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Ilo watched Elliot pack up her notes. They sat in Cassie’s, in one of the more visible tables in the place. Elliot never liked being out in the open, but this suited the situation. Ilo wasn’t going to do anything, of course, Elliot told herself. She knew that logically, but she wanted to be sure.
Not that they could do much anyway. Cassie had the place locked down with charms so tight that beyond the most benign magic, their spells would fizzle and then fall apart. So they traded notes, talked about spells. Elliot recapped the week behind her, of getting up early with Gimble to tend to the garden, and collect the morning sun, and read the day through divination. Gimble quietly threw three dollar coins on her table, and wrote down the results in her grimoire. Then she showed Elliot how to read the lines she had drawn, where the changed, and what those changes meant. They made spells together, and Elliot learned a bit of kitchen magic, making food that would enrich its consumers in so many ways.
Gimble also taught her the magic of food itself, that food was an expression of love, that giving someone a meal was you trying to help keep someone alive, and how could that not be love. One night, after the moon had risen, Gimble and Elliot flew over the city, dropping meals with the unhoused, dozens of meals. They were caught by cops, who chased them down an alley. When Gimble and Elliot turned a sharp corner, Gimble took Elliot’s hand, and they all but walked up the side of a building, perching on its roof to watch the bewildered cops look for them. Gimble laughed, harder that Elliot had ever seen her laugh, just pure joy at what they had just done.
And now, exhausted at the end of the week, Elliot finished her trade with Ilo. Their meets were still a little tense, but Ilo seemed happy to be there all the same, and he offered to buy coffee, which was nicer than Elliot had expected him to be.
“Do you need a ride share?” Ilo asked, checking his phone. It was well after two in the morning, after all.
“Uhm…” Elliot said. “I actually feel safer walking?” She said, zipping up her hoodie.
“Yeah, that’s probably fair,” Ilo nodded. He began sliding various scraps of paper into his own spell book — he kept correcting himself to ‘grimoire’ — and slipped his pen into its little pen holder on the side of the book. Elliot had finally cracked the grimoire Ardy had given her, trying to make her penmanship look good for its pages. She wrote slowly, and Ilo had waited patiently for her to catch up each time.
“Thanks for meeting me,” Ilo said.
“Yeah,” Elliot said, stretching. “No probs. Same time next week?”
Ilo nodded. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
“Cool.” And Elliot walked away from the table.
On her way out of Cassie’s, Arie caught up to her.
“You leaving?” Arie asked. “We didn’t have time to chat though!”
Elliot made sure she got out of the room the Nerd — Ilo, she reminded herself — was in, so that he couldn’t see her and Arie chatting. She held the strap of her bag tight, not really realizing it at first.
“I don’t have a lot to chat about?” Elliot said. “You’ve seen all of this stuff before.”
“But you haven’t,” Arie said sweetly.
Elliot considered this. “Maybe some other time?” That had been hard to say, but when Arie’s face lit up, she felt the serotonin hit.
“Yeah yeah!” Arie said. “You can tell me all about it. You like coffee? We can go get coffee somewhere!”
Elliot laughed. “Yeah, that sounds cool. Do you… do you sleep?”
“Usually during the day, why?”
“No reason.” She shifted her weight from foot to foot, anxious to… well, be alone? Maybe that wasn’t the best instinct either? Maybe it was? More things to consider.
Arie peeked into the room where Elliot and Ilo had been studying. “Is he still there?”
“Uhm, I think so?”
She watched Arie search the room, his ears alert, his tail standing out behind him.
“You should go say hi,” Elliot said.
Arie blushed. “Yeah, I think I will.” He hugged Elliot. “Text me about coffee, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Arie grabbed her by the shoulders and looked her dead in the eyes. “Don’t flake out on me.”
“Why does everyone think I’m going to?” Elliot asked.
Arie just stared.
“I’ll text! I promise!” Elliot said.
“Okay, good. Bye Elliot!” And he ducked into the other room, making a bee line for Ilo’s table.
Elliot sighed, and left Cassie’s.
The night was, of course, more welcoming, less demanding. It didn’t want her energy, just to quietly co-exist with her. Elliot appreciated the night, and she did her best to spend time with it when she could.
She was grateful for the companionship she was getting now. She had friends that cared about her, wanted to spend time with her, but sometimes it felt like too much. Even so, they respected when she needed to disappear, when she needed to flee to the turret of Gimble’s house and lock herself away. It was nice, and Elliot felt lucky for what she had. There was just this… feeling she couldn’t shake. Or maybe it was a lack of a feeling. Hmm.
The turret was nice. Elliot had what basically amounted to a apartment all to herself. She had a wardrobe and sitting area on the second floor, where she entered, a bathroom above that, and her bedroom above that. She was above the rest of the house, and she could see in all directions, just above the trees and out over the sound. She had already spent her evenings staring up at stars through her bedroom windows, and sometimes watching the sun rise. Meryl had already planned a day for them to go find stuff for her bedroom.
