by Layla Lawlor
"I don't suppose you could drive," I said without moving my arm. "No? Okay, fine. Let's do this."
I must have been weaving all over the road, driving home. It was by pure luck that I made it without a cop pulling me over. I had no idea what I looked like, but when I stumbled out of the car in our driveway, the blood had dried stiff on my clothes, and my hip and leg were one blazing mass of pain.
I should probably have gone to the ER, but I'd pointed the car for home on autopilot, and I couldn't bear the idea of getting back into the car and going anywhere else tonight.
Instead I stumbled to the door and unlocked it. Twinkie greeted me with the rapturous abandon of a lonely and hungry cat, too happy to pay much attention to the dog beyond a cursory hiss.
Drew arrived in the kitchen as I was pouring food into Twinkie's bowl, so exhausted I kept missing half the time and scattering it all over the floor. "Kay!" he said, popping out of nowhere. "You're alive! You are alive, right?"
"Mostly."
"Is that blood?"
"Some of it isn't mine," I said with an attempt at a laugh.
The dog could just as easily eat cat food as anything else in the house. I found a plastic bowl, poured a bunch of cat kibble into it, and opened a can of beef stew that I dumped over the top, adding some to Twinkie's bowl as an apology gesture. Creiddylad wagged her tail and dug in.
"You found the Tigers," Drew guessed, and then, sounding dismayed, "Where's Fresca? And your grandmother?"
"Safe, I think. Listen, Drew, I'll tell you everything, but right now I need a few minutes."
I took a long, hot, very painful shower, then went through the difficult process of cleaning and dressing my cuts, scrapes, and Tiger claw marks. The wounds, though numerous and painful, were shallow and had already begun to heal: the sword at work again. I slathered them with tons of disinfectant, bandaged everything, and put on my oldest, loosest sweats.
Somewhere in there I might have fallen asleep on my bed for a couple hours. I'm not sure. Hunger eventually drove me downstairs. Navigating the ladder to and from the Garret was always a pain, and in my current condition, I just barely made it without falling. Weakly, I tottered downstairs and microwaved myself some soup, while Drew hovered quietly, looking helpless and worried.
"Where'd Creiddylad go?" I asked him.
"That's the dog, right? Living room."
Creiddylad was stretched out on the couch, getting blood and filth all over it. After I refreshed myself with food and coffee, I took the first-aid kit and a bowl of warm water into the living room and doctored her too. I didn't bother bandaging anything, just cleaned and disinfected her numerous gashes, and told her sternly not to lick them.
There were several new texts from Fresca, checking that I made it home okay, with increasing levels of worry. I'm home, I'm good, just tired. Talk later, I texted back. Things still okay?
She texted me a thumbs up, and then, We'll be home tomorrow.
I didn't have it in me to climb back up to the Garret tonight. Leaning against the couch, I let my head fall onto Creiddylad's fur, and went to sleep.
I woke up to find my second sight gone—to my infinite relief, since I really didn't want to go through the rest of my life like this. My injuries showed no signs of infection and continued to heal with the scary speed that had become my new normal, though I was popping aspirin like Tic-Tacs. I slept a lot, ate a lot, and tried not to think too much about anything.
Fresca and Grandma Geraldine showed up in the evening, with Muirin driving them. We had a happy reunion with lots of (slightly painful) hugs and a few tears—Muirin stayed well back, just in case any of the hugs or tears got on her—and then all of us, including Muirin and Creiddylad, grouped in the kitchen over takeout Chinese and got caught up on everything. It was dark by that point, so Drew even got to join in, or lurk at least.
Fresca and Geraldine's experience of the end of the war had been much tamer than mine. When the city started breaking up, they were in Seth's apartment. There had been a few very minor earthquakes—in the real world too, apparently, which I probably would have known if I'd checked any news today; earthquakes on the East Coast, even tiny ones, are a Very Big Deal. Fresca and Geraldine had a ringside seat to watch the sky fall apart from Seth's apartment. "I took some pictures," Fresca said, "but they didn't turn out worth anything. Just a lot of colorful blurs."
