Chapter 21 - Luna
The farm looks almost exactly the same as the last time I was here, which feels impossible considering the rest of the world. There's a long gravel drive, two weathered barns, several fenced pastures, equipment sheds, grain bins, and the two-story farmhouse tucked behind mature trees.
A livestock trailer is already hitched to Anders's truck. Wooden crates sit stacked near one of the barn doors. Feed sacks are piled under the overhang, and large plastic totes have been set beside them.
Gage slows the motorhome as Anders steps out from behind the trailer, then stops with relief washing over his weathered face as he lifts a hand in greeting.
Gage is out and across the gravel before I finish unbuckling, and Anders meets him halfway as I follow him out.
Neither man says anything at first. They just grab each other.
Gage folds his grandfather into both arms, and Anders's thick hands grip the back of his shirt.
Their shoulders shake once. I look away to give them whatever privacy can exist in a driveway with an entire convoy pulling in behind us.
When I look back, Anders has one hand cupped around the back of Gage's neck.
"You made it home, boy."
Gage nods hard. "Yeah."
Anders's eyes are wet, and so are Gage's, and both of them pretend otherwise. Then Anders gives him three hard slaps on the back, Gage does the same, and that completes the official Strickland Male Feelings Ceremony.
I walk over to them with Penny beside me. Anders sees me and opens one arm immediately. "There's my girl."
I walk straight into his hug. "It's really good to see you."
"You too, Luna." He presses a kiss to my hair before holding me back at arm's length. "And just how is my adopted granddaughter?"
"That's becoming a really complicated question."
He nods in understanding. "Fair enough."
Doors slam behind me as everyone starts unloading from the other vehicles. Gigi climbs out of the Escalade last, and Anders notices. The change in him is so fast that I almost miss it. His back straightens, and he smooths one hand over his shirt, the other over his hair.
Oh, this is adorable. Gigi walks toward us in her sunglasses with her cherry red hair shining in the sun, and he doesn't take his eyes off her once.
"Anders."
"Elenor."
She stops in front of him. One eyebrow goes up.
He clears his throat. "Elle."
His ears turn red. I bite down on the inside of my cheek.
Gigi smiles at him. Not her dirty joke smile, and not her I'm about to cause a problem smile. This one is warmer, and Anders's ears get even redder.
"Good to see you again," she says.
"You too."
Gage makes a low sound beside me.
I lean toward him. "Does he have a crush on my grandmother?"
"Don't."
"Oh my God, he does."
"Sweetheart, stop…"
"This is amazing."
"Please stop talking."
Gigi glances toward us. "What are you two whispering about?"
"Nothing," Gage says immediately.
She gives us a suspicious look that has me choking back a laugh while Gage looks at the sky for help that isn't coming.
Behind us, a car door opens and shuts with the specific slowness of a person who wants everyone to notice. Briar steps out onto the gravel in impeccable white sneakers that have a very expensive brand logo on the side of them, takes two steps, and stops with a look of disgust on her face.
"What is that smell?"
"Cows," Anders says pleasantly.
She makes a heaving noise and snarls, "It's in my mouth."
Kara doesn't even glance over. "Breathe through your nose, then."
Briar's expression suggests she's considering not breathing at all. She looks at the barns, the pastures, the grain bins, the dirt, and something in her face wobbles before the sneer locks back into place. She's fifteen, standing in a farmyard wearing Prada, thousands of miles from the fancy boarding school she just got expelled from. Kara warned me about her, but I notice the wobble and the panic buried behind the mask she’s trying to wear and can’t help feeling bad for her
Reid comes around the front of the Jeep with both hands pressed to his temples.
"Nope. Nope, nope, nope."
Jules is at his side instantly. "What's wrong?"
"There’s so many… Oh my God, it’s so loud!" Reid squeezes his eyes shut. "It’s the cows… Food Eat, Food Eat, over and over! That’s it, no other thoughts. It’s like the worst combination of chanting and throat singing that you could imagine straight into my mind…"
Anders's eyebrows climb toward his hairline in a What’s this about? look.
"Focus on me for a minute," I tell Reid, stepping in front of him and putting my hand on his arm. "Look at me and listen to my voice. Picture the noise like it’s a stream of water and let it run past you instead of into you. Don't fight it, don’t focus on it, just let it go by."
He breathes out, long and slow, and his shoulders come down by an inch. "Okay. Okay, that's a little better."
"You’ve got this, Reid. It’ll take practice but I bet it’ll be like sitting in a noisy restaurant and being able to ignore the conversations going on around you."
