Chapter 8

8

N othing makes sense.

No, nothing feels like it makes sense.

Her arms ache, her legs ache, her head thuds with the pounding of her heart, and her eyes struggle against her to stay shut.

Above her, someone speaks and it's not someone she knows.

Wait, yes. It's Chloe, they just met, answered by Gurlien, just as close.

Their voices are muffled, like they're speaking through several thick panes of glass.

Delina scrunches her face, and her head is on someone's lap, and someone's hand in her hair.

"She's coming back," Maison says, his voice clear, so clear it's almost startling. "Delina? Delly girl?"

She told him not to call her that.

She told him not to call her that, and he had lied for five years.

She opens her mouth to say something back, but nothing comes out.

Chloe speaks again, and it's just outside of her awareness, and the cat meows in response.

The cat's perfectly audible, at least.

"You're okay, we got you, you're fine," Maison says, and she can feel the rumble of his words, so she pries her eyes open.

The world blooms in gold.

There's gold on the edges of the doorway, gold streaks along the ceiling of the cabin, and the outline of Maison's jaw as he leans over her.

She tilts her head over, and Chloe is outlined in a similar sheen of gold, though Gurlien is dark, without a trace.

The cat sits on its haunches, close to her, and at least it's fucking normal.

Chloe says something, Delina can see her mouth moving, but the words still don't reach her.

"Delly, can you hear me?" Maison says, and she tilts her head back. Of course she's leaning against him.

She tries to speak, tries to say something, but nothing comes out, so she swallows and nods.

"She needs some water, go get some water," Maison instructs, and the completely dark form of Gurlien dashes to the kitchen. "It's okay, everything's okay, you passed out."

She passed out?

For a few moments she marvels at it, at the idea of being unconscious, before the memories cram into her brain. Of the door flying in, Maison trapped outside. Of the gunshots. Of Chloe and Gurlien yelling.

Of herself striding into the circle left by her bio-mother.

She jolts upright, scrabbling up, before all her blood rushes to her head and she lists to the side, thumping against Maison's chest instead of falling to the ground.

They're splayed out on the floor of the bedroom, with the baby blue carpet and the floral curtains.

There's not a trace of paint where the circle used to be.

"Here," Maison says, and he holds a glass of water out to her. Gold lingers on the glass where his fingertips touch, and it distracts her enough to actually take a drink from it. "You'll be okay, your body just dumped the last few decades of magic into your system at once."

She twitches herself away from him, and though her head swims and she wobbles, she doesn't fall back over. "Don't touch me."

Right. Magic.

And he lied to her.

"Why are you…" she trails off, getting a glimpse of her hands.

They shine gold, bright.

"Here," Gurlien says, and she can barely hear him, though he crouches down in front of her, holding a pen light in one hand. "Look…me."

She blinks owlishly at him, and he shines the light into her eyes.

There's something off about him, too, besides just the darkness around him. His hands are hurting him, somehow she can tell, and there's something fucked up with the tendon in his left wrist.

She looks to Maison, wordless, and his brows are drawn together. His feet ache, his legs are almost trembling, and there's a sharp spike of pain in his forehead, even though she can see no injury.

She reaches a hand up and touches the spot on his forehead, but there's nothing there to suggest anything.

But it still hurts him.

She can feel it in her bones. Some newfound certainty, like a color she's never seen before, but is suddenly, vividly, there.

Chloe crouches next to Gurlien, and her boots pinch at her toes, annoying but ultimately ignorable.

"Why does your head hurt?" she mumbles, the words mealy in her mouth. "Your head hurts."

Maison and Gurlien exchange a glance. Maison had been trapped outside, she's sure of it. She's sure of it, there was a circle, and—

She leans away, looking past the door to the bedroom. Not a trace of the magic still exists, nothing's burning on the ground where he had been trapped.

Rain still blows in from the gaping hole, but it's normal. Completely normal.

The scribbled rune over the top of the doorway's gone, too.

The golden thread in one of the pillows lays shredded on the floor, like someone had taken a seam ripper to it.

"Okay," she mumbles, and Maison holds the glass for her to drink again but she pushes him away. "I don't want to sit on the ground right now."

They get her to the couch, Maison holding her up like he did when she sprained her ankle, and her skin crawls the entire time. The moment she's able to support herself on the couch, she jerks out of his grasp, sitting as far away from him as the couch and her swimming head would allow.

