Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The next few hours are spent floating in and out of consciousness, his body desperate to sleep off breaking his neck. One of the times he drifts closer to awake, whispered, heated words fill his awareness.
Naturally, he doesn’t give any indication he’s listening.
“This is stupid,” Ophelia says vehemently, and Mateo inwardly flinches for whoever she’s talking to.
“Maybe,” Topher’s surprisingly not-on-the-verge-of-crying voice responds. “But it’s my stupid to deal with.”
“If that wizard comes back, you won’t be able to stop them. He survived that fall. You won’t,” Ophelia says evenly.
A long silence in which Mateo imagines Topher disintegrating under Ophelia’s blistering scrutiny, but when Topher speaks, he’s quiet and firm.
“That’s exactly why you need to leave. I’m not going to let him get hurt again.
Not either of you. I’m going to file a missing person report in the morning.
I already got you tickets. A car’s coming to take you to the airport tomorrow afternoon.
I’ll keep you in the loop, but I don’t want to worry about something happening to you while I’m trying to find my mom. ”
Mateo braces for some sort of Ophelia-based verbal execution.
Not that the ask is unreasonable, but Ophelia’s not the sort of person you say no to—ever, but most especially not once she’s decided on something.
Never mind that getting the police involved isn’t great for a lot of reasons.
Most obviously that the police can’t do anything about evil wizards throwing people out windows with magic.
“Please get him away from here,” Topher adds into the ensuing silence.
It’s a sniper shot sort of plea. Possibly the only thing Topher could say that Ophelia can’t counter. It’s not shocking that Topher realized he could use them against each other in that way, but it is shocking that he’d actually do it.
Also, Mateo’s starting to feel sort of bad that he’s eavesdropping on this.
He considers protesting, backing up Ophelia so Topher doesn’t try to handle this extremely unhandle-able situation alone, but Topher’s concern can be flipped.
The Evil Wizard could just as easily have shoved Ophelia out that window.
Mateo doesn’t want her anywhere near this, and there’s no world where she leaves without him.
“Fine,” Ophelia says, the word more forceful than it needs to be. That’s the end of that conversation—also the end of anyone else saying anything. The apartment grows quiet, and Mateo dozes again.
It’s nearly two in the morning when he chances movement.
First an arm, a leg, and eventually a head turn.
Everything is stiff, like what he imagines doing a five-hour CrossFit class featuring a lot of jarring, neck-based movements would make him feel like.
It’s wretched, but nothing like the pain of a few hours ago.
Sitting up leaves him panting and shaking, but he manages, and takes in Quincy’s living room.
Large flatscreen. Faux fireplace. Respectable bookshelf that’s half Xbox games.
Ophelia’s asleep on a recliner to his left, curled up tight in a blanket, like a caterpillar that gave up halfway through its transformation.
The long fabric of her dress escapes the confines of the blue fleece and spills onto the floor like unused wings.
Beyond the living room is a kitchen … and also Topher staring.
He’d seemingly gone still when Mateo had started to move around—why Mateo hadn’t spotted him—but he continues to be still even after Mateo looks right at him.
“Bathroom?” Mateo asks in a whisper even though Ophelia can sleep through a shout.
Topher points to a dark hall off the room, so Mateo gets to his feet, teetering slightly, his right leg protesting bending.
When he looks up again, the hall is lit and Topher’s standing to one side of the opening, awash with sunny bathroom light.
Mateo hobbles past, avoiding eye contact because Topher’s looking at him with a new intensity.
Fear or more anxiety would make sense, but if anything, Topher seems calmer than ever before, an expectant gopher out of its little hole.
There’s no room in Mateo for whatever this is, so instead of thanking him for turning on the light, he wordlessly shuffles into the bathroom and locks the door after him.
It’s not like he thinks Topher will come in, but some alone time would be great.
Until he sees himself in the mirror.
Holy shit.
If he ever wants to up his goth game, the way to do it is to fall out a window.
What’s normally sun-starved light brown skin is ashen with sickly purple undertones in the harsh light, like he stopped breathing an hour ago and hasn’t worked up the will to give it a try again.
His lipstick is mostly off—Ophelia must have cleaned him up some—and his naked lips are bloodless.
