Chapter l237

Chapter 0237

Elva gasped. “How did you do that?”

Julian laughed. “Sleight of hand, my dear. Would you like to learn?” In a flash, the quarter was back in his

hand. He held it out for Elva, who greedily accepted it.

“Yes!” she said excitedly.

“No,” I said a second later.

Elva turned her doe eyes on me. “Mommy! Please?”

I placed my hand on my hips. “Julian. I can’t have you teach her these bad skills.”

“No skill itself is bad, Piper. It’s how you use it.” He winked at me, and I was as charmed by him as Elva’s doe eyes. With the two combining forces, I didn’t stand a chance of telling them no. “It’s actually

incredibly useful and could even save a life someday.”

“Really?” Elva asked. “I could be a hero.”

Julian made his smile kinder as he looked at her. “Absolutely.”

Elva cranked up the doe eyes, turning to me with renewed determination. “Please, Mommy! I want to be

a hero!”

I sighed. “Okay. Fine. But no thievery.”

Julian crossed his heart with one hand. I imagined his other was behind his back, fingers crossed.

“I want to support animal conservation,” Susie said later, as we talked during lunch. “I was thinking of

something like that for my cause at the fundraising gala.”

That sort of cause suited Susie well. She’d seemed more at ease in the company of animals rather than

people.

“You should probably find one specific charity to represent,” I suggested. “If you narrow your focus, it

might make it easier to talk about with the potential benefactors.”

She worried her hands together nervously. “I’ll do that. Though I worry even if I had notecards I wouldn’t

be able to talk to them.”

“You only have to be yourself,” I said. “Tell them how much you love the animals. That will convince

them.”

“I hope so.” She still seemed unsure.

Elva, in the chair beside me, was trying to palm a dinner roll off of her plate. While I didn’t necessarily approve of Julian’s training, her effort was admirable.

I lifted a wrapped peppermint from a dish on the table and placed it on her plate, pushing back the roll.

“Try something smaller,” I told her. “Work your way up to the rolls.”

Elva nodded. She tried again with the peppermint. While her actions were not nearly so smooth and practiced as Julian’s, she was still able to lift the peppermint into her palm without using her fingers.

She gasped in excitement, but then huffed when the peppermint dropped back onto the plate.

I leaned over and k*ssed the side of her head. “You’ll get it,” I said, while I added in my head, but

hopefully not too soon.

“Piper,” said Tiffany from behind me, shaking me from my thoughts. When I looked at her, she said, “Can

we speak for a moment?”

The last time we had spoken, she had told me about the strange behavior of someone who looked just like me. She wore a similar dire expression now. I wasn’t about to let whatever she wanted to say wait.

I glanced at Susie.

“I’ll watch Elva for a minute,” Susie said.

With that confirmation, I rose and followed Tiffany to a far corner of the room, out of earshot of the

others. From here, I could still see Elva, which set me at ease.

I trusted Susie, but with everything going on, I wasn’t yet ready to let Elva out of my sight.

“I saw her again,” Tiffany said. “The girl who’s impersonating you.”

Wait. She said impersonating. She wasn’t accusing me anymore.

“You believe me, then. That I wasn’t the one sneaking around?”

Tiffany nodded. “I saw her outside in the hallway, and then I walked in here, and here you are. You can’t

be in two places at once.”

I blinked, startled. “You… saw her? Just now?”

“Yeah.” Tiffany motioned back toward the door. “She was walking into the courtyard.”

No. That couldn’t be. The tunnel was sealed. Jane shouldn’t have been able to get over here.

The floor of my stomach dropped.

Jane had another way inside.