “Daddy doesn’t approve but lets him read it anyway.”
“Hey, Perkins?” I called.
Perkins caught Sylvester’s hand so he wouldn’t lose him and turned. “What?”
“Get the entire Nancy Drew collection for him. That should keep him busy. Ask if he wants the Hardy Boys while you’re at it.”
“Do you know how many books that is?” Perkins complained.
“No, but my wallet can handle it, I promise.”
He sighed, nodded, and resumed allowing Sylvester to drag him across the bookstore.
“We’re never going to hear from my brother again. I’ll miss him.”
“It’ll be fine, Beauty. What type of books do you like?”
She pointed at the horror section. “All of those.”
Uh oh. “You like the books that have the most pages because they take longer to read, don’t you?”
She nodded.
Book dragons. I’d somehow fallen prey to a pair of book dragons. Bailey would laugh herself sick once she found out. “Okay. Show me your favorites first, and I’ll get those. Then you can show me the ones you’ve wanted to read but don’t have yet.”
“But that’s all of them.”
Beauty must have been somehow spending time with Bailey. “Humor me, please?”
She secured her hold on my hand and pulled me to the horror section, where she proceeded to go to several authors, pointing at them and all of their books first. The thinnest book was over an inch thick, and I dutifully plugged in their names, purchasing every one of their titles I could while she waited patiently.
While on the shelf, the collections didn’t seem too intimidating, but the first batch of books had over a hundred and fifty titles.
My poor wallet.
“How long does it take you to read one of these?”
“If I have quiet time, a day each or so, I guess. But I don’t get a lot of quiet time.”
Beauty would discover she’d get several hours of quiet time a day, as Bailey would love discovering she had book-crazed kids to keep her company. I enjoyed reading, too, but I found I was easily distracted whenever Bailey giggled at something she liked in her latest book.
I spent more time watching Bailey than reading.
I needed to work on that.
After she did her best to clean out my bank account in the horror section, she headed to the thriller section, targeted every spy book in the section, and ran back and forth trying to figure out which author to ask for first. Laughing, I observed until I was able to isolate several she kept going to, chucking all their books into the digital shopping cart to continue the sad destruction of my wallet. “Your top three favorites, please?”
She halted, and her serpents swayed while she tried to decide. I’d gotten two of her three choices right, and I added the third author’s books.
According to my cart, I had an entire year’s worth of books for her if she only read one a day. A wise tamer of book dragons, however, got a buffer. “Do you like science fiction and fantasy?”
She sucked in a breath, and she nodded so hard I worried she gave her poor snakes whiplash.
“I’ll add my favorite authors for you, so we’ll keep those ones a surprise for now. Do you enjoy children’s books or young adult books?”
“Sometimes, but Daddy gets frustrated when I ask for them because I usually read big people books.”
“You can read just about any book you want, and honestly, if you get a hold of a girly book meant for mommies, I can answer your questions and explain why they’re meant for mommies.”
“They’re full of filth.”
I rolled my eyes at that. Gorgons had a monopoly on the filth market; most of them disliked limiting themselves to threesomes, and they didn’t discriminate gender when it came to their personal relationships.
One size fit all for them, and I found their special brand of love endearing despite the angelic genes that made it impossible for me to handle living in traditional gorgon society. “Not precisely, but you’ll find out soon enough.”
I was pretty certain at least one of the books I’d gotten for her had some borderline material.
“Okay. He didn’t like our mommies reading them.”
Ah-ha. Understanding why the gorgon male wouldn’t approve of his wives reading romance novels made me laugh.
“That’s because he wants to make your mommies happy and he may have thought he wasn’t doing that because they were reading those types of books.
They’re usually about women finding new love in their lives.
That’s not a bad thing, but gorgon males?
We get jealous of our ladies easily. Bailey reads the tame ones because she likes it.
I can ask her which ones are safe for you to read, because there are some that are a little too blunt about what happens between women and men in private. ”
“Oh! That.”
Right. That. “If you want some of those books, I’ll talk to Bailey and find some suitable for you.”
“Really?”
“Of course. Anything else you want to read?”
“Can we go into the non-fiction section?”
I nodded. “What kind of non-fiction do you want to read?”
“I want to learn how to cook.”
Under no circumstances could I afford to laugh at her request. “I have some cookbooks at home, but you can get a few here. We’ll get those as printed books. Printed books are better for cooking in the kitchen.”
Her eyes widened. “Printed cookbooks?”
“Yep. We’ll get them in print.” I scanned the store, spotted the cookbook section, and guided her to it. “What type of food do you want to cook?”
“Chinese?”
Oh boy. I’d have my hands full trying to figure out how to cook Chinese food. I expected I’d have to get a gas stove installed in the kitchen, although I suspected Bailey would be game to breathe fire under a wok while we cooked outside.
She’d love it without reservation.
“All right. We’ll get a Chinese cookbook. What else?”
“We don’t like spicy food.”
“Got nailed with some hot peppers?”
She nodded so hard I worried for her poor serpents again. “I think I can work around that condition. How about barbecue?”
“It’s too spicy.”
“It doesn’t have to be. It can be sweet.”
“You mean it doesn’t have to be red and catch my mouth on fire?”
Good God. What was their father putting on their barbecue?
“I’ll show you some pictures of good barbecue.
” It took me a few minutes to find a suitable cookbook, but when I showed her the pictures, she gasped.
“Daddy’s barbecue looks nothing like that.
That looks yummy! Even that yellow stuff looks yummy. ”
I suspected her father had picked up a bottle of hot sauce, slathered it on, and called it barbecue.
That happened in New York often enough. “That yellow stuff would be corn.” I tucked the cookbook under my arm and pointed at a monster of a Chinese cookbook, which was over three inches thick and promised the secrets of Chinese cooking.
“That one might work for your Chinese experiments.”
Beauty snagged the book, grunting at its weight. “It’s so big.”
“Look inside. Does it have good instructions?”
She sat on the floor, set the book in front of her, and within twenty seconds, it held her undivided attention.
I kept a close eye on her, snagging a few more cookbooks by chefs Bailey liked watching on television sometimes. Once I had enough to get Beauty started on the basics, I set the pile down, gently took the book away, and put it on the pile. “You can continue reading it in the car, okay?”
“Okay!”
Setting her e-reader on the top of the stack, I headed for the counter. “We’ll buy these and go see how your brother is doing.”
“He’s probably on the floor reading the first book he saw. He does that.”