I pictured Fresca leaning over the rickety iron balcony, snapping pictures of Armageddon with her phone. Of course she would.
After the sky fell, true night had fallen on Shadow New York for the first time, with, as Fresca put it, "really creepy stars," though she didn't elaborate. Dawn brought the usual aurora colors back to the sky. Seth's apartment was still connected to Central Park, but only one era of Central Park, apparently sometime in the 1890s. The park was no longer the crossroads it had once been.
"Most of the song-key doors still work," Geraldine said. "The others no longer do. The different parts of the city—"
"Neighborhoods," Muirin murmured. She'd been mostly silent, speaking up once in a while to clarify a point or add a bit of information that Fresca and Geraldine had left out.
"Neighborhoods, yes, thank you. They've drifted apart, Seth says."
As they were meant to be, according to what St. Clair had told me. I wondered how she was getting along in her version of Harlem, now that it was effectively cut off from the rest of the city.
Or ... was it? Maybe if you walked out of Shadow Harlem now, you'd simply encounter more 1920s New York, going on and on. Maybe each neighborhood had its own New York now, an infinity of New Yorks, as vibrant and diverse as the real one.
And there were still the resistance doors, and the songs.
"What about Millie and the Gatekeepers?" I asked. Fresca and Geraldine were quiet; this was something they were clearly unsure about. Both looked to Muirin, who pursed her lips.
"We're still discussing that," she said, with a finality that let me know I'd get no better answer out of her tonight.
Fresca cleared her throat and changed the subject. "So Tweed is really, uh, dead?"
"He is," I said. "I saw it." And felt it too. With my second sight, I would have known if anything of him had survived. There was nothing left.
Fresca hooked an arm around my neck and pulled me in for another hug. "I can't believe you're alive," she said, her voice husky. "Everything that happened to you, Kay—I can't believe any of you are alive."
"We all are." I hugged her back.
"Except me," Drew pointed out testily.
"Except Drew," I clarified with a sigh.
"It's not over, though," Muirin said, because Muirin was exactly the kind of person who would say that. "We—the Gatekeepers, I mean—suspect Tweed's manipulation of Shadow New York was the factor throwing off the local balance of energy, but that doesn't mean things will revert to normal now. Actually, the release when everything settled back into place might produce an even more eventful—" She finally noticed me trying to hush her, with sidelong glances at Fresca, and shut up.
Fresca took herself upstairs to have a shower and change into fresh clothes—she was wearing some she'd borrowed from Felipa—and I walked Muirin out to her car. The night was lovely, a warm and serene summer evening, with tree frogs serenading us and stars visible against the background glow of Ithaca.
"You don't have to drive back down to Binghamton tonight," I said. "You can crash here and drive back tomorrow."
Muirin shook her head. "I'd like to get home." She frowned a little at the word "home" as she said it aloud.
"Yeah, I know how it is. You always feel like you left the water on ..."
"Or milk spoiling in the refrigerator," Muirin agreed, playing along with my whimsy for the first time I could remember.
"Taza and Felipa have been there since you left, and I can guarantee, Muirin, there is definitely something spoiling in your fridge."
"Lovely. Something else to look forward to."
Wit
h everything else going on, I'd never thought to ask whether Muirin had gone with Fand of her own free will or if she was simply dragged back to the Irish otherworld at Fand's command. I suppose that, with beings like them, it didn't matter all that much. It wasn't like she could refuse Fand's orders either way.
"Oh, hey." I pulled Gwyn's note out of my pocket: it was crumpled and battered, but somehow it had made it through all the fighting. "I was supposed to give this to you, I think. I've had it since before all of the, you know, everything. Gwyn gave it to me at the bookstore, way back at the beginning of things. I think it's in Welsh, or maybe Irish. Do you want it?"
Muirin sighed and held out a hand. "He is determined, isn't he? I suppose I may as well hold onto it." She smiled faintly. "Putting his words down on paper gives me a little power over him, did you know that? His signature, even more so, should he be foolish enough to sign it."
"He really seems to feel bad about whatever he did to you."
