Chapter 17 #2
"Okay, I'm just going to ask, since you keep dancing around it," August says. "Are you in a relationship with him?"
Sidney considers several responses. He picks the least revealing one. "It's complicated."
"What does that mean?"
"It means we haven't exactly talked about it."
"You're sleeping with him and taking care of his daughter and you haven't talked about it."
"We've only slept together once," Sidney says, too quickly, and then winces at how defensive it sounds.
August raises an eyebrow. The eyebrow communicates more than an entire conversation could.
"And me taking care of Penny has nothing to do with Erath," Sidney continues, steadier now. "She trusts me. I'm not going to abandon her when the whole world is working against her. That would be true regardless of whatever is or isn't happening between me and him."
"But something is happening between you and him."
"Maybe." He hesitates. "It's complicated."
"You said that already."
"Because it is." Sidney runs a hand through his hair. "Don't make a big deal out of it. I don't even know if it's a thing. Erath is not exactly a talkative, emotionally forthcoming person. And I don't have the best track record with men. So let's not put a name on something that doesn't need one."
August's expression shifts. The interrogation drops away and what replaces it is the look Sidney has seen a hundred times.
It's the look that means August is worried, and not the kind of worried that comes from curiosity or judgment but the kind that comes from years of watching someone you care about get hurt and knowing you can't always stop it.
"I'm just worried," August says. "The same way you always worry about me."
"I appreciate that," Sidney tells him, and he means it. "But Erath has gone out of his way to be obnoxiously careful with me. He hasn't pressured me into anything. He hasn't asked me for anything."
He hesitates. The pigeon struts away. On the playground, Penny is chasing the red-haired girl in what appears to be a very enthusiastic game of tag.
"That's the weird thing, right?" Sidney says, quieter now.
"It's been three days and he hasn't once asked me for anything or guilted me into anything or told me I need to earn my keep.
He just…" He trails off. The words are in a place he doesn't usually go, a place that's quieter than the rest of him and harder to reach and more honest than he'd prefer.
"He just lets me exist around him without expectations.
And maybe I need that more than I want to admit. "
August's expression softens. The tension in his shoulders eases and he looks at Sidney the way he looked at him the first night they met, when Sidney was nineteen and working his first shift at Willow's and had no idea what he'd gotten himself into.
He looks at him with the steady, uncomplicated affection of someone who chose to be his family and has never once wavered on that choice.
"If you're happy," August says, "and he's treating you well, then I'm happy too. I just want the best for you, Sid."
"I'll be happy when I'm not being stalked by a coven of witches who are trying to maim me and abduct the little girl I'm protecting.
" Sidney straightens up on the bench, pulling himself back to the practical, which is where he's most comfortable and least likely to say something that makes his throat tight.
Sidney looks at the playground. Penny is sitting in the grass now, cross-legged, talking to the red-haired girl about something with great animation, hands moving, face bright.
She looks normal. She looks happy. She looks nothing at all like a child who is being hunted by people who want to use her as a conduit between life and death, and the disconnect between what she is and what they want from her is the thing that makes Sidney's hands close into fists on his knees.
"I'll talk to Erath," Sidney says. "Get more information about the Coven."
August agrees. Sidney thanks him and pushes himself up from the bench, wincing at the stiffness in his back from sitting too long on a surface that was clearly designed for people who don't carry forty pound children on their backs.
"We should be getting back." He glances at the sky, which is darker now, the gray thickening at the edges in a way that isn't weather. "I don't want to be out after dark. Not with her."
He crosses to the playground and calls for Penny, who protests leaving with the full-bodied outrage of a five-year-old who was in the middle of a very important conversation.
She waves goodbye to her new best friend, whose name is apparently Sophie, and allows Sidney to carry her back to where August and Xela are waiting.
She tells Sidney, very seriously, that Sophie has a cat named Mr. Whiskers and that Mr. Whiskers only has three legs but can still jump onto the counter.
"That's very impressive," Sidney tells her.
"I want a cat," Penny says.
"Talk to your dad."
"Daddy will say no."
"I guess the answer is no then."
Sidney tells Xela they're heading back to the underworld and she can return to the bar. Xela glares at him with the full force of her disapproval and says, "Why? So they can jump from the rooftops and grab you on the way there? No. I'm walking you there, pretty boy."
Sidney opens his mouth to argue. He looks at Xela's face and closes it again. There are battles worth fighting and then there is arguing with a banshee who has decided she's doing something, and the difference between those two categories is absolute. He nods and says, "Okay."
August heads south toward his apartment. Sidney, Xela, and Penny head east toward the subway entrance.
The walk is quiet. The city is settling into late afternoon, streetlights flickering on while there's still light in the sky, shops pulling in their sidewalk displays and locking up for the evening.
Penny is on Sidney's back again, cheek pressed against his shoulder, the energy of the playground finally catching up with her.
Xela walks beside them with her hands in her pockets and her jaw set and her eyes moving across every alley and doorway and shadow with the crazed attention of someone who has been doing this for a very long time and does not intend to stop.
They reach the entrance to the underworld.
The barred-off subway stairs sit at the mouth of a side street, unremarkable to anyone who can't see them for what they are.
The cold drifts up from below, steady and familiar, and the darkness at the bottom is absolute.
Penny shifts on Sidney's back, pressing her face into his neck, and he can feel her fingers tighten on his jacket.
Xela stops. She stares at the entrance for a long moment, her expression unreadable, and then she looks at Sidney.
"I don't like this," she says.
"The entrance? Or the situation?"
"All of it." She pushes her sunglasses up onto her head and her eyes, pale and sharp and older than anything else about her, meet his. "I don't like you going down there. I don't like that I can't follow. I don't like that I can't reach you when you're on the other side."
Sidney adjusts Penny's weight on his back and faces Xela fully.
She's standing with her arms at her sides, fists clenched, and there's something in her face that he almost never sees.
It's not vulnerability, because Xela doesn't do vulnerable.
It's the closest thing to it she'll allow, a fracture in the surface just wide enough for him to see the person underneath who loves him fiercely and absolutely and would burn the city to the ground if she thought it would keep him safe.
"I'll be okay," he tells her.
"You don't know that."
"No," he agrees. "But I know you'll be here when I come back up. And that's enough."
Xela stares at him for another long moment. Then she steps forward and puts her hand on the side of his face, brief and fierce and gone almost before he registers it, and says, "Don't make me come find you, Sidney."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
She drops her hand. Steps back. Crosses her arms.
"Go," she says.
Sidney goes. He ducks under the bars with Penny on his back and descends the stairs into the dark, and the last thing he sees before the light disappears is Xela standing at the top, watching, making sure they make it down safe before she turns away.
The tunnel closes around them. The cold settles in.
The sounds of the city fade to nothing and are replaced by the low, distant hum that Sidney has started to associate with the underworld's version of silence.
It's not quiet. It's the absence of living noise, filled instead with the murmur of things that are no longer alive and the ambient thrum of a place that exists to process the end of everything.
"Sid?" Penny says against his shoulder.
"Yeah, kiddo."
"Sophie said her mom makes her pancakes every morning."
"Is that so."
"Every morning, Sid. Every single one."
"That's a lot of pancakes."
There's a pause, and then, with the devastating precision of a child who knows exactly what she's doing, "You make good pancakes too."
Sidney's throat tightens. He adjusts his grip on her legs and keeps walking through the dark, and he doesn't say anything for a while because he doesn't trust his voice.
They walk the rest of the way in a comfortable silence punctuated only by the sound of his boots on the stone and Penny's breathing in his ear.