15. Gunnar
Gunnar
I want it on the record that we crossed a realm for this.
Three years of waiting. A Vestry summons. Ezra in the actual flesh. A day on foot, too. And for what?
I was braced for a monster. Something with tentacles — I committed to tentacles somewhere around mile thirty and nobody talked me out of it, which everyone will remember the day tentacles turn out to be right.
A creature big enough to hide one of ours from the oldest powers alive, that’s a thing worth kicking a door for.
Rayner kicked the door like we agreed.
He just didn’t know it.
Went through it before the scream finished. I’ve never once seen him move like that.
And now that we’re on the other side?
I’m a little disappointed.
This is not what I ordered.
Instead of tentacles, I get a woman half-buried in blankets and Erik practically on top of her.
Erik. Who we mourned in every way except burying him.
I don’t think being here has been the struggle we assumed it was.
“Wondered when you’d show up,” he says. Grinning from the pile.
I open my mouth.
She beats me to it.
“Okay.” One hand comes up out of the blankets, palm flat, like she’s directing traffic only she can see. “Okay. You know them.”
“I know them,” Erik says.
“You know them. And I know you. So by— that’s how knowing works, it transfers. We basically all know each other.” The hand makes a small circle, gathering the whole room into it. “We’re friends. This is friends. Friends visit.”
I open my mouth again.
“Friends who break down a door,” she says, mostly to herself now, working the problem, “which is a thing friends do. A certain kind of friend. A legitimate kind. An enthusiastic kind.” She nods. She’s sold. “We’re all friends here. Friendly.”
Nobody in the history of doors has broken one down in friendship. I’d know. I’ve broken more doors than anyone in this room and not one of them was friendly.
“And when friends visit, you—” She’s pushing up out of the blankets, shoving Erik like she can move him without him helping.
He lets her.
Of course he does.
“Coffee. I have coffee. I can make coffee. Do you want—”
She looks at the door. The door is in three pieces on the floor.
“—coffee,” she finishes, quieter.
She doesn’t look at us.
Not that I blame her, after what we did. Her door’s in pieces and she’s still offering us a drink.
Erik catches her by the elbow. “Hey, they’re with me. Friends, I swear — bad timing, that’s all. We’ll get the door fixed.”
“Yeah, friends…” she says. Not quite sold.
“Friends.”
She lets out a breath and my eyes move to his hand on her arm.
I don’t know why.
I don’t like it.
She looked about two seconds from climbing out a window.
But now —
“I’ll just—” She’s already moving. “Coffee. Right.”
She makes it to the kitchen doorway, catches the frame, and disappears around it.
And then it’s just us.
Sort of.
Rayner hasn’t said a word since the door came down. He’s just staring at the spot where she went. I snap my fingers in front of his face and get nothing.
Wonderful.
We came to recover one man and I’m watching us lose two more.
Speaking of.
“Where the fuck is Leif?”
Erik just shrugs, still grinning.
“He was in the box,” Brock says.
“Well, he’s not in the box now.” A lifetime of that man lecturing us about staying together, and he evaporates inside a hallway.
Rayner’s a statue. Leif’s a rumor. Somebody has to deal with Erik.
So it’s me. Of course it’s me.
A cabinet opens in the kitchen. Closes. Water runs.
Erik hasn’t moved. He’s just sitting there with the face of a guy who got caught and figures he’ll enjoy it.
“What is this?” I say.
“What?”
I point at all of it. “That.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I doubt that.”
“Gunnar—” I don’t react. I know Brock’s voice when he thinks I’m going to do something stupid.
“You shot up off her so fast when the door went I thought you’d flown. Now you’re right back in it.”
“It’s a pull-out.”
“You’re grinning at me, Erik.”
Behind me, Brock moves close enough I can feel the heat coming off of him.
“Let him explain.” Low, right at my ear. “I want to hear how he says it.”
The words move against the side of my neck and stay there.
I don’t lean back. For the record.
The sound of something shattering comes from the kitchen.
“Shit.”
The sound of a broom follows.
Erik’s grin gets bigger.
I look back at the monstrosity Erik is sitting on, and he catches me looking.
“What? It’s for a guest, you know. It’s what you do when someone stays over.”
“Go on.”
“I’m just crashing here for a few nights until this thing with her ex blows over. That’s all it is. A comfortable place for somebody to sleep.”
“She built you a nest.”
I say it to get a rise out of him. It’s the worst word I’ve got and Erik squirming is the best thing I’ve seen all night, so I use it.
“I didn’t ask her to—”
“She built you a nest.”
And somewhere in the second one it stops being funny.
Because I haven’t actually looked at it.
Not really.
Even when he caught me just now.
I’ve been looking at Erik, the door, her — anything but the thing in the middle of the room.
So I look.
Pillows three deep. Two blankets, a throw. Corners softened. A wall along the back. It isn’t a pile of bedding shoved together. It’s built.
Blanket fort.
That’s the word I want.
The harmless one.
It’s not a nest.
That isn’t…
I look over to where she disappeared around the corner.
It’s not.
Because human females don’t do that. So obviously…
Her scent’s been under all of it since the box opened and we got in.
It’s stronger here. Strongest in the n… The blanket fort.
Oh.
Oh no.
No no no.
I know what she is.
This is the worst thing that’s happened all day.
It’s not real. It’s a fucking fairy tale.
I need to sit down.
But the only place to sit is…
Nope.
Everybody knows the stories. You hear them as a kid and you stop believing in the idea about the time you stop believing anything good is coming for you. Because there hasn’t been one of… those in longer than I’ve been alive. Because that’s the whole point of the story — they’re gone.
There was one with a mountain in it. Or a lake. I don’t remember — I was six, and it was a story.
She’s in the kitchen, breaking things.
We crossed a realm and kicked in a door for a disturbance nobody could figure out.
That didn’t have tentacles.
Turns out it’s a woman in a blanket fort trying to make us coffee.
“Gunnar.” Erik’s not grinning now. He’s watching my face. “Don’t.”
I wasn’t going to. Not with her ten feet away and no idea that four strangers just walked into her apartment and every one of us knew her on sight.
“She built you a blanket fort,” I say.
He watches me.
“I thought it was a nest?”
I’m not answering that.
I close my eyes.
She’s a real life fairy tale standing in front of me with those big green eyes and frizzy hair shoved out of her face.
She shouldn’t exist.
She’s definitely not mine.
Absolutely fucking not.