Chapter 15 #2
She makes a disgusted noise and shoves him off and tells him he has a lot of explaining to do and he agrees.
He sets Penny down at the bar on one of the tall stools and gets her a chocolate milk from the back, and Xela gives the girl a long, appraising look and seems to decide she's acceptable, or at least not actively offensive, which is high praise coming from Xela.
Over the next few hours he fills her in on everything that has happened. He starts at the beginning, because Xela deserves the full picture, even the parts that make him squirm. He tells her about the underworld, about the house, about Penny's bond and what it means.
He does not tell her about Erath in any romantic capacity. Then, slowly, skillfully, with the ease of someone who has been navigating difficult conversations with a volatile banshee for years, he leads the conversation into how he needs her help.
"We're sitting ducks outside of the underworld," he says, leaning on the bar across from her while Penny colors on a napkin with a pen she found behind the register. "So that's why I haven't been able to come see you."
Xela is polishing a glass, which is what she does when she's thinking. She doesn't look at him. "If you're not safe in Haven then you should stay in the underworld where the Coven can't reach you.”
"And do what? Live down there forever? Hide?"
"Yes," Xela says flatly. "That is literally what I'm suggesting."
"Xela." Sidney leans forward, arms folded on the bar.
"I'm not dead. I have a life I'd like to continue living.
And Penny is five years old. Staying inside a dark house with Legos for company for the rest of her life is not a productive thing for a growing girl.
She needs sunlight. She needs other kids.
She needs to not grow up in a crypt because the adults in her life are too scared to deal with the problem. "
"You're not her parent, Sidney."
The words land harder than they should, and he knows Xela doesn't mean them cruelly.
She means them practically. She means that this is not his fight, not his child, not his responsibility.
That he's a bartender in his mid-twenties who got dragged into something cosmic by accident and has every right to walk away from it.
He knows that. He also knows that walking away from Penny is something he's incapable of doing, and that Xela knows it too, and that the statement is less of an argument and more of a test.
He meets her eyes and says, quietly, "We need to be able to live freely. And the only way we're going to be able to do that is to deal with the coven."
Xela sets the glass down. She stares at him for a long time.
Then she looks at Penny, who is drawing something with great concentration, tongue poking out the corner of her mouth, and something shifts in the banshee's expression.
It's small. Barely perceptible. But Sidney has known Xela long enough to see it.
It's the same look she gets when someone threatens a patron she's fond of, or when Sidney comes in with a new bruise, or when someone makes the catastrophic mistake of being cruel in her bar.
It's possessive. It's protective. It's the look of someone deciding that something now falls under her jurisdiction.
"The coven would be very, very foolish to attempt anything while I'm around," Xela says, which is not the same as saying she'll help, but it's close enough. Her fingers drum once against the bartop. "Where do we start?"
Sidney exhales, some tension he didn't realize he was carrying loosening in his shoulders. "I know Erath wants August on board, but I can guarantee August won't give it his all unless he hears from me that I'm okay. Seeing is believing, so to speak. So we need to speak with him."
Xela hums, noncommittal but not disagreeing, and begins putting the bar back together for opening.
Penny holds up her napkin. It's a lopsided sunflower with what appears to be three stick figures underneath it. One is very tall and dark. One is medium and has yellow scribbles for hair. One is very small and holds both their hands.
Sidney's chest does something he refuses to examine too closely. He takes the napkin from her, studies it with the gravity it deserves, and says, "This is going on the fridge."
Penny beams.
He folds the napkin carefully and tucks it into the bag with the rest of his things, and when he looks up, Xela is watching him with an expression that is dangerously close to soft. She catches him noticing and immediately scowls.
"I'll give him a call," she says, all business again. "Give me twenty minutes."
Sidney nods and turns to Penny. "Alright, kiddo, finish your milk. We've got places to be."
Penny drains the chocolate milk, wipes her mouth on her sleeve, and hops off the stool with the energy of someone who has been cooped up for three days and is vibrating at a frequency that could power a small generator.
She grabs Sidney's hand and looks up at him and says, "Are we going on an adventure? "
"Something like that," Sidney tells her. "A boring adult adventure where we talk to people and make plans and nobody gets to go spelunking."
"Splunking," Penny corrects, and Sidney doesn't correct the correction because she's five and she's earned it.