Elliot was about halfway to her bus stop when she felt the fur stand up on the back of her neck. This was something that Gimble had been working on with her — letting her intuition speak when it needed to. Right now, it was shouting at her. Elliot stopped in her tracks, and turned slowly.
Behind her, maybe twenty feet back, a banshee also froze, as if doing so would make it invisible to Elliot. It looked at her, its eyes unreadable. Elliot felt her heart rate skyrocket, her pulse surging through her veins. Everything in her body was telling her to run, to summon her broom and get out of there. But Gimble’s voice was taking over. What would Gimble do in this situation? She din’t have a jar of pennies to shake at it.
Elliot raised her hand over her head slowly, calling to her broom. The banshee let out a low grumble, but it didn’t move forward. With her free hand, she pointed at the banshee.
“Stay back,” she said, her voice quaking.
The banshee grumbled again, but it didn’t move. It tilted its head at her, like a puppy hearing a new sound for the first time. Which gave Elliot an idea. She drew her intentions up carefully, making sure she had the right ideas in place. And then she pointed again and said, “sit!”
The banshee’s back end dropped, and it sat up alert, watching carefully, as if she had a treat for it.
Elliot let out a surprised laugh, stifled as best she could. She held her breath for a moment, her ears twitching in thought. She was almost sure she knew what this meant, almost. She tried again. “Down!”
The banshee laid down on the ground, looking like a haggard sphynx.
Elliot could hear the broom rustling to her. She held her stance, standing firm against the banshee, who only watched her, tilting its head every so often. As soon as the broom hit her hand, she jumped on it and darted into the sky.
Thank god she had had entirely too much cake that night.
The banshee howled after her. Even at altitude, the sound pierced Elliot’s ears, and she grimaced. It followed her on the street, watching her and howling.
Elliot cut across the streets, flying at an angle that she knew would be hard for it to keep up. She was also aware that, despite her practice, her range was low, and she’d have to come down sooner or later. She searched her position, spotting the lights of Broadway to her 2 o’clock, and she pointed herself in that direction. She went over all the buildings on the street, and tried to pick out one to perch on.
Elliot felt herself sinking as she arrived at Broadway. She found an apartment building, one that was five or six stories high, and landed, crumbling to a stop. She sprawled out on the roof, panting, feeling dizzy with exhaustion. Her body ached from exertion, but she was safe. She laughed, almost liked Gimble had at outrunning the cops. It was a high she hadn’t felt before.
The banshee wailed. Elliot bolted upright. That was really close. Too close. She got to her feet, holding her broom tight. The banshee wailed again, and Elliot spun, just in time to see it drag itself onto the roof.
“Oh COME ON!” Elliot said. She forced herself into a stance again, trying to will her intentions back. She pointed and-
The banshee lunged at her.
Elliot shouted, stumbled backwards, and fell off the roof. Her broom caught her, lowering her to the ground, dropping her in the middle of the street. A car skidded to a stop in front of her, and Elliot squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the impact.
“I thought that was you!” The driver of the car shouted.
Oh come on, Elliot thought.
“Get in!”
Elliot wasn’t going to argue. She pulled open the passenger door, threw her broom in the back, and fell into the car. She pulled the door closed just as the banshee landed on the sidewalk next to them. The driver peeled out, speeding down Broadway. Elliot could make out the blue and red lights bouncing off the buildings around them from the car.
“I saw you fly over,” Agent Lebeux said. “I figured you wouldn’t be so conspicuous if you weren’t in trouble.”
“You figured right,” Elliot said, looking back as the banshee disappeared into the distance.
“You okay?” Agent Lebeux asked.
Elliot finally managed to pull her seatbelt on. “Yeah. Thanks.” She thought a moment. “You’re not taking me in, right?”
“Nah,” the agent said. “Just protecting one of my own.”
“That’s weird and I don’t like that you called me that,” Elliot said.
“Look, I don’t want to get all Us vs Them but it kind of feels that way right now. You know Aldon James?”
“The Lemuria guy? Not, like, personally.”
“Something’s going on with him, too. Something’s going on with Lemuria and I can’t quite figure it out.”
Elliot considered this a moment. She didn’t trust cops, but there was common interest here. Right? And that probably counted for something.
“They’re wizards,” Elliot said.
“Wizards?”
“Remember a few weeks ago? On University?”
Agent Lebeux nodded. “That explains a lot.”
“They want something in the tunnel. The Nerd told me that-”
“Are you on speaking terms now?”
Elliot folded her arms over her chest. “That’s complicated. But he said they’re working on something down there. He puts up barriers or something.”
“What’s down there?” Agent Lebeux asked.
“Not sure. He doesn’t even know. But whatever it is, Lemuria wants it. He said he thinks we need to stop them.”
“Ominous.”
“Yeah, I thought so too.”
For a moment, Agent Lebeux said nothing, just driving north. “But you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” Elliot said. “Thanks for asking.”
“Where am I taking you?”
The question hit Elliot in the chest. The answer came immediately, where she wanted to go. Very suddenly, she wanted to see Ardy. She knew if she asked, Ardy would hug her, would hold her close until she stopped shaking. She longed for her touch.
This was a very new feeling.
