Chapter 2 #2
“Search me,” Kai says. “I'm not the one with the direct through-line to France.” He slides a glance at Kingston. “Guess I'm assuming you were on top of that.”
Kingston pushes his food around, staring straight at the table.
“And?” Kai prompts.
Kingston breathes out hard through his nose. “I don't know. I haven't been in touch with them.”
“You haven't?” Kai's incredulous. “What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I just said,” Kingston says again, his voice clipped. “I haven't written.”
“Well, have they written to us? Don't they keep some kind of regular tabs or something?” Kai says, waving his arms around.
“They usually go through Father,” Kingston says, “went through, and I...”
“So go look in his mailbox,” Kai cries. “It's right on campus. I mean, you should have done that first thing, right?”
Kingston doesn't answer.
“Give him a break, Kai,” I say.
Kai looks at me, not harshly, but pointedly. “This isn't something that'll get better or go away if we ignore it, Gwenna. Those motherfuckers are—” he can't seem to grasp the right word.
“Cunning,” Lanz fills in for him. “Very cunning.”
“Yeah.” Kai gives a sharp nod. “Personally? I’d love to just fuck the pain away like you two are, but—”
“Hey.” Kingston, Cal, and I all say the same thing at the same time. Lanz goes even paler.
Kai balks. But only briefly. “You know what I fucking mean,” he mutters, darting a glance at Kingston.
“And here I was thinking that our first Easter without Luther would be free of family drama,” Morgan says under her breath.
I'd laugh if I weren't so tense. Instead, I take a sip of my wine. It's good, I think, oaky and a little bit sweet, but right now I mostly just want it to do what wine does. It could be grain alcohol for all I care.
Because Kai's right. Over the past week, it's like Kingston wants to crawl inside my skin every moment he feels stressed or scared.
And that's basically every moment he's awake.
And I don't mind, because I need it too, in a way.
I want it too, certainly. I want so desperately to be normal and just have this be the end of a regular spring break where I'm about to go back to classes.
But that isn't what's going to happen, and I can't keep being that for him either.
“We don't have any of the equipment either,” Callahan points out. He blushes a little. “I mean, I realize that's really beside the point right now, but—”
“It's not,” Lanz adds, pressing his lips together. “That was all of our weapons, all of our gear. I don't think there's even anything left down in the...”
“We can figure that out,” Kai says, waving a hand. “It's just a matter of calling up the suppliers and putting in an order. It's not like they're going to do a credit check or anything.”
He digs his teeth into his lip, catching the lip ring, and puts his elbows on the table, leaning into his fists, looking over at Kingston—his brother or the closest thing he has to one. Then he lowers his hands.
“Why don't you get on that, King,” he says, his voice just a tiny bit softer. “Go to the salle, see if you can make some kind of list of what we're missing. Put your anal retentive qualities to good use.”
It's maybe the gentlest joke I've ever heard Kai make at Kingston's expense, but Kingston doesn't even laugh.
“Come on,” Kai says. “Stop pretending to eat and go make yourself useful.”
That gets Kingston's attention. He glares at Kai, deliberately forks up a chunk of ham and stuffs it in his mouth. Chews, swallows. It's as close to unrefined as I've ever seen his table manners.
“Fine,” he says.
He gets up and walks out.
“Well,” Morgan says, after a few long seconds. “This has been really wonderful catching up, but I think I'll excuse myself, too.”
“There's carrot cake,” Lanz says, almost like he's disappointed.
“Save me a piece,” Morgan says. “Unless you want some, Gwenna.”
I shake my head. “Not in the mood, but I will have some later,” I add, mostly for Lanz’s benefit.
“Can I steal her away, gents?” Morgan says.
The three of them exchange a look.
“She can do whatever she wants,” Cal says.
Morgan snaps her fingers and points at him. “Exactly.” She gestures for me. “If you would like to.” She flashes me a grin. “I got you a present on vacation.”
"Wow,” I say to Morgan, unfolding my gifts over my bed. “I don't know what to say."
I really don't. I'm not even sure what I'm looking at.
“You can thank me later,” Morgan says airily. “As soon as I saw them, I knew they were for you.”
“You did?" I say, cocking my head. “That's funny, because I don't even know what these are.”
"They're twillies," Morgan says, as if that explains anything.
When I continue to stare blankly, she sighs.
"Silk scarves? For a pop of color." She gestures at the two long, narrow strips of silk—one a deep jewel-toned blue, the other a rich burgundy, both patterned with delicate gold geometric shapes.
"They had all these tacky tropical prints, but I found these in the back and I thought, Gwenna. Classic. Elegant. A little moody."
"They're beautiful," I say, and I mean it. They really are. Soft and slippery-cool between my fingers.
"You can use them as a headband, or around your wrist like a sort of bangle, but mostly you just tie them on your handbag to…” She trails off. “Well, I guess next time I’ll get you a handbag, too.”
She sighs, packs the twillies delicately back up in the box, and sets it on my bedside table, one pop of color in the otherwise fairly stark room.
“They’re nice,” I say, because they are—they are, and she is, to think of me. “Really. Maybe I’ll…hang them on the wall. Make this place look like less of a prison cell.”
I haven't had much time to decorate my room in Camlann House.
