15)

I glared up at the two little faces looking out at me from the window they had cracked open. "Does "Hide where no one can see you" mean something different these days?"

Sara opened his mouth to say something snide, but Ami cut her off. "We're on the other side of the building from the kitchen and the window was open before she pulled up. When we heard the car we got out of sight but didn't want to get seen getting the window closed."

“Well...” so what am I supposed to say here? I guess nothing since I don’t want Alfonzo to come looking for me and hear me yelling up at a second-story window in a supposedly empty house. That sort of thing gets people talking. "Just stay away from the windows and keep it down. We'll talk about this later."

I got an eager nod and a sour glare, you know which came from which. Then I collected the Sheriff’s card with her cell and office numbers.

So... I'm outed. Since she wasn't trying to stare me down and bark out orders, this might even be a good thing. I guess I will have to get through dinner to find out, and I'm going to have to leave the kids here alone while I do so, since I don't want anyone to know they're here.

Is Sara old enough to watch the other two? I mean, she did get them here, but in a legal sense?

I took a deep breath and decided to deal with priorities.

First, check in with Alfonzo and his sidekick.

“Looks like an easy install boss, the "car" didn't do anywhere near the amount of damage I was thinking it would. We should be able to remount the new door in just an hour or so."

Well, it looked like I going to make it to dinner.

I offered to brew them up some coffee but I was only able to get them to agree to some bottled water after they deferred.

Next, I called Minute Maids and told them not to come in this week to clean the house. I offered to still pay, but they said not to worry about it.

Then upstairs.

Sara was pacing around while the younger two were playing video games again. The oldest was all set to begin asking the first of many questions. But taking a lesson from her younger sister I cut her off before she could get started. "Are you old enough to watch the other two?"

She set her fists on her hips. “I’m thirteen.”

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I nodded at her, “That was old enough once, but I don’t know what the laws say nowadays. For all I know you might need a degree and a license to do it now."

She huffed at me but brightened up when I asked her to "Make a shopping list, I'll pick up some groceries after dinner, but keep in mind it's a small town store. So include some alternatives to whatever it is that you wanted."

I left them to it while I took care of one last thing.

The secret room off the library was at best guess meant to be an office, although the house came with at least two other rooms also clearly meant to be offices. But the secret one was behind a bookshelf that opened up like a door and had a well ventilated if windowless room.

This is where I kept my real gun cabinet and my ammunition.

Also my comic book collection, it’s a good sized room.

The tempered glass fronted gun cabinet in the library only had working replicas. Those ones I never bother to keep ammunition around for since I had no interest in ever shooting them other than at a gun range. And there I could just buy what I needed for the day.

What I thought of as my real one was a steel cabinet that had belonged to my uncle and had my old hunting rifle, my duty revolver, my father's shotgun, and the bulk of my uncle's collection of firearms. No one else had wanted them and I had just never gotten around to selling them off.

Now I had the space to keep them and no need for the money from selling them. So I had decided I'd just hang on to them until they become one of my heir's problems to deal with. You know, the same thing my uncle had done to me.

If the Sheriff was planning on making a power play, swing by again with some backup... what was I going to do?

Wait...was I actually having some fantasy about trying to defend my home by myself and fight off a horde of snarling werewolves out to make me bow down and kiss their boss’s boots?

With three little kids in my home...

Crap, crap, crap. Even if it was just me, that was a stupid kid’s way of thinking. Even now, after becoming a lycanthrope, I’m still not Rambo.

Why the hell was I thinking like this?

The Sheriff’s reacting to me like a dangerous wild animal was starting to make sense. Part of becoming what we were must include a heaping dose of aggression, something I’m going to need to watch out for.

How else is this affecting me?

I put the keys to the gun cabinet back in my pocket and made a decision. Whatever the wants, she gets.

At least while I got kids here to protect, after that, I got a lot of money, and whole families of magic warriors for hire being around was apparently a thing…

That’s when I heard the eldest's voice pipe up outside the room. "Is that a Gatling gun?”

I stepped out of the secret room, pulling the bookshelf behind me with a soft click as the latch snapped shut. Causing Sara to jump at the sound.

She took that stance again as she gave me a suspicious stare, "Why do you have a room full of weapons?"

I looked around at the gun cabinet, the swords rack, the knife and dagger array, and all the other historic weapons as well as the polished Gatling gun in the glass case in the middle of the room.

"I had collected a few items over the years, and some of my friends gave me their stuff once they had kids around. Which reminds me. I guess I should lock the room up while you three are here."

She looked left to right, giving the whole collection a slow look before looking back at me. “How many friends do you have?”

I shrugged, “I may have gone on a shopping spree after winning the lotto, and I may have gotten a bit carried away. Besides it’s actually a library, I just didn’t have enough books to fill it up.”

She stared at me for a moment before asking. “Can I borrow the Naginata? I need to practice.”