"It's not quite that, so much as he wants to correct the balance of things," Muirin said. "Right now the scales are tipped in my favor. His kind—our kind—hate owing anything to others. He knows I could quite legitimately call on him. And one of these days, if he keeps pushing, I might." She contemplated the folded note, with her name in Gwyn's graceful handwriting, and then tucked it away in her pocket.
"You could go back to Fand's, you know," I said. "If you wanted to. We got the sword back, so ... I mean, it's not that I'm trying to get rid of you, but I've got the other Gatekeepers to help me out, and if Fand's place is where you'd rather be—"
"No," Muirin said firmly. "That's not my place anymore. I thought it might be, but ... it's not."
"Two thousand years in the human world must be hard to get over, I guess."
"I suppose we do change, after all, even beings like us." She opened her car door and leaned on it, looking over it at me. "I'll bring up the training swords to you soon."
"Speaking of which," I said, "I've decided on my fencing teacher."
Muirin waited with the quiet expectancy that I'd come to realize meant she was really listening. Open, silent, she looked back at me.
"You," I told her.
I was gratified to get a reaction: surprise and startled pleasure raced across her face before it shut down again. "Kay, I've explained this already. I won't be a good teacher for you. The fighting techniques I use are not useful to you, and I'm not sure how well I can adapt them. And I haven't the patience to teach you properly, anyway."
"I know," I said. "I just don't care. You're the teacher I want."
"Why?" she asked softly.
"I—don't know." It was something to do with the memory of Muirin standing between me and a hundred attacking Tigers. And something to do with Muirin in a dress and jewels that didn't suit her, all her purpose gone and her future a giant question mark. It was all of that, but maybe what it came down to was that, in this case, I simply preferred the devil I knew to the one I didn't.
The downstairs was empty when I came back inside, except for Creiddylad on the couch. From the second floor, I could hear water running in the bathroom, my grandma apparently, since the door to Drew's room, now Geraldine's, stood open and the room was empty.
We were really going to have to do something about that situation if she stayed here more than another day or two. I hadn't even realized, with one thing and another, that I had never asked her when her return ticket was.
The light was on in Fresca's room, the door pulled gently closed but not latched. I tapped on it.
"Come," Fresca said.
I came. She was on the bed with her phone.
"Anything earth-shattering in the news?"
"My brother Brendan has now decided he wants to go into law enforcement." She shook her head, her damp hair swishing. "We always figured Brendan would spend a lot of time in police stations, but, uh, on the other side of the handcuffs."
"How old is he?"
"Sixteen. He'll probably change his mind tomorrow. But who knows, some people do figure things out at sixteen."
"I didn't have anything figured out at sixteen," I said, sitting on the end of the bed.
"I don't have anything figured out now."
An uneasy silence fell.
"Are we good?" Fresca asked. "I mean, really good. Really, truly good."
"I think we are." I'd had plenty of time to think it over while I was waiting for them to show up today. During the whole fight with the Tigers, I had worried about Fresca, but I hadn't really been dwelling on the rest of the situation with her. Getting my crush out into the open hadn't gotten rid of it, but I felt as if it had settled into a lower orbit, somehow. She was there. She wasn't going anywhere. I hoped someday she'd be ready for me. But in the meantime, I didn't feel like I was breaking my heart every time I was near her, so that was something. I still felt comfortable around her. I didn't particularly feel like tearing her clothes off, though I certainly wouldn't object if she felt like tearing mine off.
"Yeah," I said, more definitely this time. "We're good." I smiled at her. She didn't smile back. "Fresca ... are you good?"
"Yeah, about that." She stretched her legs and trailed one foot on the floor. She was wearing bright-green pajama pants to match her hair. "Kay, I think I'm going home for a while."
The words sank in, but didn't make sense. "Going home?"
"To my parents' house in Nebraska. Just for a little while. 'Til I get all this shit in my head worked out."
"Oh," I said blankly. "Oh. Is this about what Muirin said? I swear, Fresca, if I'd know she was going to say something like—"
"No, no. It's not Muirin. I mean, it's not like I want to hear there might be more magic shit around for awhile, but I'm not fooling myself that it wouldn't be there anyway. I'd rather know about it."
