Chapter 68
Chapter
Sixty-Eight
Winter
The house was on a quiet street with a yard big enough for Horrace to exist in without frightening the neighbors too badly, mostly because the neighbors were used to unusual things, living where they did.
It was a proper house. Not a Bureau apartment with monitoring wards and a vending machine that had opinions about nutrition.
A house with a kitchen that had seen actual cooking, a living room where five people and an interdimensional manticore had negotiated furniture placement for an entire weekend, and a garden that Milo's skeletons had claimed as their own personal project, which meant it was perfectly maintained but also occasionally had tiny bone footprints in the flower beds.
The skeletons' room in the house was exactly what it had always been, their own small domain, which had expanded slightly to accommodate new members of Jeffrey's social circle, including the six who'd delivered the Oracle's shard.
They'd apparently decided that as bone-based entities, they had more in common than not, and the tea parties had become something of a regular institution. They wanted to stay permanently.
Horrace split his time between our house and Emma's veterinary clinic with a casualness that made it clear he considered himself the bridge between two homes rather than the property of one.
His memories hadn't come back, not fully, but he'd built new ones, layered on top of the empty space like ivy growing over stone.
He remembered me. He remembered Emma. He remembered the way Milo's skeletons arranged themselves when they wanted attention and the specific location of every particularly comfortable sunbeam in every room.
Emma and I had drinks on her porch twice a month now. She'd cried once, quietly, when Horrace had done something he used to do, settled into her lap in the particular way that was him and said it was like remembering a word she'd been trying to think of for thirty years.
I came home to find candles one night after work.
Not romantic disaster candles, not emergency candles, not I'm-about-to-perform-a-ritual candles.
These were the deliberate kind, arranged with Fenric's precise spatial awareness across the dining table that had been cleared of Milo's books and Rook's weapons maintenance equipment and whatever three-month-old Bureau document Zane had been using as a coaster.
The table was set properly, actual plates, actual napkins folded with unnecessary mathematical precision, the good wine that Zane had been keeping for what he'd described as an appropriate occasion.
Milo was grinning so wide his face looked like it was considering structural limits.
Rook was standing with his arms crossed in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, doing his absolutely unconvincing impression of someone who wasn't deeply invested in how this moment went.
Zane was pouring wine with the focused attention he usually reserved for potentially dangerous situations.
Fenric was straightening an already perfectly straight candle for the third time.
"What's the occasion?" I asked, setting down my bag.
"Sit down," Milo jumped up and down with the energy of someone who had been waiting all day to say this.
I sat down. Horrace, who had been doing something in the garden with Jeffrey, trundled inside and arranged himself beside my chair with dignified casualness.
The food was extraordinary, Zane had been cooking all afternoon. Rook had apparently handled the actual obtaining of ingredients, which meant he'd gone to three different markets and had opinions about all of them.
We ate. The conversation was comforting.
It was Milo's ongoing saga of the Great Garden Dispute between Jeffrey and a local crow.
Rook's quietly devastating commentary on a Bureau procedural update that had made Fenric's eye twitch for an entire Tuesday.
Zane's account of a student in his yoga class who had accidentally achieved enlightenment and then immediately wanted to know if there was a refund policy on the eight-week session.
I watched them and felt something settle in my chest.
After dessert, which was something Milo had made with berries from the garden and Jeffrey had enthusiastically requested in the only way Jeffrey communicated requests, which was by standing in front of the refrigerator and pointing, a different kind of quiet settled over the table.
Rook looked at Zane. Zane looked at Milo. Milo looked at Fenric. Fenric set down his wine glass with the particular precision that was all him.
They reached into pockets simultaneously.
Four small boxes, none of them matching, all of them clearly chosen with individual intent.
Milo's was wrapped in paper printed with tiny skeletons.
Rook's was plain dark leather. Zane's was a deep fae-blue that seemed to shift color in the candlelight.
Fenric's was precisely square and had a small Bureau seal on the corner because apparently you could take the man out of the bureaucracy but not that bureaucracy from the man.
They looked at each other one more time.
"We discussed," Fenric began, "whether to do this sequentially or…"
"Together," Rook grunted, which was his position on most things that mattered.
Four boxes slid across the table toward me.
I looked at them. I looked at the four of them, Milo almost vibrating, Rook very still in the way that meant he was working extremely hard at stillness, Zane watching me with that particular softness he usually kept carefully tucked away, Fenric with his jaw set and his hands flat on the table and his eyes holding everything he'd ever struggled to say out loud.
The rings inside were all different. Of course they were.
Milo's had a tiny bone detail worked into the band with an amethyst that matched his necromantic energy.
Rook's was simple and heavy, dark metal with a single groove worn into it.
Zane's was ancient gold with fae knotwork that moved when the light hit it.
Fenric's was precise and silver with a blue stone that matched his eyes and also somehow the Oracle's mark on my forehead, which had faded to nearly nothing but still caught the light sometimes.
Horrace put his head in my lap.
"Yes," before any of them could find the words they'd been rehearsing and because I had been carrying this answer for months without knowing I was carrying it. "Obviously yes. To all of you. Obviously."
Milo made a sound that was approximately eighty percent joy and twenty percent relieved tears.
Rook exhaled like a man setting down something very heavy.
Zane smiled the particular smile that reached all the way to his ancient eyes.
Fenric blinked once, precisely, and then said, "Good. The paperwork is already prepared."
"Of course it is," I laughed, and was still laughing when Milo lunged across the table to hug me and upended a candle, which Zane caught without looking, Rook had clearly anticipated given the way he'd already moved the wine, and Fenric documented by saying "noted" in a tone that meant he'd already written it down.
Later, after the table was cleared and the candles were burning low, we moved to the living room in comfortable disorder.
Horrace was draped across Rook and Zane both, his colors cycling through warm golds and soft blues.
Milo was on the floor with Jeffrey, who had apparently been promoted to ring security during the dinner and was now receiving an award ceremony from the other skeletons.
Fenric sat with his shoulder pressed against mine, his hand finding mine without ceremony.
I looked down at my finger. Four rings, worn together as we'd decided, because nothing about this was traditional and there was no reason to pretend otherwise.
I had held cosmic power. I had given it back. I had chosen the mess and the joy and the people in this room over the clean lines of absolute authority.
I had chosen well.
Outside, rain was beginning, soft and ordinary. My knee ached with the first drops before the sound reached us, which was just how it worked, how it had always worked, and would go on working regardless of prophecies or Harbingers or anything else the universe had in its queue.
Milo looked up from the skeleton award ceremony and said, "Are we having a party now? We should have a party. Jeffrey wants to DJ."
"Jeffrey does not DJ," Rook deadpanned.
"Jeffrey absolutely DJs," Milo grinned. "He has opinions about tempo."
"He has a jaw," Rook pointed. "That is not a DJ qualification."
I leaned my head against Fenric's shoulder and listened to them argue about it.
Here. With these four impossible men, one deeply principled miniature skeleton DJ, and an interdimensional manticore snoring on the couch.
Here was home.