Chapter 9

9

S he manages to actually doze off, so by the time Gurlien makes it back it's dusk outside and the smell of cookies permeates the air of the cabin.

And everything is louder.

"Axel didn't pick up his phone, and Alette cussed me out before hanging up, and I still don't have the other's number," Gurlien mutters to Chloe, along with the tell-tale sounds of someone stripping off a wet rain jacket. "I tried Luis the scholar, he didn't take my call, and I couldn't risk anything to Kirk."

Delina blinks her eyes open, not moving from underneath the blanket, but they're all in the kitchen.

"I found the dead bird," Chloe says, and Delina instinctively thinks towards the spot she could tell it was.

Somehow, it's colder, like the leaves covering it were a burial blanket.

"That's bad," Gurlien snips. "I don't think either of you two know how bad this is."

"I have a little inkling," Maison says, his voice a rumble, and Delina sits up at that.

Immediately, they all look to her. Gurlien's hair is literally dripping from the rain.

"Can you hear now?" Chloe asks, the first to break the awkward silence.

"Yeah," Delina says muzzily. "Thanks for the door."

"Oh that's…that's no problem," Chloe responds, almost puzzled. "Just had to find a material that would work."

Maison scowls at the room, his arms crossed, though his head is certainly better.

"Why is it bad?" Delina asks, when none of them speak again. "You said it was bad, why is it bad?"

They all look at each other, like gauging what lie they can tell.

"Frederick should take this one," Gurlien says, "since he knows how bad it could be."

"Don't call me that," Maison replies, plaintive, and that, at least, is something. "Nobody calls me that anymore."

"Is it actually your name?" Delina asks, reaching towards the water on the table.

"Legally," Maison says, disgruntled. "My mom calls me Maison."

Delina raises an eyebrow at him. He never talks about his mother, changing the subject sourly whenever she brought her up, to the point where she thought they had a horrible relationship or something.

But no, his mom calls him Maison.

Her hand shakes a little with the glass, but not nearly as much as before, so she pushes herself up to standing and wobbles.

"Take it easy." Chloe says, her voice lilting up. "You're probably still dealing with a fair amount of shock."

Delina shoots her a glare, and gets a surprised grin from Maison, before she strides in to join them in the kitchen, shamelessly grabbing a cookie from the pile. "Talk," she orders.

Again, she's met with silence.

"I mean it," Delina says, leaning against the counter, the same counter she brewed coffee just that very morning. "I can hear now, I'm upright, I deserve to know. Go."

"Good lord, she is just like her," Gurlien mutters in sotto voice, and she levels the stare at him. "It's not a good thing to be like your mother."

"We can't confirm anything," Chloe finally says, as Maison crosses his arms again. "So we don't want to panic you, but in whatever magic your mom did…it might be bad."

"Understatement," Gurlien says.

Maison just frowns deeper.

"Bad like drag me off to this College bad? Or bad end the world bad?"

"You're not going to end the world," Maison says, finally. "At most you might be on the run for your entire life."

"That's not better," Delina informs him, and his jaw twitches.

"We want to run some more tests," Chloe says, and Gurlien nods. "But you need time and energy for those."

"Do I have time for that?" Delina asks, tossing her ponytail behind her and immediately regretting it. "Or is my ex-boyfriend here going to take me to this College that my mom wanted me to avoid?"

There's a flash of something across Maison's face, gone before she can even pinpoint it down, but he shifts, squaring his shoulders.

It's his ‘ready to fight' stance.

"They don't know I'm here yet," he says, and Gurlien's eyebrows flash up. "And I'm not going to tell them until we have more answers. If they track my GPS, I'll say we went on a surprise vacation."

"Charitable," Gurlien shoots at him.

"And," Maison says with a glare to Gurlien, "like you pointed out, there may be bigger issues."

"Which you aren't telling me," Delina snaps, stealing another cookie.

"We're trying to not be alarmist," Chloe says solemnly, "and if we act like the bad option is true before we know it is, then we could do things that aren't necessarily a good idea."

It's something, at least, but it sits poorly with Delina.