"I guess I thought you were doing better," I said, feeling foolish. "You seem to be doing better."
"I am. Really. But better doesn't mean good, exactly, and—Hey. Kay." Fresca leaned forward and tugged up my chin, looking me in the eyes. Her lips quivered. "It's not forever, okay? But ... the thing is, I've still got a long way to go, and a lot of healing to do. I just need to get away from all this for a while. Away away."
I tried to pretend it didn't hurt. I don't think I did a very good job. "Are you—dropping out?" I was impressed at how steady my voice came out.
"No!" She sounded genuinely shocked. "No, Kay, no. I'll be back for classes in the fall."
It was almost the end of June. July and August. Two months. Not so much time, after all. And I'd be busy. Muirin would see to that.
"It'll go by before you know it," Fresca said.
"For me, maybe." I managed to laugh, this time. "What are you going to do? What did you say the population of Fisher is?"
"Eight hundred and eighteen," Fresca said, a trifle woefully.
"Slightly more than the number of people in my graduating high school class."
Fresca rallied to her hometown's defense. "We have a Walmart. And three gas stations."
"I bet that makes you the envy of the whole county."
"We used to have a Dairy Queen, but it closed." She flopped down on the bed and covered her face with her hands. "What am I doing? Why did I think this was a good idea? I'll go nuts. I'll die."
"There are such things as telephones, Eeyore, even in Fisher." I lay down beside her and laced my fingers through hers. She didn't pull away; we were getting easy with each other again. "You'll email me every day. And send me pictures of grain elevators."
"So many grain elevators," Fresca promised.
Loving someone means being willing to let them go, even when it feels like your heart is being ripped out of your chest.
Because, if they love you, they will come back.
I left Fresca asleep on her bed and came downstairs slowly, drained and tired and aching in every bone. I wasn't really unhappy or grieving—all that was in me was a void, a great weary emptiness.
I found Grandma Ger
aldine at the kitchen table, freshly showered and changed, feeding Creiddylad bits of leftover egg rolls. She took one look at me and said, "There's fresh coffee on."
I poured myself a cup and pulled up a chair across from her.
"I believe this is yours," she said, and reached across to place the iron key to the house ruins on the table in front of me.
"Oh," I said numbly. That's where it had gone. "Don't you want to keep it?"
"I think perhaps you'd use it more than I would."
I pocketed it without speaking.
"How's your friend?" Grandma asked.
"She's leaving. Going home." I rolled the cup between my hands, soaking in its warmth. The house was, if anything, unpleasantly warm—it was June, after all—but I felt cold to the core. "She says she'll be back for the fall semester. I ... I think I'm in love with her, Grandma."
Saying it made my whole body shake. It hadn't really felt like coming out when I had told Fresca. That had been tense for a whole different reason. It had been like stepping off a cliff, but this ... this was more like sticking my hand into a wood chipper.
But all Grandma said was, "I know. I could tell."
"What do you mean, you could tell? Can other people tell?" Suddenly it made me think back to the way that Drew—when he was alive—used to call Fresca my girlfriend. I thought it was just Drew being a dick. And it was ... but maybe it wasn't just that. How long had I been wearing my feelings for Fresca on my sleeve, even before I knew about them?
"Don't panic." My grandmother squeezed my shoulder and gave another bit of egg roll to Creiddylad. "I've lived a life, you know. I've fallen enough times to know what it looks like when someone else does. I'm not going to tell your mother."
"There's nothing to tell anyway." I looked down at my hands. "Fresca's leaving. She's going home, back to her parents' place. She says it's only for the summer, but ... I don't know what she'll decide once she gets there, away from all this."
"I won't give you any platitudes about other fish in the sea. It's her life, not yours. You can't live it for her. —No, sorry, no more." Grandma showed her open hand to Creiddylad, fingers spread. After making an attempt to lick Grandma's fingers with her long tongue, the wolfhound gave a soft sigh and lay down under my grandmother's chair.