Third Solstice CALIBRE with cover Read Online Free PDF Page B

and his kitchen and his morning were perfectly normal apart from the shattered crockery. Lee was sweeping up. Gideon grabbed a dustpan and brush and went to help him.
    They worked in silence until every shard was gone. Gideon hoovered the sugar from around the table, Isolde snuffling at his heels. He set the toaster upright, checked that it was still working, and went to join Lee by the side of the pen. Together they stood and watched their daughter, who seemed to be putting on a display of ordinary babyhood for them, drooling and gnawing on a teething ring. After a moment she grinned and pointed at Gideon, as if assigning him to speak first. “You’re a troublemaker, you are,” he told her, resting his hands on the top bar of the pen.
    “Oh, she’s a troublemaker?”
    Reluctantly Gideon met Lee’s gaze. “I didn’t mean to throw him out of the house.” Lee’s eyebrows rose, and he reviewed his words and actions. “Okay. Yes, I did.”
    “He’s lucky he doesn’t have the print of your size-ten on his backside.”
    “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
    “Do you remember, a little while back—when I’d thought it was okay not to get our adoption papers formalised, and you disagreed?”
    “Yeah. I remember that.”
    “And I said afterwards that it was okay for you—nobody else, just you—to put your foot down with me?”
    Gideon nodded miserably. He supposed it wasn’t okay all the time. That he could go too far, even for Lee. Despite their differences, Lee and Zeke had developed their own strong bond. “You heard what he said.”
    “Yes. Sometimes you have to be boss. You were defending your family, and I’m grateful.”
    Not as grateful as Gideon. He took a deep breath, oxygen and relief flaring. He put out an arm and Lee walked into it. “I see,” he said, holding him tight. “I can be boss, as long as it’s all right with you?”
    “Something along those lines.”
    “Do you see the irony of that?”
    “Plainly. What are we going to do, Gid? He called her a demon. And that came from someone who loves her. Who loves us .”
    “He’s a twat. He doesn’t love anybody.”
    Lee led him back to the table. Neither of them quite wanted to sit down in the chair Zeke had knocked over in his wrath. Lee perched on the table edge, drawing Gideon to stand between his thighs. “That’s not true.”
    “I know. But he was so terrified, or mind-blown, or whatever it was, that he forgot he loves her, and I was so pissed off with him that I never even found out why he came here in the first place.”
    “He was worried about something.”
    “Something to do with Eleanor. I thought he said Elowen and I nearly bloody died.” He rubbed his brow against Lee’s, feeling the rush and wash of his own fears reflected there, the margins of a storm-racked sea. “It’s going to be a problem, isn’t it—this new thing of Tamsyn’s?”
    “Yes. I don’t think I’m being a fussy dad if I say that psychokinesis is not gonna help our kid integrate into society. We have to stop her.”
    “How?”
    “In so many ways she’s ordinary. And she’s just started doing this. Maybe we can stop her in the same way we would if she’d started doing anything else that was...” Lee’s voice roughened. “That was wrong.”
    “You don’t think it’s wrong at all.”
    “Nor do you, because she’s your baby and you can’t believe any harm of her. But she’s too little to control it, and even if she ever learns, she’ll terrify some people, and others—worst-case scenario—will want her strapped down in a military lab somewhere, being dissected for her weapons potential.”
    “Fuck’s sake, love.”
    “I said it was worst-case. Stop her, Gideon. Teach her not to, just like you taught her not to pull Isolde’s tail or crawl too near the fire. Don’t even think about it.”
    Gideon straightened up. He let Lee go and went to crouch by the playpen. He had done those things, hadn’t he? They hadn’t