Chapter 4
“A humungous salamander? Mixed with a serpent? That is at least creative,” Adelaide remarked from the corner of the main room. The house’s occupants met here under the guise of strategizing, but it looked much more like “family time.” Dakota absently braiding her hair while watching the news, Katya and Jaden knitting on the couch—and the old woman pacing back and forth with a two-week-old crossword puzzle in her hand. “Salamanders are more like frogs. They have gills and sleep in the mud.”
“Like you, Adel?” her dad quipped.
She dismissed the insult with a wave of her hand. “Are you certain it was both?”
Ken rolled her eyes in place of a nod, which would have disrupted the grooming session. Though Ken often did her own hair to her liking, there was something innately soothing
