“Paint Your Favorite Book’s Setting?”
“Yeah.”
Marcie smiled at me. “I think it’s great.”
My chest warmed. “I’m glad to hear it. I’m pretty proud of it.”
“You should be,” Marcie said. I blushed a little at the praise, then grabbed a ponytail holder from my own bag and pulled as much of my still too-short hair as I could into a messy knot on top of my head. “We’ve done book characters before, and Disney princesses, but not settings.”
“So many children’s books take place in amazing locations,” I said. I crouched down and started hunting beneath the desk, trying to find where I’d stashed the box of brushes and colored pencils. “I hope the kids have a lot of fun with this.”
I didn’t have to wait long to get confirmation that the event was a wild success.
“Miss Greenberg? Is it okay if I add a dragon to my castle?”
I turned away from a little girl I’d been helping who was painting a vibrant picture of the sun. She’d chosen a nearly neon shade of purple for the sun’s rays. It was easily my favorite of all the projects the kids were working on.
“Of course it’s okay,” I said to the little boy who asked the question, who’d earlier introduced himself as Zach. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Zach gave a one-shoulder shrug. “The instructions were to paint our favorite book’s setting,” he said. “I already did the castle, and I thought painting a character, too, would be breaking the rules.”
I crouched down so I was eye-level with Zach. His canvas was covered in shapeless swirls of browns and greens. It didn’t look like any castle I’d ever seen—but then again, I’d never seen a castle in person, so who was I to judge? Maybe in his favorite book, or in his imagination—or both—this was exactly what castles looked like.
“I think a dragon would look great right here,” I said, pointing to the one corner of the canvas that hadn’t been covered in watercolor paint.
“But Fluffy is the main character of the book, not a setting,” Zach pointed out. His tone was as serious as if he were giving a lecture on the current state of American politics, which—given that he was all of six years old—was so adorable I nearly burst out laughing.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep that from happening and pretended to study his canvas. “I see your point,” I said. “But you know—the only real rule in art is to make something you enjoy.”
His eyebrows shot up his little forehead. “No other rules at all?”
“None,” I confirmed. “We wanted kids to paint the settings from their favorite books today, but if you want to add Fluffy, go for it. In fact,” I added, “I can’t really picture a castle without a dragon. Maybe Fluffy actually is part of your book’s setting, and not just a character.”
Zach chewed his bottom lip as he considered my words. “That makes sense.”
“I agree,” I said. “In the end, though, this is your painting. Make something you love.”
And with that, Zach dipped his paintbrush in the pot of orange watercolor in front of him, painted a giant swirl in the only spare corner of his canvas, and smiled.
* * *
By the time I made it back to the apartment it was nearly sundown. I took the stairs two at a time, grinning as I imagined throwing myself into Frederick’s arms and picking up where we’d left off this morning.
When I got to the third-floor landing, however, I knew that something was very wrong.
For one thing, Frederick was shouting from inside the apartment.
“How dare you come to my home unannounced and behave in this way!”
For another, a woman whose voice I did not recognize was shouting, too.
“You dare to ask me how I dare?” the woman scoffed, the sharp click of her heels echoing so loudly on the hardwood floors I could easily hear her footsteps from where I stood. “I would have thought your manners better than that, Frederick John Fitzwilliam!”
I hesitated at the door, unsure what to do. The only other person who had been in our apartment the entire time I’d lived there was Reginald—another vampire. And that had ended in disaster.
From the sounds of things, another disaster was brewing in there right now. But what should I do? This argument, as bitter as it sounded, had nothing to do with me. Even inadvertently hearing what I had so far felt like an intrusion.
“Cassie will be home shortly,” Frederick said. “I ask that you please leave before she returns home. I do not wish to discuss this matter with you any further.”