Chapter Forty-Seven • Quiet • Damien
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Our escape from the hospital would have been almost funny if not for the absolute terror engulfing my soul.
We ran out of there like we’d set off a bomb.
I had to steal a hospital gown. Oren carried Fletcher piggyback, and Roxie and Wren had to wrangle Satoshi, who’s hovering somewhere between delirium and speaking in tongues.
Now we’re all sitting at the airport terminal. The soonest flight we could find back to California doesn’t leave for six hours. We’ve already been here for three, and the entire time we’ve been silent as death.
There is this sort of quiet that falls over people when tragedy strikes. I don’t see as much of it as actual doctors do, but I’ve seen it a few times when someone dies at the scene of an accident, or has an unexpected heart attack or stroke. This sort of feeling of well, what is there to say?
No amount of “I’m sorry,” or “It will be okay,” will ever be enough. Because what does it matter if you’re sorry? And because it won’t be okay.
Wren sleeps fitfully against Satoshi, who’s sitting on the floor against the wall.
His arms look almost entirely better. I managed to suture up the gash on Fletcher’s head with the first aid kit in the rental.
He said he got it in the fall after he was knocked out.
Roxie hasn’t stopped crying: a steady, insistent stream, like the constant flow of a well-supplied creek.
Oren sits next to me, staring at the ceiling while I stare down at my hands.
Another hour passes like this, then a second one.
My mind buzzes with the white noise of fresh grief.
And each passing tick of the clock hammers the reality of my loss deeper into my bones.
As much as I’m eager to get back to Del Lune to ask Aemon what can be done, the yawning void of her home without her in it makes me feel like I’m going to unravel.
Then, out of nowhere, around three in the morning, an Irish brogue tears through the quiet. “Aye, you know what? This is proper bullshit,” Fletcher snaps.
We all look at him.
“Lillith—she’s a good girl,” Fletch says. “She came all the way over here to save your sorry ass, and we’re just sitting here waiting for a godsdamned aeroplane? It’s not even a direct fucking flight. The longer we wait, the less likely we’re going to be able to save her.”
“Why are you talking like you were born in 1850?” Oren asks without looking at him.
“Ah, yeah. Just pretend to be unaffected by the loss. Gods forbid you have a genuine emotional response to any external stimuli whatever,” Fletcher sneers. “You fuckin’ hu—” he pauses and coughs like he’s choking on something. “You fuckin’ men. I swear.”
“Yeah? And what should we be doing, Fletch?” Satoshi barks from his post against the wall, spooking Wren awake.
“Aemon’s a familiar, isn’t he?” Fletcher says. “We summon him, you bellend.”
I blink, looking at Wren. “Wait, can we do that?” I ask her.
She rubs her eyes and yawns. “I mean, yeah... theoretically,” she says. “But I don’t actually know how. That is highly specialized magic. And even if I did know how, I wouldn’t know how to do it here.”
My hope immediately deflates, but another irritable sound comes out of Fletcher.
When I look at him, his face is pink. The way it colors when he’s feeling agitated about something and uncertain what to do. He looks like he wants to be puffing on his stupid hobbit pipe. I’m about to tease him for it when he speaks.
“I... I know how to do it,” he finally relents.
Silence in the empty airport terminal. Silence except for the muzak playing over the blown-out speakers and the sound of suitcase wheels clicking across tiled floors somewhere several gates down. We all stare at Fletcher. My mind hums with a droning static of confusion.
I see Wren sit up in my peripheral.
“I’m sorry,” she starts. “But what in the ever-loving fuck do you mean?”
Fletcher flushes even deeper, but he reaches for the wristband he always wears.
He fusses with the leather straps and takes it off, setting it down on the seat between himself and Roxie.
Before our eyes Fletcher’s features change.
The dusting of freckles across his nose and cheeks dissipates to a few perfectly placed, amber specks, leaving almost luminescent skin behind.
His rounded ears elongate and taper to a point at the shell.
His lashes grow longer and so do some of the proportions of his body—his musculature stretching, hands looking more graceful and delicate, nails growing and rounding to polished almonds.
Even his copper curls lighten to more of a strawberry gold color.
And his eyes.
Holy shit.
His eyes are iridescent, with greens and golds and even little flecks of pink in his gem-like irises.
“What the actual fuck,” I say. “You’re fae?!”
Fletcher rubs the nape of his neck, not quite looking at me. “Aye,” he says, quiet.
“Whoa,” Oren says, gawking at him. “Shit. You’re fucking beautiful.”
Fletcher blushes, the color a faint dusting on his flawless skin. “I—I feel we’re getting distracted here. The entire point of me revealing this is to help Lillith. We can address all of this later.”
“I knew Bastion was looking at you funny,” Wren says under her breath.
“Yeah, that bastard’s been poking at my glamour every time we meet.
Even Lillith started picking up on it here and there, but—well, I just have a lot of practice at it.
” Fletch says. “But... that’s not important.
The whole point is, if we can find somewhere private, I should be able to summon our reluctant familiar friend to our aid. ”
“Private? In an airport?” I ask.
“How private are we talking?” Roxie asks.
“I’d need maybe twenty minutes to prepare,” Fletcher says. “Then about five to perform the ritual. It’s not a terribly difficult spell.”
Roxie taps their finger against their lower lip. “Well... We do have access to the VIP lounge. And I don’t think I saw anyone in there when we passed it earlier.”
“We do?” I ask.
“Perks of having a label,” Roxie says with a shrug.
“Are we really about to perform a summoning ritual in the middle of an airport?” Wren asks. “I feel like Homeland Security would have a problem with this.”
“You think Aemon would try to smuggle more than two ounces of liquids into the airport?” I joke. “Should we go back to the TSA check and have him take off his loafers?”
Wren frowns at me. “No need to be a smartass,” she says.
“Well, let’s go summon a smarmy asshole,” I say, clapping my hands.
For the first time in a few hours, I feel the banked embers of my hope spark just a little.
Maybe not all is lost, after all.