“Yeah,” said Roth.
She glared at him. “Fine. Whatever. Thanks for not being a dick about Catling.”
“I’m kind of a softy when it comes to the animals, just so you know,” said Roth. “Don’t spread that around, though. You’ll ruin my reputation.”
“Oh, right,” said Nora. “I forgot that you’re trying very desperately to get laid.”
“Fucking truth cordial,” Roth muttered. “You know all my secrets. I don’t know any of yours.”
“What does that matter?” said Nora.
“I don’t know.” Roth shrugged. “Maybe we could be friends if you told me something equally embarrassing about yourself.”
“I’m not doing that,” said Nora.
“Oh, come on. You could just answer a question for me,” said Roth. “Who’s cock is bigger, Owen’s or Sawyer’s?”
Nora’s face got red. “I’m not answering that. I wouldn’t even know.”
“Because you didn’t have sex with Owen or because you haven’t had sex with Sawyer?”
“None of your business.”
“Answer the question.” Roth gave her a nasty grin. “Don’t you want to be friends?”
“You know what?” said Nora. “I don’t think I do.” She gave Catling a final stroke. “Take care of Catling.” She turned to leave.
Roth caught her by the shoulder. “Sorry.”
She shook him off. “You’re awful, you know that?”
Roth shrugged. “I know that. But I do want to be friends.”
She sighed. “I never had sex with Owen.”
Roth nodded. “And Sawyer?”
She blushed.
“And he’s, like, actually a functioning male under those skirts?”
“Roth—”
“All right, all right. Sorry. I’ll take care of your cat-duck. I promise not to ask you any more embarrassing questions.”
* * *
“How’s Catling?” said Sawyer as he scooped some casserole onto his plate.
Nora followed suit. They were at the main fire pit for dinner. There wasn’t nearly the kind of selection that there would usually be. Too many of the food muses were ill. There was only the casserole and some bread. Before the sickness, there would have been four or five entrees to choose from and several different side dishes. Now, everyone was strained.
“Roth said that all of the chimeras are getting sick like that,” said Nora. “He doesn’t know why, and he can’t do anything for her. I had to leave her with him, though, because he’s the best person to take care of her right now. I’ve been so busy.”
“Well, I hope Catling does okay with Roth,” said Sawyer. “You get that painting finished today like you wanted?”
“Yeah, barely,” said Nora. She’d been working on several different projects that day, all for separate inspiration threads that the enclave was trying to send out. She felt exhausted. “How about you? You were making that quilt. How is it going?”
“We’re making progress,” said Sawyer, “but we lost Gina today. I went by her tent, and she’s sick too.”
“No,” said Nora. “How many people does that leave you guys with?”
Sawyer made his way over to a bench and sat down. “Ten. How many you got in visual art?”
Nora sat down too. “Sixteen, I think. And over half of them are tweens. Before long, there’s going to be no one to make inspiration threads.” Tweens couldn’t make inspiration threads. Only adult muses could do that.
He took a bite of the casserole. “Well, we’ve got to keep going.”
Nora ate some as well. It wasn’t very good. The food enclave was off its game recently. There was less activity there, and no one even bothered to make breakfasts or lunches anymore. Besides dinner, the muses had to fend for themselves when they were hungry. And dinner was fading too. One crappy casserole? She set down her fork.
“Coeus, I’m fine,” came Phoebe’s voice.
Nora turned to see Coeus holding Phoebe by the shoulder.
She was pushing at him. “Let go of me. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” said Coeus. “You need to be in bed.”
Phoebe didn’t look too good. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she had a haggard look about her. Was Phoebe getting sick? What would the muses do without Phoebe? They needed her. She was the head of the council.
“I have to run this council meeting,” said Phoebe. “We’re ironing out details for Halloween.”
Coeus sighed. “Phoebe, who knows if we can even manage Halloween.”
“Of course we can.” She pried Coeus’ hand off of her shoulder. Immediately, she stumbled.
