Chapter Forty Four #2
All my life, my home was a place I wanted to be free of. Home was a prison full of secrets and hurt. Where I had to make myself smaller to survive but that’s not what ‘our home’ is. Not by a long shot.
I get teary-eyed thinking of what home will be like now with Jaak.
I look around at everyone and laugh when I see Nina holding up a finger to Mort’s face, testing his vision.
At least I hope that’s what she’s doing.
Beside them, Elijah messes with Charlie’s cape while he shows Elijah how to shoot his bow.
In front of us, Sunday sits on the hood of the car talking to Dina and Clyde.
I don’t know what they’re talking about but whatever it is, Sunday is excited.
“How are we going to deal with her?” Buffy asks pointing at Eri.
I make a face. “Oh man, I forgot about her.” It’s true.
I had. It’s not every day your husband comes back from the dead through magical means after you K.O.
’d a god. “I honestly don't know. I thought I could kill her but I couldn’t.” I look over my shoulder at the crowd.
The marching band is back in formation and starting to play and they’re on the move again.
They head right for the officers and cult members.
I watch a trombone slide catch a deputy in the back while a bass drum takes down the sheriff.
“Are all marching bands agents of chaos? I mean, look at them, they’re making those arrests as awkward as possible.
You would think going the other way and not directly through them would be an option. Are marching bands evil?”
“Don’t they say the best way is to go through something not around it?” Buffy asks.
“I think that’s about life’s challenges, beloved,” Wrath explains.
“Y’know that makes a lot more sense with life lately.”
“Meadow! Help us! Stop them!” It’s my parents. They're in handcuffs and being dragged along by deputies towards the wagon. My mother pulls at her cuffs and tries to run to me but she’s dragged back. “You can’t let them take me away. We’re your parents! Meadow! You get over here this instant.”
Jaak growls and looks like he’s about to split my mother in two but I stop him. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”
He looks confused when I say that but Buffy doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m starved. I haven’t eaten all day, what with putting down that coup and running here. The next time I’m having breakfast, no matter what. I don’t care who set the Hall of Worship on fire. Let it burn.”
“They did what to the Hall of Worship?”
“It was just a little fire so don’t worry.” She waves her hand at me. “I say we concentrate on eating. Do you know any good places in town? I’m craving pancakes.”
“MEEEADDOOWW! Meadow! You turn around! Turn around right now!”
I don’t turn around. There’s no reason when everything I want is in front of me.
“As a matter of fact, I know the perfect place,” I say.
“For pancakes that a magic house made, they are excellent,” Elijah says as he pours syrup on his second short stack of the day. After we ignored my parents and left them to a fate that only they and the Bitter Root PD know about, we came back to the only place I wanted to be.
Sarande House.
Funny that I didn’t know it had a name until Eleanor told me.
“Bacon is stellar too,” Clyde says and salutes the ceiling. “My compliments to you. You are a master of your profession.”
Buffy looks up at the ceiling. “Is being a house a profession?”
Sunday shakes her head. “Kinda but it’s more a willed into existence thing so it would be more of a vocation, if anything.”
Buffy nods. “Ahhh, I get it. Wait, no, I don’t. You can will something into existence?”
“You can will anything into existence if you try hard enough. Just like I’m doing with extra cinnamon rolls. Are there any more cinnamon rolls?” Nina asks, looking for the platter that Elijah brought out earlier.
Wrath puts down a fresh platter in front of her. “Right here, I just iced them.”
We’re having a good breakfast at the house, even though it’s well past lunch. Sunday said this is just something called brunch.
Brunch is awesome.
When we got back from town there was an entire spread waiting for us on the table with more in the kitchen. Wrath and Elijah explained the delicate cinnamon roll system they have in place for meals to the house and of course, made more than enough to feed us all.
Buffy cracks open a White Claw. “So, how are we handling blondie? She’s giving me the willies.”
We all look to the corner of the room where Eri is tied up, magically gagged, and glaring daggers at us. She’s awake now. She woke up on the way here, which was interesting. Jaak had carried her until then and she tried to bite him. She got assigned to Buffy after that.
“Try and bite me and see what that gets you. I’ll give you something to eat all right.”
Eri was smart enough to not try and bite Buffy.
I frown and tap my fork on my plate and sigh. “Honestly, I don’t know. I wish—I want her to be somewhere she can’t hurt anyone else but I don’t know how to do that without offing her. I mean may-”
Buffy grabs my face with both hands and turns it to her. “Do that again.”
“Dwoo whagin?”
Buffy gives me a funny look and smushes my face again. “What?”
