Chapter Sixteen
“But, Mom, but, Mooooommmm.”
Josie pushed opened the door to the lobby and Amos ran past her, his face red with frustration, tears in his eyes.
This morning it had been freezing, the snow from yesterday’s blizzard measuring at least two feet. Josie had been held up at work, so Amos had to sit in the Oak Room at school, where the kids whose parents worked late were housed.
The teacher, Miss Monica, was wonderful, but Amos was the only “big” kid there. A handful of three-year-olds decided he was a monster and ran around screaming every time he moved, and it put him in a shitty mood.
It would put her in a shitty mood as well, so out of sympathy—and guilt that she’d been late—Josie had made an exception and gotten him dinner from McDonald’s instead of heating up leftovers from last night.
The gesture was too little, too late to salvage a no good, very bad day, because before they made it home, Amos had discovered his Happy Meal had a blue Sonic the Hedgehog when he’d wanted the yellow one.
“We are not going back to McDonald’s, Amos,” Josie said for the forty thousandth time. “The color of the hedgehog doesn’t make a difference in how good your chicken nuggets taste.”
She prodded Amos with her arms full of paperwork and rapidly cooling french fries but he collapsed on the bottom step of the staircase.
“My legs is broken!” he wailed. “I hafta go back and get a yellow Sonic.”
Josie considered whether she should leave the child and go on upstairs.
Eventually, hunger would force his legs to unbreak, but the determination of a four-year-old when it came to the specifics of a meal toy was akin to the hunger for a gold medal with Olympic athletes.
Both groups were determined to break something—world records in the case of Olympians and their parent’s will in the case of four-year-olds.
Worst-case scenario…
Even as Josie thought the words, the door to Pax’s office opened and Maddy stuck her head out.
Today, Maddy was sublimely composed in a light beige skirt set, complete with a tiny gold pillbox cap settled onto the gold silk scarf covering her hair. Or whatever you called the snakes coming out of her head.
“This scene is loud and would appear unnerving to a being with less sangfroid than I,” Maddy said.
The woman had a talent for stating the obvious.
“I wanted a yellow Sonic,” Amos wailed.
Josie sucked in a huge bellyful of the violet gum–scented air and grasped for patience.
“You know, when I was a kid, we didn’t have Happy Meal toys,” Josie lied to her son, aware her words would mean nothing to this child, but pretty sure it was what parents were supposed to say. “We got chicken nuggets from the grocery store in no shapes, and if we complained, we didn’t get fries.”
This was the downside about living in an apartment building, magical or not: there would always be more witnesses to a child’s temper tantrum and thus more witnesses on hand to judge Josie’s handling of said tantrum.
She flinched when Maddy walked closer and tilted her head to examine Amos, who lay on his back, his legs out straight, feet flopping to the sides while he talked to himself about Sonic.
“It must not be easy as a single mother, trying to do your best for your little boy,” Maddy said in a voice low enough that Amos wouldn’t hear her. “He would do well with a man in the house.”
He would…what?
How the hell would Maddy know what Josie needed to raise Amos?
Maddy wasn’t a mother. At least, she’d never mentioned children.
“I don’t think—”
“Hmm, no, I don’t believe you have been. Thinking. Especially about the future,” Maddy said. “If you were, you would know a permanent settlement here is impossible. We are leaving, Ms. LaChiusa, the sooner, the better.”
Josie had been trying to get through the week with the promise of dinner with Pax sitting like a beacon at the end of a long, dark, absurdly busy tunnel. She hadn’t even begun to process everything she’d learned about Number Five, but Maddy had a point.
This building wasn’t just alive, it had a purpose: delivering these mythological creatures to the worlds where they belonged. Amid all the explanations no one had given her a time line when they explained how the Waysides worked.
“Once you refuel, how long will it take you to leave?” Josie asked.
“What does it matter since you cannot come with us?” Maddy asked.
Well.
Well, that was blunt.
“Good evening, Mr. Amos, Ms. LaChiusa.” Pax stood in the door to the office and Josie’s humiliation was complete.
He must have been fixing something, because his hair was covered with a red bandanna, a tight cream-colored thermal shirt stretched its seams at his chest, and he wore brown work pants with thick-soled black boots.
Maddy looked far too poised to have been up to anything with Pax in the office. There’s no way any woman wouldn’t look a little discombobulated if he’d been touching them in that outfit.
“What does it matter since you cannot come with us?” Maddy had said.
