Lilly bouncing into the hotel room with scrapes and dried blood on her hands was not how Matthew imagined announcing they had ice cream. Yet she held them up like prizes at a carnival and shouted, with no shame in her voice, "I did it!"
"What happened?" Matthew kneeled down and took her hands in his. "What were you doing, crawling through the hotel air vents?"
"No," she insisted. "You won't let me."
"You won't let me, either," Eli grumbled, sticking his spoon into the too-cold ice cream carton.
Matthew shot the boy a pointed glare. "No air vents. I'm not having you stuck and having the fire department come dislodge you."
Eli's eyes narrowed in response, and his frown intensified. "I could steal stuff from other rooms that way. We could be rich."
"We're not hoarding dragons, Elliot," Matt warned. "Lilly, what happened?"
"I finished Lloyd!"
"You – what?"
She scratched her face, some dried blood sticking to her cheek. "You were taking too long, and don't worry. Eddie was watching me the whole time. He even helped me put Lloyd on some milk cartons so I could get under him."
Matthew started listing the ways he could kill Edward Reyes.
"But I got the brakes put in, and it didn't even take that long. I did get some oil on my shirt, but I put that in the bathtub. Where does the laundry go?"
"Lilliana Yang. You – hold on. Ed let you crawl under the car?"
"Yeah!" she said, bouncing on her feet. The grin on her face was almost contagious. Almost. "Yeah, Eddie and I looked over the instructions, and he showed me the map for everything – "
"Schematics."
"Yeah, those, and we worked together to finish it for you!" She held up her hands again and shook them like sparklers. "Surprise!" The girl's mouth opened with glee.
His head was spinning. Matthew nearly screamed. "Holy shit," he mumbled, standing.
"Language," Eli chastised.
"I'm going to kill him. How could he –how could he let you do that?"
Lilliana cocked her head to the side, eyes narrowing. "I can read those schemantics better than you or Eddie."
"Schematics, and that's – " His mind was moving too fast. He didn't know where to start.
Eli slid off the desk chair, holding the spoon still firmly wedged into the ice cream like a sweet scepter. "Lloyd's all finished?"
He started pacing. "Oh, my Gods. Your dad is going to kill me. He's going to kill Ed, and no one really wants to kill Ed. Well, maybe me right now, but I don't – "
"Yeah," Lilly said, watching the nanny move back and forth. "I thought Matt would've liked that." The two's eyes started following him like a game of tennis. "Did he hear us?"
"If Yang finds out you went under the car, and – oh my Gods, if something happened– "
"Did you carve the rune I asked you to under the thing?" Eli asked.
"No. I didn't want the thing to shift while I was doing it. Lloyd's heavy. Daddy and Eddie had a hard time lifting him up." She leaned forward. "I did carve it in his engine lid door thing."
Eli considered that for a moment. "I guess that works. It's more effective in a more central location, but if it's right next to the engine, which – I guess that counts as the beating heart – "
"Lilly." Matt kneeled back down and put his hands on the six-year-old's shoulders. "Please, for the love of all that is good and decent. Did you tell your father any of this?"
She blinked. "He was there."
"Oh, good Lord."