I slap her hands away. “I said do what again?”
“You know what, missy.”
“I really don’t!”
“You frowned.”
“Oh, yeah, I do that now. Pretty cool, huh?”
Buffy snaps her fingers at me. “Do. It. Again. Do it many times. Show everyone!”
It’s hard to frown because I can’t stop smiling when the table starts clapping and demanding to see my frown. They erupt in cheers when I finally manage it.
“That’s the best frown anyone ever frowned,” Sunday says and lifts her mimosa glass to me.
Nina beams at me. “I’m proud of you, Meadow.”
“Thanks. That means a lot.”
Jaak wraps an arm around me and kisses my temple. “It makes me glad to see you surrounded by such love. Tell me, Meadow. Where do you wish to live?”
I already know where this conversation is going. I can sense it. I look around the house, at the people in it, and I know exactly where it is that I want to make home.
“Here.”
“You wouldn’t miss your friends?” I know Jaak is concerned that I’ll miss them, and it’s sweet of him but there’s ways around that.
“We can make the journey. Sweet Tooth isn’t that far away, right?” I ask.
“A hop, skip, and a jump.” Sunday shakes her head. “It was only half an hour by car.”
Elijah clears his throat. “Not to correct you, sweetheart but it was only half an hour because of how fast you were driving. One might say it was…well above the speed limit.”
“I was driving perfectly normal.”
Wrath gives her a look that says ‘no the fuck you weren’t’ before he says. “You were going over a hundred miles an hour. I do not think Meadow wishes to sustain whiplash on her journey.”
“I’d say Sweet Tooth is more like an hour away, little more,” Elijah says.
“An hour isn’t far, and we could always teleport. That had us here like that,” I say, snapping my fingers.
“Wait, are you telling me we could have teleported?” Nina asks.
Buffy holds up a piece of bacon. “Don’t look at me. I don’t have that upgrade.”
“Wrath is hurt, which means I’m the only magical ride around and I’m not carrying you three through the speedways of time and space.
It’s too dangerous. I wouldn’t be able to protect you all,” Sunday explains.
She’s right, it is dangerous. I remember the Auger and how scared I was of it.
I’d be okay now, though. I might even get to look around.
“An hour, or however long the journey is, is fine.” Jaak hugs me close. “We will make our home where you wish and this is as fine a house as they come.”
He’s right. It is. It’s the best house.
“We’ll be safe here and there’s plenty of room for a visit whenever any of you want to come. I know Ms. Donna and Mrs. Landry will want to come for a stay. It’ll be perfect,” I tell everyone while I happily start planning what days with a full house would look like.
I’m midway through planning my imaginary girls’ staycation when Eri starts talking, her voice muffled by the gag I slapped on her. The silver of the magic sparkles against her skin in the sunlight when she leans forward to stare me down.
“Do we ungag it?” Charlie asks. “I’m totally fine if we don’t. Could just turn her chair around and really put her in time out.”
“No. We may as well,” I mutter and flick my hand to take away the gag. The second I do, Eri is talking.
“You think you won? That you’re going to get to play house in a place like this? This is an ancestral seat of power. The first magic bringers of this region lived here. You are not worthy to use their power.”
Sunday jabs her knife in Eri’s direction. “Actually, she is. This is a bonafide witch house and the girls back then weren’t that particular. I partied here more than once with that coven and let me tell you, the stories these walls could tell you if we hadn’t spelled the house to be silent.”
“You did what?” I ask.
“I partied hard in these four walls once upon a time with some powerful witch bitches.”
“I meant the house.”
“Ohhhh, well, loose lips sink ships. We had to do it. Don’t you dare look at me like I’m a monster, this house was not this chill when it was younger. The things it said then would have had you clutching your pearls. Be glad we silenced it.”
The dining room door slams twice, telling me Sunday probably isn’t wrong. I look at the house and make up my mind that I’m going to find a way to bring its voice back but that’s going to be a quest for another day. Right now, we have Eri to deal with.
I flick two fingers at her and slap the magical gag back on her. Eri’s eyes nearly bug out when I do that and she starts to scream and shake her chair trying to get up. It’s no use. I bound her tight with my magic. She’s one thousand percent stuck.
I stare at Eri and a thought starts to form. “Let’s lock her up. Bind her. Put her somewhere she can’t cause trouble and no one will go looking for her.”
Sunday sips her mimosa and nods. “I like it. Where would we find that kind of place though?”
Jaak and I look at each other. When he grins I know he’s thinking what I am. “We’ll show you.”