Nora and Sawyer both stood up.
Phoebe staggered forward, barely able to keep her balance.
Coeus caught her, arm going around her waist.
She sagged against him. There was fear in her eyes.
“You need to go back to bed,” said Coeus.
“No,” said Phoebe, but her voice was weak.
“The council will understand,” said Coeus.
“But… Halloween,” said Phoebe. “Inspiration threads.” She tried to move again, but Coeus held her fast.
“Come on,” said Coeus in a gentle voice. “Back to the tent, honey.”
Hearing Coeus use the term of endearment for Phoebe went through Nora like a jolt. He was never like that with Phoebe in public. His saying it meant that he was worried about her.
Coeus took Phoebe back to her tent.
Nora turned to Sawyer. “We have to see if there’s anything we can do.”
He nodded.
They hurried over to the tent.
In a moment, Coeus came back out.
“She’s sick, isn’t she?” said Nora.
“Just started this morning,” said Coeus. “But she’s weakening fast. I’ve never seen her like this before.” He looked down at his feet. “I’m going to the engineering enclave, and I’m going to work straight through until I can make that damned dimension device.”
“Can we help?” said Nora.
“Not with the device,” said Coeus. “Not yet.”
“Not even with those orange stone things, like last time?” said Nora.
“No, I have enough of those, thanks to you guys,” said Coeus. He gestured to the tent. “You want to help, ask Phoebe what she needs.” He turned and strode across the field, away from the main fire pit.
“He’s scared,” said Sawyer.
Nora chewed on her lip. “What are we going to do, Sawyer?”
He took a long breath. “We’re going to ask Phoebe how we can help. What else can we do, right?”
* * *
Phoebe was lying on her hammock, and Nora wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen Phoebe lying down before.
Then she remembered that she had woken up Phoebe last year when she’d found the message from Owen in the snow. She’d barged in and found Phoebe and Coeus asleep together.
But still, she’d never seen Phoebe looking so weak. It was terrifying.
She and Sawyer approached.
Phoebe tried to sit up.
“Don’t,” said Sawyer. “You need to rest.”
Phoebe laughed bitterly. “Actually, it doesn’t matter what I do, does it? I’m going to get worse no matter what. And we’re no closer to understanding this sickness or to stopping it.”
“I wish we were,” said Nora. “But there’s been no time. It’s all we can do to keep up with the inspiration threads.”
“The inspiration threads,” said Phoebe. “That’s right. That’s the most important thing. If we aren’t inspiring the mundane world, everything is in danger. Their inspiration feeds us and our inspiration feeds them. You understand, right? You understand how important it is?”
“Yes,” said Nora. “But we’re tweens. We can’t make inspiration threads.”
“What you create is funneled through the other inspiration threads, Nora. You know this, because you’ve been helping in your enclaves. W
e need the tweens. We need all of you.”
“You’ve got us,” said Sawyer. “What do we need to do?”
“Halloween,” said Phoebe. “We have to have Halloween. Everyone needs a costume. There need to be decorations and drinks and music and merriment. We have to have a party. If we don’t create, we lose everything. This is vitally important. Do you understand?”
“We do,” said Nora. “We’ll make sure Halloween happens.”
“Promise me,” said Phoebe. “Don’t let the others give up. The council can’t cancel Halloween. Losing the Gala was bad enough. We must have Halloween.”
“We will,” said Sawyer.
* * *
Maddie made her way across the tweens and rebels enclave. “Jack!”
He looked up. He was walking across the field in the growing twilight. “Oh, hey, Maggie.”
“It’s Maddie.”
“That’s what I said,” said Jack, smiling.
“Um, Nora said that I should ask you about the band schedule for Halloween. She said you were working on it.” Ever since Phoebe had collapsed before the council meeting, Nora and Sawyer had been doing their best to organize the Halloween celebration, and they’d gotten all the tweens to help out. Jack and Agler were in charge of the bands.
