Harvest of Holidays Read Free Page A

we’ll be here.”
    Carson shut the front door and put the bowl of Hershey’s Kisses back on top of the record player. “It’s 1983, guys. You acting in loco parentis wouldn’t work now.”
    “Why not?” Nick asked, his tone even sharper. “Tally turned out just fine.”
    “And I agree one hundred percent,” Carson said, picking up her hand and holding it. “You did a fantastic job raising her and training her, and whatever the flavor she’s got inside her now, the sprout has two demon hunters for parents, so the chances are he – she – they will be hunters, too, and will need your expertise. Poor kid,” he added with a sigh.
    Tally squeezed his hand and looked at Nick, who was having the most trouble over this. Damian just looked thoughtful. “Nick, it’s not like in the sixties. Raising kids is much more formal and controlled these days.”
    “You’re trying to explain cultural shifting to me?” he asked, sounding both pissed and amused.
    “No, she’s trying to be nice about it,” Oscar said. “So let me put it in legal terms. You two don’t have a single legitimate identity between you. You’ve been moving through time using bluff and the worst fake IDs I’ve ever seen. That’s not going to work much longer. Fingerprinting is hugely sophisticated now, then they’re starting to talk about DNA testing – have you heard about that?”
    Nick frowned. “It’s not a legal form of ID,” he said.
    “It’s moving through the court system now,” Oscar replied. “It will pass in the next year or so. But that’s not the point. The point is, neither of you could prove in a legally acceptable way that you’re really who you say you are. You don’t exist in legal terms and so far you’ve dodged complications because you don’t impact the system. So long as you don’t line up for social security, or apply for a government job, you’ll go unnoticed. For now.”
    “We’ve gone unnoticed for a very long time,” Damian said quietly.
    Oscar nodded. “But now computers are going to screw that up for you.”
    “Computers?” Carson repeated. “You mean that Atari thing the kids use? That’s a threat?”
    Oscar shook his head again.
    There was another knock on the door. “Trick or treeeeaaat!”
    Carson flexed up onto his feet and grabbed the bowl. “Computers are so freaking expensive, they’re never going to catch on.” He opened the door and doled out candy to the costumed kids outside and shut the door once more and sat down with the bowl in front of him.
    “They will,” Oscar said firmly. “Especially for processing mega amounts of data, and the government is already using them for just that. They’re going to cross-reference everything you do and irregularities will pop up just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
    Damian sighed and glanced at Nick. “They would never let us take care of the child.” His voice was soft.
    “Exactly,” Oscar said. “Because legally, you don’t exist and you don’t have a prior familial or moral claim on the child.”
    “He’s a descendent of mine,” Damian pointed out.
    “You can’t prove it,” Oscar shot back. “You guys need to shift with the coming times. I know you’ve been doing that all along, but you need to pick up speed, because change is going to pick up speed. There’s a book that came out a few years ago, by a guy called Toffler—”
    “ Future Shock ,” Carson added. Then he shrugged as everyone looked at him. “I read.”
    Oscar nodded again. “That’s the one. Even normal humans have trouble keeping up with the rate of change and it’s only going to get worse. You have to make a real effort, you two, if you want to stay covert.”
    Nick sat back and crossed his arms. “Embrace technology,” he summarized flatly.
    “Yes,” Oscar said. “Use it to your advantage instead of being screwed by it.”
    Tally watched Damian and Nick exchange glances and knew they were having one of those perfectly in-sync moments