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(Well, he was only going to get away with that for so long.

He had to try, though.)

"My best friend has me well-trained, is all," he demurs. "She'd disown me if I neglected my manners."

Also true. The candy is from Irene's favorite chocolatier, whom Jim uses often. (Jim very carefully does not think of how she would react to hearing him claim she'd trained him.)

Matilda giggles. "You have a best friend? What's her name? Is she a bad guy too?"

Jenny, meanwhile, opens the box of chocolates. Some people acting in the role of parent might try to tell Matilda she shouldn't be rude. Jenny doesn't believe in discouraging harmless curiosity, or in expecting six-year-olds to act like adults. She also knows that Matilda, like Jenny herself, has a pretty good sense of how far she can go with any given person.

"I do," Jim says. "Her name is Irene."

He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial pitch and continues,

"Don't tell her I said this, but sometimes I think she might be the best bad guy."

That is one of the most adorable things Matilda has ever heard. She beams.

"I won't," she promises immediately.

Amused, Jenny slides the box of chocolates along the table toward her. Matilda takes one with a cheerful, if absent, thank-you-Jenny; Jenny offers them to Jim next, since he brought them and all.

Jim politely declines; he brought the sweets for them, and besides, he has very little interest in foodstuffs of any kind.

To Matilda, he says,

"Thank you, I'd never hear the end of it."

This is easily the truest thing he's said since they sat down.

Jenny picks up a chocolate and shares a smiling sideways glance with Matilda; they eat their chocolates at exactly the same time, a family ritual.

Then Jenny says, "Matilda, would you mind going upstairs so I can talk to Jim for a bit?"

Matilda considers this. She doesn't honestly think there's a conversation they could have that would be over her six-year-old head, but she's willing to accept that Jenny needs one anyway for her own peace of mind. Jenny's peace of mind is important.

"Okay," she concludes, gives Jenny a hug and Jim a wave, and heads for the stairs.

Jenny folds her hands in her lap and looks at Jim thoughtfully.

...She has no idea where to even start.

Before the silence following Matilda's departure can go on long enough to become awkward, Jim asks,

"How much has Matilda told you about Milliways? So we're on the same page."

More or less.

"I think her exact words were, 'time-travelling interdimensional bar'," Jenny says wryly.

Jim chuckles.

"Yes. Visitors from every point in time and countless different universes. Most people seem to be from a reality that's also a work of fiction. Mine is an adaptation of the Doyle stories, which I've known for some time."

So there's no need to worry about throwing him into a sudden existential crisis or anything like that. Jim skipped that step altogether. He never did see the point of it.

"She mentioned that, too," says Jenny, smiling. "Also called you—what was it—'really nice, in a criminal kind of way'."

"She reminds me of myself at that age," he says, "except she's got a bit luckier than I did."

Little Jimmy never had a Miss Honey. Perhaps he would have turned out differently if he had.

Or perhaps not. But there's not much point in dwelling on it either way, is there?

"She seems to have found a soft spot I didn't know I had."

"I'm not surprised," Jenny admits. "She's an extraordinary person. But I don't need to tell you that, do I."

He smiles fondly. (It's more genuine than he'd willingly admit to anyone, even himself.)

"Not at all," he says.

She smiles again, a little wryly.

"Not a day's gone by since I met that girl where I haven't felt somewhat out of my depth. I'm starting to worry that for once in her life she might be out of hers."

"Milliways has a way of looking after its patrons," Jim says, "especially the younger ones. Mother hen tendencies. It has to be slightly alive with a sense of responsibility, otherwise the entire system would have devolved into chaos a long time ago. I don't think it would allowed Matilda to meet me if I were a danger to her, and it certainly wouldn't have allowed her to bring me back here.

"I do think there are options she's going to want to explore when she's older that will be considerably easier without her father's record following her every move. The sooner she learns secure methods for dealing with that, the better."

Jenny's smile widens briefly. She glances at the ceiling, in the direction of Matilda's room.

"I think you're right," she says.

"I've learned a lot from her, but I think one of the most important things is this: you don't try to control a child like that. You teach her everything you can and then get out of her way. So just... try not to get her into any trouble she can't get out of, all right?"

"I won't," he promises.

Unless he happens to overestimate her capacity for getting out of trouble, but he thinks that vastly unlikely.

"I don't know why I believe you," says Jenny, "but I do."

She gets to her feet.

"I'll go tell Matilda we're done being grown-ups and you two can get on with the real work."

Jim does not mention the fact that he's extremely good at making people believe him, especially when he knows them better than they realize. Which he always does.

He just happens to be a bit more sincere than usual in this case.

"All right," he says with a laugh.

Jenny looks back at him and smiles again just before she steps out into the hall.

Very shortly afterward, Matilda comes bounding down the stairs and into the living room.

"We can do whatever we want," she reports. "I love Jenny."

That would be a dangerous thing to tell Jim Moriarty if it weren't for the fact that he does whatever he wants anyway.

"She doesn't give herself enough credit," he remarks. It's an unusual quality; most people, in his estimation, give themselves too much credit by far.

"I know," says Matilda.

(They can do whatever they want. The plural was an integral part of it. Jenny trusts Matilda to be as cautious and sensible as circumstances require.)

"Ready to get to work, then?" he asks cheerfully.

"Yep," she says just as cheerfully, settling onto the couch and beckoning to her laptop, which flies obediently across the room and into her arms.

He watches this display with interest.

"In the book," he says thoughtfully, "you lose the telekinesis once you start doing work that challenges you properly. I wonder what the difference is here."

Is it scientifically based? Or is Matilda's world one of those with magic hidden under a cloak of normalcy, accessible only to some?

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