A bruised and weary darkness sits deep enough around his eyes to suggest empty sockets.
Puts his normal eyeshadow to shame. A dark welling of black blood sits on the inside edge of his right eye.
Strong strung-out Jack Skellington vibes, especially because the black Dolce & Gabbana dress shirt he’d been wearing is scuffed and tattered from the fall and his subsequent dragging.
Tearing his gaze away, he peels off his ruined shirt, fingers finding the back of his neck, sides, and front, carefully touching the tender but unbroken skin.
It’s especially bad down the right side, along the arm he’d seen in loose pieces, and the front of his neck.
Bruised all to hell, but whole. The blood dried hours ago and crusted into various places, mostly his hair and below the neckline of the shirt.
There’s a dried clump on his forehead, probably where he hit the pavers.
The trembling starts without warning, and he has to grip the sink, and then sit on the edge of the tub so his legs don’t go out from under him.
It’s a bizarre sensation, freaking out while refusing to admit you’re freaking out.
He’s okay.
He almost died but he’s okay.
But then why is he crying?
And why can’t he stop thinking about the impact, convinced he heard his own skull crack on stone, or the fleeting consciousness, choking, the way swallowing had felt like forcing glass through a twisted and bent straw, how his mouth still tastes of blood and his nose still smells of copper and he will never get the formless sensation of his arm minced and twisted up out of his brain?
It’s not like the movies where there’s this amazing healing factor that makes the hero able to fight anything no matter the damage.
He’d been absolutely fucked up and then very slowly unfucked—still slowly unfucking—and it’s the worst miracle in the world that he’ll never be able to complain about to anyone because at least he didn’t die.
Except he doesn’t know what he’s doing to his body.
Or soul. It’s not good, for sure. He’s known from go that every bit of magic he uses is a risk, adding to an unknowable bucket of bad that could overflow at any moment.
And he has no idea what happens when the bucket fills.
There’s no way to know how much of himself he’s just lost.
So, he cries quietly in the bathroom, turning on the faucet to obscure the second wave of ragged breathing when he realizes that his teeth are sharp again.
It’s not like he’s looking for a deep sense of belonging to all mankind, but this classifies him as inhuman.
He is twenty-three, and it’s ridiculous to cry about this very-not-new situation, but he still does it for a while.
Once he’s cried himself out, he takes a shower.
Just as he starts to pull his battered clothes back on, the world’s softest knock sounds on the door. Topher. He doesn’t want to talk, but the part before he broke his neck was Topher seeing a room splattered with his mom’s blood, so Mateo cracks the door.
“Quincy found you stuff to sleep in,” Topher whispers, pressing fabric at him.
“Thanks.” Mateo takes the sweatpants, closes the door, and drags them on with the measured motions of the very old. Quincy’s close to his height but with more girth—also known as muscle—so they’re big but fit well enough with the drawstring.
Another glance in the mirror, but he can only assume he looks better after washing up because his reflection has a swath of darkness where his face should be.
Just the shadow silhouette. Luckily, he’s well beyond his emotional limit so he can’t get upset again and instead wanders back to the living room.
“I made tea. I mean, I made enough for two. Like, in two cups. I mean, I made two cups of tea, and if you want one, you can have one. But if you don’t, I can just put it in the sink.
Or drink two. It’s just tea. I mean it’s Quincy’s tea so I don’t want to waste it, so I’ll probably drink it, but I can drink two teas,” Topher rapid-fires from the kitchen, caught in a quantum state of picking up and putting down the mugs to accommodate whatever Mateo decides.
This guy’s mom is probably dead—or maybe wants to kill him—and he’s fretting over tea.
“I’ll take a tea,” Mateo says just to free him, joining Topher in the kitchen.
Topher presses the mug to him. Chamomile. Too hot to drink, but they’re both standing there staring at each other, so they both try to take a tongue-melting sip because burning your mouth is better than this awkward silence.
“Can’t sleep?” Mateo tries, because he’s bad at small talk not about a purchase or getting something free, but it feels like he should say something to Topher after the day they’ve had.
Topher shakes his head, tries to sip his tea again, but it’s still too hot, and he puts it down. “We were taking shifts,” he says, but has to expand when Mateo stares at him blankly. “For when you woke up. Ophelia went first, then Quincy.”