"One of the chickens has been screaming about not getting its share of bugs since I stepped out of the car."
"Baby steps."
Briar takes a step back, looking at Reid like he has two heads. "Are you mental? What are you talking about?" She looks over at her brother, "Julian...What is Reid talking about?"
Jules snorts, and Reid opens one eye to glare at both of them and then focuses on Jules. "You didn’t tell her? You didn’t tell her about the…you know." He asks motioning toward his head.
Julian sighs and shakes his head before turning to Briar.
"About that." Jules turns toward the stock tank near the fence line with the expression he wears right before he ruins somebody's afternoon.
He lifts one hand, and a rope of water rises out of the tank and hangs there in the air, twisting slowly.
Briar makes a sound I've never heard a human make before.
"Julian." Her voice climbs an entire octave. "Julian, what is that."
"Water."
"WHAT IS IT DOING?"
"Floating." He flicks two fingers, and the rope of water arcs lazily toward Reid, who yelps and ducks behind Anders.
The arc never gets there. Kara lifts her chin, and the whole thing freezes solid in midair, a curved icicle hanging above the gravel for one perfect second before gravity notices and it drops, shattering into pieces at Jules's feet with a sound like a dropped chandelier.
Nobody moves at all. Then Gigi starts clapping.
"Was that necessary?" Jules asks, looking down at his ice crusted shoes.
"You started it," Kara says. "I ended it. You don't get to play the victim now."
Briar stares at her brother, then at Kara, then at the ice melting into the gravel. "Since when. Since WHEN?"
"Since the moon broke," Jules tells her with a shrug. "There's a lot to catch up on. We all have some form of…magic now."
Her eyes are impossibly wide as she stares at all of us and then they drop to stare at her lifted hands with a frown. Anders takes all of it in with the calm of a man who has spent seventy years watching weather do whatever it wants. "Well," he says. "That'll be useful."
The group gathers near the trailer while Penny races off toward the barn with enough excitement to power a small town. Gage whistles sharply. She stops, looks back, considers her options, and then comes running back, because Gage's commands still outrank curiosity by a very small margin.
"I heard the news and felt the shock wave," Anders says. "You were right, Elle."
Gigi pulls her glasses off and shakes her head. "One of the few times in my life I wish I hadn't been. We've come up with a destination, though, to get us through what's coming."
Gage fills him in on the Harlow Mine and why we think it will work to shelter us. Anders takes it in with a thoughtful expression, then nods. "Alright. That'll do the job better than anything I could have come up with."
"I'm sorry," Briar steps into the middle of the group. "A mine?"
Jules pinches the bridge of his nose. "Briar."
"A mine. Like…underground in the dirt?" Her arms cross hard over her chest. "You had me pack for that? Due to personal reasons, absolutely fucking no."
"Language," Anders says mildly.
"Is there plumbing? Where does a person shower? Julian, where does a person SHOWER?"
"We'll build something."
"You'll BUILD something? You don’t know how to BUILD anything!"
Kara examines her nails. "We have neither the time nor the crayons to explain this to you, Briar. It will get worked out."
"Nobody asked you."
"And yet here I am, improving your life by letting you come with us so you don’t DIE."
"You said we were going somewhere sa-fe." Briar rounds on her brother, and her voice cracks on the last word. "You didn't say we were going to live in a hole."
Jules opens his mouth and nothing comes out, because she's right and he knows it. He didn't tell her. Instead, he forced a choice that wasn't one on her, and now she's standing in a farmyard finding out the rest in front of strangers.
"It's a coal mine, not a hole," Gage tells her, and his voice does that steady thing that makes people believe him. "Yes, there will be rock over your head and stable temperature year-round when we lose the sun out here, that’s a good thing. It’ll be safe for us. There’s enough room inside to build actual rooms. We'll put walls in.
Bedrooms, kitchen, washing setup, all of it. It'll be better than you're picturing."
Briar's chin trembles once before she gets it under control. "It will not."
"It might surprise you."
"Nothing about this week so far has surprised me in a good way."
Gigi loops an arm through hers before the girl can escape, ignoring the way Briar goes stiff as a fence post. "Come along, little sasshole. Stick with me and I'll make sure you get first pick of the good rooms."
"There are no good rooms. It's a MINE."
"Then first pick of the least terrible ones." Gigi steers her toward the barn without slowing down. "Now, tell me everything you know about your parents' marriage. Leave nothing out."