"So, let me get this straight," Claire said to Jim in a slightly impatient voice. She was absentmindedly rocking four-day-old Ellie back and forth as she stood by the carved stone counter of their kitchen. "He lives on the East Coast, but wants to meet you at your mom's in California?"
Jim sighed, adding strips of venison to the pan that he was working over the fire. "Yeah."
"Jim, that sounds..."
"Like a trap, I know," he said, finishing his mate's thought. He wasn't happy about the situation either, but... "But I trust Strickler, and Strickler trusts this guy. We won't be gone long."
Claire frowned, looking down at the sleeping baby in her arms. "I think it's too early."
"I think so too," Jim agreed, his eyes also falling to the baby in his wife's arms. She was so small, and while she was not exactly weak, she wasn't the strongest either. Granted, he hadn't really been around many babies in his life — human, troll, or otherwise — so all he had to go on was instinct, and his instincts were screaming at him to keep them home and safe. "But I have to meet him, and I'm not going to risk Ellie by making you and her stay behind."
"I wonder what it is that makes troll babies so dependent on both parents?" Claire murmured quietly, studying her daughter closely. "Do you think it has something to do with magic?"
"Probably," Jim replied, shuffling the pan as the meat began to sizzle. "Our souls are so intermingled... maybe she needs the time to anchor the magic of her soul into ours... or the other way around. Nomura didn't go into detail, and I was too panicked to ask."
"Can't he wait?" Claire asked desperately. "He said that he didn't know where Usurna was, so what's the hurry?"
"Apparently, he said he's waited enough," Jim explained, reiterating the phone conversation that he'd had with Strickler only an hour before. His contact was nervous, worried that his information was putting him at risk — which, technically, it was. If an enemy discovered that this guy knew something as important as he said it was, and he was planning on snitching to the Trollhunter, he was as good as dead. "And if he has information on whoever or whatever is behind all of this — including Usurna — then we have to know what he knows."
"But we'd be leaving New Trollmarket undefended," she worried, and Jim noted that the more anxious she became, the closer she hugged Ellie.
"Merlin is here," he replied, laughing a little bit. "He's a lazy jerk, but he is an all-powerful sorcerer. He can defend the Market for a few hours, and if anything does go wrong, we're one portal away from being back."
"...what about your mom?"
Jim sighed again, frowning. Instead of answering right away, he threw some chopped root vegetables into the pan with the meat, using the juice and fat from the meat to sauté them. His mother hadn't called, and they hadn't called her; truthfully, he was still half furious with her, though he understood where her misplaced authoritative concern originated from. He couldn't exactly tell her that her doctoring was actually more of a danger in this case. This was the same woman who hadn't spoken to him for two whole months when he refused to tell her why he'd been found unconscious in the woods — she was stubborn and could hold a grudge like no one's business. "Just... don't let her, or anyone, try to hold Ellie."
Claire snorted an incredulous laugh. "Don't worry about that — they'll have to find a way to detach her from my chest first."
Jim chuckled, shaking his head. Ellie nursed at least every other hour, and even if she wasn't actively eating, she wanted to be attached to her mother; he was afraid that those hectic first few hours after her birth had traumatized her somehow. Even when he held her, she clung to him, mouthing whatever part of his skin that she was resting against. When they passed her between them, even if she had been sleeping, she would immediately jerk awake and scream until she was attached to one of them again. Needless to say, they were both worried, and exhausted, and would much rather cocoon themselves in their cave for a month longer than portal back across the country to have a meeting with a man they didn't know about a subject that could destroy everything.