“Yeah, Agler’s got that,” said Jack.
“Oh,” said Maddie. “Is he in his tent?”
“Nah, he’s playing guitar at the fire pit.” Jack pointed. Agler was sitting around the fire with a group of older tweens. There was a fire leaping up in the center of them, and they were all singing loudly and raucously. They sounded kind of drunk.
“Right,” said Maddie. “Thanks, Jack.”
“No problem.” Jack kept going across the enclave.
Maddie made her way up to the fire pit. Agler was banging away at his guitar, playing a song that Maddie had never heard before. But the words were simple, something about playing hard and working hard under the summer moon. And all of the tweens around the fire seemed to know it pretty well.
She watched Agler’s face as he played. His eyes were closed, and his mouth twitched every time he changed chords. His rhythm was a little bit off. The other muses didn’t seem to notice.
He was a really attractive guy. She hadn’t really spoken to him lately. There was a time when they were seeing each other every day. But things in Helicon kept deteriorating, more and more people kept getting sick, and they’d both been occupied with other stuff lately.
Agler finished the song with flourish.
The other tweens cheered and applauded. Agler laughed and set the guitar down. He picked up a mug of beer and took a long drink.
Then he looked up and saw her. “Maddie.”
“Um, Nora says that you have the schedule for the bands for Halloween?”
“Yeah, it’s in my tent.” He grinned at her broadly. She liked his grin, even though it was obvious from the way he was moving that he was drunk.
“Can we, um, get it?” said Maddie. “Nora says she needs it.”
Agler shrugged. “Sure.” He turned to the other tweens. “I’ll be back, guys.”
“Can I play your guitar while you’re gone?” one of them asked.
“Knock yourself out.” Agler waved at the guitar, and then turned in the direction of his tent. His steps were a little unsteady. He wasn’t so drunk that he was weaving, but he wasn’t exactly walking in a straight line.
Maddie kept up with him.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” said Agler.
“I’ve been busy,” said Maddie. “My mother is one of the few food enclave muses who isn’t sick, and she’s got me running all over Helicon, delivering meals to sick muses. By the time that breakfast’s over, it’s time for lunch, and by the time I get lunch out, it’s time to deliver dinner. Between that and working on stuff for Halloween, I feel like I never have a spare second.”
“Yeah, me either,” said Agler. “I was so glad to have tonight off, I might have overdone it.” He chuckled. “Do I seem drunk to you?”
“Maybe a little,” she said.
He kept chuckling as they approached his tent. “The schedule’s in here somewhere.” He shoved aside the flap. “Come on in.”
Maddie stepped inside the tent. She’d never been in here. There were two sections of the tent. She looked past the area with his two easy chairs to his hammock. The place where he slept. She wondered what it would have been like if she’d had sex with Agler in a hammock instead of outside.
Agler rummaged through a stack of papers in the corner. “It’s going to be less music than usual. There are so many sick muses in the music enclave that we’re really hurting for talent. But we managed to scrounge together three or four hours of entertainment.”
“I’ll let her know.”
Agler pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Nora said that there’s going to be enough muse magic to run the electricity, right? It wouldn’t be Halloween without wailing guitar solos.”
“I think so.” Maddie took the piece of paper.
Agler didn’t let go of it. He smiled lopsidedly. “Uh, you know if we have a chance, I’d be up for continuing to interview the sick muses. There are bunch more now. Maybe if we kept at it, we’d figure something out.”
“I don’t think I’ll have time.”
“Right,” he said. He let go of the piece of paper. “You probably hate me, don’t you?”
“No,” said Maddie. “I don’t.”
“Yeah, but after, you know… May Day—” He broke off. “I was supposed to stop bringing that up.”
She looked away, feeling uncomfortable.
“Why’d you let me do it, anyway?”
She raised her gaze to his. “What?”
“Why’d you go along with it? I remember what you said, that you wanted to get it over with. Was that what it was about for you? You just wanted to lose your virginity or something?”