Besides the ridiculous amount of wardrobe accessories that Kingston bought me and the ball gowns from Kai, I don't even have that much on campus that wasn't reduced to ash.
I feel a sudden pang of a missed experience—buying posters, setting up a whiteboard on my door for people to write notes when I'm out at class, a shower caddy, a reading corner where I would study for exams, page through textbooks, crumple paper from my notebook and aim for the wastebasket across the room to kill time. College things, normal things.
A gust of wind rattling the windowpane brings me back to attention. Morgan is clambering into bed with me, where she sits cross-legged and peers into my eyes.
“How are you?” she asks, her voice more serious now. “Really?”
“I'm...” I trail off. I don't want to think about the question. Or the answer.
I feel like I'm floating in space, in a timeline of things that can't possibly be real.
The trip, the island, the girls, the church.
The shivering form of the archimandrite.
Alexei Moroslav's eyes flashing and then going dull as Kai buried his sword in his chest. The fierce wind on the tarmac, Kingston and Luther.
The blood on the snow, the blood on their faces, the blood on my lips.
“Different question,” Morgan interrupts, as if she can sense that I'm going down a bad path. “Look to the future. What are you going to do now? I mean, what's the plan with them? With their whole...” She gestures in the air. “With you.”
I swallow hard. Give my head a slow shake.
“It sounds like they're still figuring that out, right? Like we're figuring that out," I amend. "Kingston is--"
"Traumatized?" Morgan offers.
I breathe out. I wouldn't have used that word, but now that she's said it...she's not wrong.
“Yeah,” I agree.
“And so are you.” Morgan takes my hands into her own. “Listen,” she says intently. “I did a ton of research--as best as I could, anyway. All of this stuff about magical rites and fertility goddesses and the ties to pagan rituals across the world and—”
“Thanks.” I cut her off, sharper and harsher than I mean to, and Morgan's face falls. I clench my fingers inside hers.
“No, I mean it. Really, thank you,” I rattle off.
“I just don't want to think about that now? Right this instant?” I say it like a question, wincing.
I extract a hand to press to my temple, eyes closed.
“It's just, I don't want to have to be any of that right now.
" My voice is small, hesitant. "I think I just I want to, I don't know. Be here. Study. Other than that, I want everyone to leave me alone.” I open my eyes. “Except you, I mean," I add quickly.
Morgan purses her lips, the tiniest bit of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “And of the four of them downstairs.”
My face heats up thinking about what Kingston and I were doing barely over an hour ago.
“Right,” I agree.
Because the thing about the four of them is, I realize, they do leave me alone.
Or it feels like they do. They're not there in a way that feels imposing, don't intrude on me in the way that the rest of the world does.
They're around me and beside me and...complementing me.
A frame that fits the artwork perfectly.
I don't feel that usual need to be hidden or not looked at.
Because if they're looking at me, I usually want to be seen.
To be caught in the heat of their gaze. And if I don't, it's like they know enough not to interfere.
I don't know what that is. Don't know what to call it. But it seems incredible that I've ever found it at all.
“I just want to do…normal girl talk stuff right now,” I finish, “if that's okay. I missed you, Morgan.”
“I missed you too.” Morgan flops along the bed. “Are we normal girl talk girls? What does that even mean?”
“Beats me,” I say, falling back on the pillows next to her. “Aren't you supposed to tell me all about your fabulous tropical vacation, how you went cliff diving and skinny dipping and did ayahuasca with dumb jocks from other schools?”
“I presume you mean in the part of my vacation before I heard that my stepfather had mysteriously and suddenly died in a foreign country,” Morgan says dryly.
“But sure, yeah." She lifts her chin, thinking.
"My mom and I had a whole double act going. There was one night where we pulled a father-son pair.” She frowns.
“At least I'm pretty sure they were father-son.
There's an outside chance they were a couple, but--"
“You did not,” I gasp, pretending to be scandalized, and Morgan cackles.
“You have so little faith in my abilities? Let alone my mother's. She's a cougar if ever there was one. Positively bewitching.”
“Are you trying to tell me you use some kind of magic?” I say. “I thought you said that was unethical.”
Morgan rolls her eyes. “Listen, on spring break, there are no ethics.”
She goes on to spin out the whole story involving a swim-up bar, hijacking a DJ booth, a midnight moped ride with no headlights, and swimming with sea turtles at sunrise.
It sounds made up. It probably is made up.
I don't care. We're both pretending to be normal, both telling ourselves a little fairy tale for the moment, transported from the bleary and bleak Caliburn campus to a fantasy land we can giggle about and cackle over like best friends do.
By the time she's done, we're gasping with laughter, and my cheeks actually hurt from smiling so much.
And it occurs to me: of all the things that have happened to me, of all the improbable and fantastical and downright unbelievable events that I've witnessed or suffered through or barely survived, this one might be the most incredible of all.
That I have a friend like Morgan. Smart and funny and fiercely loyal and cool.
"I would never have survived this year without you," I say quietly as Morgan yawns mightily next to me. "You know that, right?"
"Me?" Morgan murmurs. "I'm not the one who literally killed to save you, Gwenna."
I ignore the shudder those words send through me. "C'mon. I'm serious. You were there for me before...any of this."
"Aw. Well, you're worth it, Gwen." She flashes me a grin and tweaks the end of my nose. "Besides, I'm sure you'll return the favor someday."