Chapter 7 #3
"This," I say, holding up the can like a holy relic, "is the greatest thing I have ever put in my mouth, and I say that as someone who once ate an entire feast at the Autumn Court that was laced with euphoric pollen."
"It's just Dr Pepper, man. Maybe you should take it easy on the caffeine."
"It is NOT just Dr Pepper. It's a religious experience.
It's the answer to questions I didn't know I was asking.
Leo, how do humans get anything done? How do you have wars, politics, arguments about fence lines when this exists?
You should all just be sitting in a field drinking these, being happy. "
I finish the can. I find another one. I finish that one too.
The caffeine hits about four minutes later.
I don’t know what caffeine is. I don’t have a word for it in any language I speak. I speak several. What I do know is that something in that drink has entered my bloodstream, started rearranging my nervous system without permission.
My fingers are tingling. My knees are bouncing. My thoughts, which normally arrive in an orderly queue with reasonable spacing, now show up all at once. Shoving. Elbowing. Talking over each other.
I start pacing. Fast.
"Leo, do you have any more of these? How many are in the pantry?
Can I have all of them? I could reorganize the entire kitchen right now.
Actually, I could reorganize the entire house.
Does the garden need pruning? I could prune.
I could prune everything. I could prune things that don't need pruning.
Kevin, stop looking at me like that. I'm fine, I've never been more fine, I am the definition of fine, I am—"
"Is he vibrating?" Mora says from the doorway.
"He drank two Dr Peppers," Leo says, with the tone of someone reporting a minor catastrophe. "Has he never had caffeine before?"
"Seeing how I don't know what that is, I am going to say he's never had caffeine," Mora says. She knows me well enough for it to be a statement, not a question.
"He's never had caffeine," I confirm, speaking about myself in the third person because that seems appropriate given that I am currently experiencing consciousness from somewhere slightly to the left of my own body. "He is also having a wonderful time and would like a third can immediately."
I am, in fact, vibrating. My whole body is doing a low-frequency hum that makes my chitin rattle. Kevin has retreated to the top of the refrigerator and is watching me with the focused attention of a bee who is considering whether a malfunctioning copy has replaced his best friend.
Raskel walks into the kitchen, takes one look at me, and whacks me across the back of both knees with his stick.
My legs buckle. I sit down hard on the kitchen floor.
"Hey!"
"You were vibrating," Raskel says, as if that explains everything.
"I was expressing enthusiasm!"
"You were a hazard to the structural integrity of this house." He turns to Leo. "No more of the brown drink for the bug. He stays on water."
"You can't ban me from Dr Pepper. I've only just found it. We've only just begun our journey together."
"I can and I have." He whacks my shin for emphasis. "Now sit there and calm down before you shake the wards loose."
I sit, mostly because the caffeine is doing something complicated to my spatial awareness. The floor seems like the safest place to be.
Mora lowers herself beside me, close enough that her shoulder touches mine. She doesn’t say anything. She just stays there, warm, steady. After a few minutes, my heartbeat begins to slow. The vibrating settles into something closer to a gentle hum.
"Better?" she asks.
"Getting there." I look at her.
Leo is standing by the kitchen window, looking out at the garden. Sarah is next to him. The late-afternoon light catches the dust in the air and makes everything look almost peaceful, if you ignore the fact that the garden is full of things that want to eat us.
"Do you think they'll find her?" Leo asks. He's asking the universe more than any of us.
"Yes," I say, because I believe it and because he needs to hear it. "Kaelren will tear apart every timeline in existence before he gives up. And Elle is—" I stop. Think about the little girl in the photographs, arms crossed, standing her ground. "Elle is stubborn and doesn't give up."
Leo nods. Doesn't turn around. But his shoulders drop half an inch, and I know he heard me.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. The house settles around us, creaking, breathing, doing whatever human houses do when they're full of fae refugees and a gnome on a power trip.
Kevin comes down from the refrigerator and lands on Mora's knee.
She strokes his fuzz with one finger, and he makes a soft buzzing sound that means he's content.
"Guys," Leo interrupts.
Something in his voice makes us all look up.
He's staring out the window. Sarah has gone still beside him, her hand gripping his forearm.
I get up and cross to the window. Outside, the garden is moving again. The vines along the fence are twitching. The sunflower stumps are trembling. Something dark is pushing up through the soil near the elm tree, like a fist pressing through wet clay.
Raskel appears at my elbow. He looks out the window for a long moment, then sighs—a deep, weary sound that carries the weight of four hundred years of guarding a backyard that keeps trying to destroy itself.
"Well," he says, gripping his stick. "Time to get back to work."
Mora is already standing, knife in hand. Leo is reaching for the broom. Kevin buzzes once, sharp and ready.
I crack my knuckles, roll my neck, and head for the door.
"For the record," I announce to no one in particular, "I'd like it noted that I am doing this sober. One hundred percent caffeine-free. And it is significantly less fun."
Raskel whacks my ankle as I pass.
"Noted," he says. "Now move."