She tucked the schedule into a pocket in her skirt. “I wasn’t in a great place then. I wasn’t feeling very good about anything.”
“I just wondered if you ever, even briefly, thought about me like that.”
“Like that?”
“Yeah.” He scratched the back of his head. “You know, like, um…” He took a deep breath. “Fuck it.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and stepped close.
“Agler…?”
His hand cupped her cheek, and he gazed into her eyes questioningly.
She parted her lips.
His mouth came for hers.
She shut her eyes.
His lips were warm. He tasted like the beer he’d been drinking—something honeyed. It was pleasant. His tongue stroked hers for a minute. His arm crushed her close. She felt like her body was enveloped in him. He engulfed her, smelling of pine needles and sweet ale, and she felt lightheaded and overwhelmed.
He let go of her. “Damn it.”
She felt confused. Damn it?
“I’m sorry, Maddie.”
“Sorry?”
He rubbed his face. “I’m drunk, and I just did it again. I keep taking advantage of you. You must hate me.” He pushed past her, out of the tent.
She was stunned. “No, wait.”
But he was already gone.
It took her several minutes to get her limbs moving again. When she got back out of the tent, he wasn’t anywhere in sight.
She touched her lips.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Okay,” said Nora, “so then we’ve got food, we’ve got drinks, and we’ve got music. How are the decorations coming?” She turned to look at the tweens who were all gathered about the fire pit in the tweens and rebels enclave.
“Good,” said Evie, who had volunteered to be in charge of decorations. “Everything’s shaping up.”
“Awesome,” said Nora. “We’re going to have Halloween, guys!”
The tweens applauded, but Nora could see that they did it wearily. They’d all been working so hard, trying to take care of
all the sick muses and work on existing inspiration threads and plan for Halloween. Everyone was getting pushed to their limit. Nora knew how they felt. She was tired too.
She waved them away. “Go chill out, everyone. Get some rest. Tomorrow, we’re back at it, bright and early.”
The tweens began to break up and scatter, talking amongst themselves.
“Nora,” said Evie, winding her way over. “I wanted to talk to you for a second.”
“Sure,” said Nora.
“I guess I wanted to apologize,” said Evie. “I know I gave you a hard time about Sawyer. But looking at the two of you together, I can see how much you care about each other, and I just feel like a bitch for acting like that.”
“Oh, I completely forgot about what you said,” said Nora.
“Well, I didn’t,” said Evie. “And for what it’s worth, I’ve other tweens saying similar things. Twyla Grass was just talking about how horrible she felt for giving Sawyer a hard time. We all know that things would be falling apart if you guys hadn’t stepped up. Even the older tweens.”
Nora smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“Well, we appreciate everything you’re doing.”
“We’re all doing it,” said Nora. “Every single one of us.”
“That’s true, but we wouldn’t be with out you and Sawyer,” said Evie. “I just wanted you to know that.”
She grasped Nora’s hand and squeezed. Then, smiling, she walked away.
“Did you hear that?” Nora looked over her shoulder at Sawyer.
“Yeah,” said Sawyer.
“I didn’t know that Twyla Grass gave you a hard time,” said Nora.
“Oh, she and Duncan and Rufus are the gay police,” said Sawyer. “They wanted me to pick a team and stay there.”
Nora giggled. “I see.” She poked him. “I thought you did pick a team. Team Me.”
He grinned. “Yes, Team You.” He kissed her quickly. “Would you mind if I didn’t go see Catling with you tonight? I’m exhausted. I’ll just wait for you in the tent.”
“Sure,” she said.
* * *
“She’s the same,” said Roth. He was sitting at a table in Mack’s tent. “She’s sleeping now, but you can go and say goodnight to her if you want.” He gestured to a pile of blankets he had set up in the corner. Five or six cat-ducks were lying on it, all fast asleep.
The Helicon Muses Omnibus: Books 1-4 Page 80