“Us” as in the residents or “us” as in her and Pax?
His boots made a soft pumping sound when Pax crossed the lobby and joined them at the foot of the staircase.
“I’m sorry for the noise, Mr. Pax,” Josie said. “Amos has forgotten to use his inside voice.”
Pax squatted and tilted his head, saying nothing while Amos described in detail why his heart had been broken and he wouldn’t survive without going back to McDonald’s for a yellow Sonic the Hedgehog instead of the blue one.
“My goodness, what a tragedy,” Maddy said dryly. “I cannot wait to hear the ultimate outcome. Pax, we will speak more later.”
Not only did she have incredible posture, Maddy’s shoes today were pink patent leather heels with gladiator ribbon straps. How the hell did she walk in those things?
Josie had to fight the urge to flip her off.
By the time Amos finished his soliloquy with a wet, mucousy inhale, Maddy had disappeared, and it was only the three of them in the lobby.
The gargoyles must have been out doing whatever gargoyles do on a Wednesday night.
Pax, of course, being a magical sexy knight with great hair, did not tell Amos about what sort of indignities he’d suffered in his childhood. Josie could only imagine the kinds of stories a guy raised in some sort of military orphanage might have.
Instead, Pax twisted to sit next to Amos on the bottom most step and asked the obvious question.
“What is the difference between the yellow Sonic the Hedgehog and the blue Sonic the Hedgehog?”
At first, Josie thought she might cry in relief when Amos sat up, tears forgotten, and launched into a long, detailed explanation of Sonic Hedgehogs.
Could have been true, could have been completely made up—to her knowledge Amos had never seen a Sonic the Hedgehog movie—whatever Amos was saying, however, animated him enough so his legs became unbroken.
Then Josie thought she might cry for another reason when Amos reached out and put his hand in Pax’s, still talking, and walked up the stairs with the giant knight in tow.
Josie fell into step behind them, trying to label her feelings.
Overwhelmed? Yes.
Exhausted? Always.
Other emotions lay alongside these, emotions she couldn’t tease apart. What exactly did she feel at the sight of Amos’s hand being held by a man who wasn’t his father?
Hope? Hesitancy?
Was allowing Pax to help a wise choice or was she letting him get too close too soon?
What would happen if and when Number Five got better?
As always, Josie’s brain treated her to worst-case scenarios ranging from the fatal to the merely humiliating, but each stair the pair touched turned to a dark forest green marble beneath their feet.
Wrought iron birds followed them, hopping between spindles on the staircase, tilting their heads back and forth and stopping occasionally to peck at the sculptured ivy leaves, some of which had turned the same dark green as the stairs.
As Amos and Pax passed the small table on the third-floor landing, the vase atop it holding dried flowers suddenly overflowed with pink and white peonies.
What was Number Five reacting to? Was it to the energy produced between the unlikely pair in front of her? Or was Number Five coming back alive in response to Josie’s fervent wish that whatever was happening between Amos and Pax would turn out well?
Magic.
If asked, Josie would have predicted magic would manifest itself in tremendous and terrifying ways.
This magic—real magic?—seemed quiet but also marvelous and more to Josie’s liking.
Why use magic to conquer the world when you can just as easily gift your neighbors with fresh flowers when they come home from work?
The pair came to a halt in front of Josie’s door, still discussing various Sonics. Apparently, the blue Sonic turned into the yellow Sonic when he needed special powers.
Fascinating.
“I can show you in my book,” Amos was saying. “You wanna come inside?”
Pax, who’d been staring at where his and Amos’s hands were joined, now looked over at Josie. His eyes, so often unreadable, were a little bit wild—Amos’s creative liberties with classifications of superheroes could make things confusing—and definitely hopeful.
More magic?
What if this was Number Five’s doing? What if Pax was only interested in them because of some weird spell?
“It is your mother’s decision,” Pax said.
If it was a spell that brought Pax to them, did that necessarily mean he needed a spell to remain with them?
“If you don’t mind leftover lasagna, you are welcome to join us for supper,” she told him.
At her invitation, the door to the apartment opened.
Amos, chattering once again, walked into the apartment without missing a beat.
“Number Five is not subtle,” Pax said to Josie, ducking his head as two iron birds flew by.
“You don’t have—” Josie’s words faltered when Pax tapped his pointer finger gently against her lips.
“She’s not subtle, but I’m not unhappy about it,” he said quietly. He lifted his finger and lightly traced the arc of her cheek.