The cutesy living room with the cute couch is absolutely coated with gold. Gold dusts the creases in the fabric, the lining of the pillows, and the cracks in the hardwood floor.

Rain blows through the doorway with every gust of wind, and Gurlien and Chloe busy themselves with hanging a heavy blanket over it as Delina sips water and tries to make sense of the world.

Every little bit of protection her mother had written into this place is gone. Every scrawled rune, every carefully placed ward, all of it.

Even without looking, she knows the one sketched on the bathroom wallpaper is gone.

All the little details threaten to overwhelm her, and she shakily sips from the glass, hyper aware of Maison staring at her, sitting next to her on the couch.

"How'd you get inside?" she attempts to say, though the words come out half garbled.

He catches her hand holding the glass, setting it on the table for her, and there's even rings of gold around the surface of the table, like they too had been collected with condensation on warmer days.

"Don't worry about it," Maison says in his attempt to be soothing, and she shoots him a glare. "We'll talk later, it's okay."

"No," she says, and her voice is loud even to her plugged ears. "I'm not okay, I want to know now."

From hanging up the blanket, both Gurlien and Chloe look back at her.

There's dust streaked along Chloe's face and Gurlien's hair is firmly out of place.

"How long was I out?" she asks, the attention overwhelming in the silence. Chance the cat jumps on the arm of the couch, sitting upright and staring at her as well.

"About…minutes," Chloe says, and Delina blinks at her, still missing words.

"Twenty," Maison murmurs to her, like he can tell she can't hear that well. "The wards fell, you convulsed, we stabilized you, then you woke up."

She doesn't miss the word ‘we.'

"They let you in?" she asks, and both Chloe and Gurlien wince as Chloe hammers a nail in place, then quickly tucks away a step stool.

"…couldn't…came in…sorry," Chloe says, drawing close and sitting on the far edge of the couch, as far away from Maison as she can.

Her toes still hurt in the boots.

"Without the wards, they couldn't stop me," Maison supplies at her blank face. "She's not hearing you guys well."

"Don't talk for me," Delina snaps, though even her own words feel muddy.

Gurlien steps close, the pen light still in his hand, and she leans away from that. "I've seen this before," he says, speaking slowly, and this, at least, she can hear. "The sound processing…in a few hours."

"You'll be fine in a few hours," Maison murmurs, despite her glare.

Delina rubs at her face, and even her skin feels rubbery, her eyes crunchy.

When she thought about getting magic from her mother, she didn't think it'd be like this.

"Why is everything gold?" she asks, plaintive, and all three give her identical uncomprehending looks. "Everything shines with gold."

Maison and Gurlien glance at each other, and despite the fact that Gurlien had shot at him and Maison had destroyed a door, there's still some sense of them knowing each other. Some sense of shared history that she wasn't a part of.

"That'll probably go away," Maison says, though his voice isn't as declarative as before. "Your body had a shock."

"Don't baby me," Delina says, before shakily reaching for the glass again and missing it completely.

Maison grabs it for her, holding it out, and she considers ignoring it before taking it anyways.

"Why can I hear you?"

"Half-demon," Gurlien says, slowly and deliberately, and that, at least, she appreciates. "Magic doesn't …by normal rules."

"Thanks," Maison snipes back.

"What does half-demon mean?" Delina asks, before screwing her eyes shut to block out some of the glaring gold.

"I will explain it later," Maison says, and she peeks an eye open, only to see more of the gold along the edges of his cheekbones and in his soft brown hair. "Tell us your symptoms."

Both Chloe and Gurlien nod, and Gurlien pulls out a notebook and an honest-to-god fountain pen from the coffee table.

"Chloe is good at figuring things out, and this asshole has a ton of diagnostic knowledge," Maison continues, gesturing at Gurlien. "If there's something we can do, they will know."

She stares at all of them, at the gold everywhere, at her boyfriend who was actually fake and these people she just met, and seriously considers just leaving. Just getting into the tiny sedan and getting out.

"Did you clear the tree?" she asks, instead.

"Not fully," Maison says, and there's still the sharp pain in his forehead, itching at her awareness.

"He wouldn't…to," Gurlien says, and nothing makes sense still, and she shuts her eyes again.

"Everything's covered in gold. I'm dizzy, my ears are plugged up, and I can tell your head hurts, your boots are bothering you, and your left wrist is messed up," Delina says, pointing to each of them, but keeping her eyes closed.