But there was someone else, someone she knew would help her make sense of everything, even this early in the morning.
—-
Rory set a mug down in front of Elliot and poured tea. Elliot slumped in her chair, suddenly very tired. Saxnōt sat on his perch, looking for all the world annoyed to be awake this early. Elliot looked at him, and he hissed at her.
“Hi, Saxnōt,” Elliot said, smiling a little.
“Hey,” Rory said, their voice coming out of the crow, a switch that was still very jarring for Elliot, “you arsehole, be nice to Elliot. She’s had a rough night.”
Saxnōt hunched on his perch.
“So it was following you?” Rory asked, sitting down with their own cup of tea.
“Kind of? Like it was a lost pet or something.” She took a long drink of tea. Once again, Rory had broken out the good stuff for her. She felt… like it was too much? But it was nice all the same.
“So like, the weird thing was, it started listening to me.”
Rory rested their chin in their hand. “Listened to you? What did you do?”
“I told it to sit.”
Rory cracked a smile. “You didn’t!”
“It seemed like the right thing to do? Like, it made sense at the time.”
“And it listened.”
“Yeah,” Elliot said, looking down at her hands. Steam twisted gently off of her tea. “I… I don’t know what it means.”
“I have ideas,” Rory said simply.
Elliot nodded slowly. “Yeah, I kind of figured you would. That’s why I’m here.”
“Well, that and the cop that brought you here.”
“How did you-?” Elliot stopped herself. Right, right, right. She grunted. “Yeah, she brought me here.”
“Friend of yours?”
“No.”
Rory took a sip of their tea. “Do you like monsters?”
“I’ve always liked monsters,” Elliot said. “As far back as I can remember.”
“What attracts you to them?”
Elliot hesitated, because why would Rory even care? But also, that’s why she’s here, isn’t it? Because she knew Rory would listen.
“They make me feel good,” Elliot said softly. “They don’t judge me, they don’t ask me to be anything I’m not.”
Rory sat silently, holding their cups, swirling the tea in it gently.
Elliot swallowed, realizing they’ve fallen into a therapy session. “They’re like…”
“Like you.”
“When I was growing up, I was always a burden to someone. I was their disappointment, or their mistake, or their shame. And maybe they didn’t realize they were telling me, but they told me I was bad, I was evil, I was going to hell.”
“You were a monster.”
Elliot pulled her knees up to her chest. “So maybe the Skinwalker is out there, and maybe we have a lot in common, and maybe they wouldn’t care that I was like them.”
“Is that the attraction to Ardy?”
Elliot opened her mouth to respond. Her ears twitched in thought. “…I don’t think it hurts.” She frowned. “That’s not why I’m interested!”
Rory smiled and patted Elliot’s hand. “I’m just poking at you.”
Elliot narrowed her eyes and looked away, her ears dropping on her head. “I’m not, like, a monster fucker or anything.”
“How’d you know until a few months ago?”
“I have regrets coming here,” Elliot said.
Rory grinned, and took a moment to refill their team. “You did come here for a reason.”
“Yeah,” Elliot said. “I’m still figuring things out, but… I think there’s something wrong with me.”
Rory leaned forward. “Elliot…”
“You know what I learned tonight? Ilo taught me how to make a healing potion. Like, a potion that will actually heal a person, even if it’s just a little, even just to close up wounds. That’s incredible, isn’t it?”
Rory nodded.
“You know what I feel? Nothing. I don’t feel anything. I’m just numb. I have friends, and people who are nice to me, and a girlfriend, and most of the time I just feel… Nothing. I just feel nothing all the time. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel like I should be crying but I can’t, because it’s just not in me.”
“I think,” Rory said slowly, “that this is something that you need to talk to Gimble about. She’s qualified to make a judgement on that.”
Elliot said nothing to this. She nodded.
“I like seeing this level of introspection,” Rory said. “You’re going in the right direction, and this is a very good step towards taking care of yourself. Things feel impossible right now, but you’re moving forward.”
Elliot considered this. “Thank you for listening to me.”
“I love to listen to you,” Rory said. “I wasn’t lying when I said that I want you to come and visit. This should be an exciting time for you, and I’m sorry it temporarily isn’t.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t have, like, a tea or a potion or something, to be honest,” Elliot said.
Rory tilted their head. “I am many things, but what I am not is a doctor.”
“Fair.”
Rory patted Elliot hand, and then stood. They disappeared into the back of their shop, and came back carrying a pillow and some blankets.
“I’m going to make up the couch for you. You’re welcome to sleep as long as you want.”
Elliot nodded. “Thanks.”
Rory left to go prepare the couch. Elliot sipped her team, watching Saxnōt watch her. She was certain Rory was watching too. That was fine. Maybe she needed someone watching her. Maybe that was okay.
Elliot slept soundlessly, peacefully. She wouldn’t remember the dreams she had, not of the Chamber or of crows spinning in a whirlwind of birds and feathers and shouts, or of falling from a great height into water. She would remember the dream of her in her turret, looking out over the sound to Ardy, in her own tower, the both of them very alone.
[g]