Chapter 15
It's been three days in the underworld and Penny is climbing the walls.
Not literally. Figuratively. But there's a fine line with a five-year-old and Sidney doesn't know how much longer it's going to be until she's hanging from the rafters.
He's pretty tired of being in the doom and gloom himself.
Not to mention he's been wearing Erath's clothes for three days, because he has none of his own, and while there's certainly something warm and fuzzy about wearing the clothes of the guy you're sleeping with, Sidney desperately wants to wear underwear again.
And to have clothes that actually fit him.
Pants that don't pool at his ankles. A shirt that doesn't hang off his shoulders and smell so distractingly good that he keeps catching himself pressing his nose into the collar when no one's looking.
Which is why, when Erath is gone and can't loom over them and insist they die of boredom in the underworld, Sidney puts on Penny's coat, zips it to her chin, and takes her back up the subway stairs into the glorious, overcast light of the above.
It's almost painful how bright it is, even without the sun out, and he feels immediately refreshed.
The air hits his face and it tastes different up here.
It tastes alive. There's exhaust and bread from a bakery somewhere nearby and the distant metallic tang of rain on its way, and he didn't realize how much he missed it until now.
He feels his lungs open, his shoulders drop, and for a second he just stands there at the top of the stairs with his eyes closed and breathes.
Penny tugs on his hand. "Sid, you're blocking the way."
There is no way to block. Nobody comes or goes from this entrance. But she's five, and she's bossy, and Sidney lets himself be pulled forward onto the sidewalk.
They aren't immediately beset by coven witches hoping to string them up for blood magic, so Sidney assumes that means they're relatively safe and leads Penny through the streets.
The city is gray and damp and busy in the midmorning way that means everyone has somewhere to be and no one is paying attention to the blond in oversized clothes holding the hand of a small girl in overalls.
Good. That's fine. They're just two unremarkable people running errands. Nothing to see.
First things first, they go to his apartment.
The building looks the same as it always does, ugly carpet and all, and the ivy is still crawling up the brick.
The apartment itself has not been completely trashed despite the presence of the coven.
The door has been repaired since he was last here, new wood visible around the frame where the old one splintered, but his key doesn't fit the new deadbolt.
He jiggles it twice, then a third time, harder, and then stands there staring at it.
Penny presses her hand against the deadbolt and it slides out of place. Just slides, smooth and easy, the way a lock slides when you ask it nicely. She doesn't even look like she's concentrating. She just touches it and it yields.
Sidney stares down at her. She blinks up at him.
"That's a handy skill to have," he says.
She nods, very seriously, and walks past him into the apartment.
He tries to tell himself not to abuse the powers of a five-year-old. He tries and mostly succeeds, though the mental list of locked doors he'd love her to touch is already forming.
The apartment smells stale. Closed up and unoccupied for days, the way apartments do when no one's cracked a window or run the sink or existed in them for a while.
His cereal bowl is still on the coffee table from the night everything went sideways, a crust of dried milk in the bottom.
The window he escaped through is closed but not locked, and the curtain is crooked from where he shoved it aside in a hurry.
It's strange, being back here. It feels smaller than he remembers.
Or maybe he just got used to vaulted ceilings and gothic architecture and the eerie, constant presence of something vast and unknowable on the other side of the walls.
He showers using his own shampoo and his own towels, and the hot water pressure in this building has always been mediocre but right now it feels transcendent.
He stands under the spray for longer than he should, letting the heat work into his muscles, and scrubs three days of underworld grime off his skin.
He dresses in his own well-fitting clothes, jeans that sit where jeans are supposed to sit and a shirt that doesn't make him look like a kid playing dress-up in his father's closet.
He slides on a pair of boots that make him feel immediately more human.
It's amazing how much better he feels. He catches his reflection in the bathroom mirror and his face is healed, no bruises, no swelling, but his hair is too long and needs a trim, and there are shadows under his eyes that weren't there a week ago.
He tucks his hair behind his ears and decides it can wait.
He packs a bag of essentials for when he will inevitably have to go back to Chateau la Death.
Toothbrush, deodorant, underwear, a few changes of clothes, his phone charger even though it's useless down there.
He grabs the golden Oreos from the pantry because Penny will want them.
He also grabs a deck of cards, a notebook, and two pens, because he is going to lose his mind if he has to play with Legos for one more afternoon.
Penny has occupied herself rearranging the magnets on his fridge. She's made something that could generously be described as a face, or possibly a landscape, depending on which direction you tilt your head. She looks pleased with it. He scoops her up in a piggyback and they head to Willow's.
The walk is quiet and uneventful and Sidney tries not to look over his shoulder every thirty seconds.
He mostly succeeds. Penny is warm and solid on his back and she hums a tuneless song into his shoulder and points at things she finds interesting, which include two pigeons fighting over a French fry, a dog wearing a sweater, and a fire hydrant.
He doesn't ask why. He's learning that five-year-olds operate on a frequency of humor that is entirely inaccessible to adults, and he's made his peace with that.
Willow's looks the same as it always does.
The neon sign is off, because it's daytime and they're not open yet, but the door is unlocked and the lights inside are on, which means Xela is here and has been for a while.
She does most of her prep work in the morning.
She says it's because she likes the quiet, but Sidney knows it's because she hates customers and the fewer she has to interact with, the better.
He pushes the door open with his shoulder and steps inside with Penny still on his back.
Xela is behind the bar, drying glasses. She looks up when the door opens.
Her eyes find Sidney first, then Penny, and then something shifts in her expression that Sidney has only seen a handful of times in the years he's known her.
It's not relief. Xela doesn't do relief.
It's something closer to fury that has been held at bay and has just found its target.
She sets the glass down very carefully. Then the rag. Then she puts both hands on the bar and leans forward, and her voice is tight and controlled and absolutely lethal when she says, "Three days, Sidney."
"I know."
"Three days without a word. Without a call. Without so much as a message through your little necromancer friend to tell me you were alive."
"I know, Xela."
"I thought you were dead." She doesn't yell.
She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't need to.
Xela is a banshee, and the power of her voice is something she wields with precision, not volume, and right now the precision is directed at making him feel approximately two inches tall.
It's working. "I thought they came back and finished what they started in that alley and I was going to find you in a ditch somewhere with your spine rearranged. "
"There's a child present," Sidney says, which is both a reminder and a plea for mercy.
Xela's eyes flick to Penny, who is watching this exchange from over Sidney's shoulder with wide, fascinated eyes.
To her credit, Xela does not yell. She does not scream.
She does not unleash the full devastating power of her voice, which could shatter every glass in the bar and probably a few of Sidney's bones along with them.
She tightly, precisely, viciously gives him a piece of her mind.
She tells him he is irresponsible and reckless and inconsiderate and that if he ever disappears for three days again without telling her where he is, she will find him, and the coven will look like a group of well-intentioned social workers compared to what she will do to him.
Sidney accepts it because he shouldn't have made her worry.
He knows that. He should have found a way to get word to her, should have asked Erath to send someone, should have done anything other than vanish into the literal underworld without telling the one person who has always, always been there for him.
She hates for people to know she worries about her human.
She acts like he's a nuisance, an inconvenience, a stray she's been saddled with and can't get rid of.
But she rescued him from a place he was trapped.
She's given him pieces of herself she's never given anyone else.
She answered the phone when a stranger called from his contact list and she came running.
He pulls her into a hug. She stiffens, every line of her body rigid and offended, but she doesn't push him away. He holds on and says, into her shoulder, "I'm sorry."