She doesn't want to see their expressions, so she squeezes her face as small as she can scrunch it, trying to think.

Everything is still too much. Too many things she's aware of, too many sensations.

"The scribbles in the bathroom are gone—"

"The runes," Maison murmurs.

"—and everything is too much. There's too many details, there's too much to think about, I'm getting a headache."

She ventures her eyes open.

Gurlien's brows are drawn together, a thoughtful expression on his face, his pen still on the paper. Chloe drums her fingers on her legs, her head cocked, frowning.

Maison's leaning back, his face unreadable.

"There's some sort of animal outside, I think it's dead under a tree and some leaves. There's ants on the outside of that wall, and I still want to know why he's allowed in here and why you two didn't do anything."

Gurlien glances at Chloe, then holds up his left hand. "Translate…sense."

"He's asking what you sense when he does something," Maison says, his voice distant, like his mind is racing and he's on autopilot.

In front of her, Gurlien taps each finger to his thumb, and there's a trace of pain when his ring finger comes in contact.

"There," Delina says, and after everything, with how shitty she feels, with how much her head pounds, a smidgen of curiosity worms its way inside of her. "That one hurt."

Gurlien nods, then says something rapid fire to Chloe, too fast for her to have a prayer of understanding. His eyes dark, he stands, striding into the other room.

"He's going to walk into town to make a call," Maison says, his grey eyes staring hard at her. At least they're not red anymore. "You're not going with him."

There's no way she could make that walk right now, but she levels her best approximation of a glare at him. "Are you going to arrest me?"

"What?" Maison says, then shakes his head—which doesn't help the sharp pain. "No, Delly, I'm not going to arrest you."

"Don't call me that," she says, crossing her arms.

Chloe says something outside her hearing and she doesn't feel like concentrating to understand it, but the sarcastic tone is obvious enough.

"No, I'm not going to do anything until she feels better," Maison argues, "then we'll plan and we'll figure something out; until then, the College doesn't need to know."

"I thought you worked for them or something," Delina says. "Great big reason why you were with me."

Maison exhales, looking away, and in the motion she could swear she sees a glint of red in his eyes before he blinks and it's gone.

Chloe clears her throat, the sound soft against Delina's awareness. "Delina," she says, slowly, deliberately, leaning forward and peering over her thick rimmed glasses. "We may have bigger fish to fry right now."

She didn't even miss any words that time.

Delina shuts her eyes again, thumping her head against the couch. "So what am I, Chloe? You're the one who knows the types of power."

There's silence, not the normal muffled speaking, which doesn't help.

"Still figuring that out," Maison says finally. "Might take a bit."

There's the sudden, overwhelming emotion of exhaustion. Of experiencing too much in too little time.

"Is it safe for me to sleep?" Delina asks instead. "Or is this a concussion sort of situation?"

She ends up curled on the couch with a blanket thrown over her, the dim sounds of Maison and Chloe discussing something in undertones in the kitchen.

It's not better, and the nap that she knows in her soul would make her feel better evades her.

Chance stretches himself out next to her, at least, purring like nothing's wrong in the world. The cat's back right paw is a bit sore, like he stepped on something prickly, but she would have never known by the sound of the purr.

It's worse than her horrid hangover in undergrad, but she focuses all of her will to doze off, like that could fix everything.

At one point, Chloe steps outside, comes back drenched, holding a piece of plastic siding. Without even bothering to explain or anything, she holds it against the open-door jamb.

It's far too small to cover it, but Delina watches her through lidded eyes as the air blurs, bursts gold, and a door forms in its place.

A fully functioning door, if a bit warped. Still made of plastic, down to the doorknob, but Chloe yanks down the blanket and opens and shuts it several times.

The rain stops leaking in, and the wind echoes outside instead of through the living room, but Delina can't find it in herself to be appreciative of it, not quite yet. Let them think she's actually asleep.

Maison putters in the kitchen, with the familiar sounds he makes, with mixing bowls and measuring cups. He's always been the one out of the two of them to bake when stressed.

How much of that is fake?

Delina stills her hand on the cat, and the cat meows at her in response.

There's so many small things that could be real, could be fake, and she would've never known without her mother's letter.

So instead, she listens to the familiar clinking of pans of the oven door opening and closing, all slightly muffled, the anger slowly replacing itself with something closer to sadness.