"And," Chloe says, raising her voice just a bit more, "we can go into town to test it tomorrow. Weather is supposed to clear up and the forest service will take care of the tree."

"And there's something to be said in not telling you, as to not influence the results," Maison says, which is, again, reasonable, but Delina seethes with it.

Gurlien's staring hard at Maison, like he's trying to will him into explaining himself, and Delina could have told him that rarely works. "Chloe," Gurlien says, "I need to run something by you."

Chloe glances at him, startled, her brows drawn together. "Now?"

Gurlien nods, a quick jerk of his head, still staring at Maison, before the two of them abruptly walk away, down the hallway on the other wing of the cabin that Delina still hasn't explored.

Leaving just her and Maison.

She grabs another cookie, needing the idle motion, and he scowls.

Once, two years into their relationship, they had fought over her taking a job he thought was underneath her, and she thought he'd leave her out of frustration. He had insisted she was better than it, she had insisted that it would be easier, and they didn't speak to each other for almost a week.

This scowl reminds her of that.

"Ex-boyfriend?" he starts, like that's the upsetting part of all of this. "Just like that?"

She stares at him, and he doesn't look away.

"You were never planning on telling me," Delina says finally, and the yellowing kitchen lights do nothing for his complexion.

"I couldn't," Maison says, leaning back against the fridge.

"Bullshit," Delina informs him, and he bares his teeth at her in an almost smile. "You could've and we could've figured something out."

"Yes, that would go well," he says, and if he's using that sarcastic tone he must be really upset. "‘Hey, Delina, your mother was an evil magician and I have dubious parentage and you might be magical, but we don't know, wanna get frozen yogurt after work?' That'd go over just peachy."

"I dunno, these two nerds managed to show me some proof pretty quickly," Delina shoots back. "Your eyes were fucking glowing, that might've convinced me."

He crosses his arms again.

"You listened to me talk about my mom so many times, and you never even said ‘oh hey I know her,'" Delina continues, a bile taste in her mouth. "Instead, I had to find out from a letter."

There's a long stretch of silence, where the only sound is the continued hum of rain on the roof and the faint purr of the cat on the couch.

There's a brush of gold where she had touched the espresso machine that morning, weakly glittering.

"You would've left," Maison says, his voice awful, "you would've left and then the College would've sent someone worse your way, or just…arrest you."

She stares at him, and he has the gall to look like he thinks he's in the right. Gold still glints around him, through his soft brown hair and around his jaw.

"You should probably rest more," he murmurs, after shifting under her examination for a good minute. "You're new to this, don't do anything rash or make any fast decisions for a bit."

"You're just trying to get out of this discussion," she says, because he totally is. "You're uncomfortable because you lied to me for five years and you're trying to convince yourself that it was the right thing to do."

That makes him look away, and she wants to thrill in the little victory of it, but the sour taste doesn't go away.

It never does, whenever they've fought.

"I can't believe you would do that," she whispers, and her voice breaks, no matter how hard she tries to keep it under control. "Five years, and it was fake the entire time."

Her head pounds, and she squeezes her eyes shut again.

"Do you think they went in the other room just so we could fight?" Maison asks, his voice low.

"You're the one that's known them for longer than you've known me," Delina says, and it's just as bitter.

"Then probably," Maison says, shifting uncomfortably. "Gurlien hates emotional situations, even before…whatever happened, happened, and Chloe follows the lead of those around her."

"Right," Delina says, then shrugs. "Yes, ex-boyfriend. Just like that."

There's still the well of hurt inside of her, bubbling forward and mixing with bile, at her saying the words. At her actually speaking them aloud, as if she had kept silent the last two days wouldn't have happened.

So instead of seeing that terrible expression over him, she turns on her heels to leave, her throat aching with something else unsaid.

Before she can take a step away, Maison catches her by the hand, like this is a normal day and he's pulling her in like he always does.

But the moment his fingers grasp her, a loud snap echoes through the tiny kitchen, and a single spark of gold arcs from her hand and nestles into his skin.

Delina flinches, hard, and Maison jerks, his hand tightening around hers.

"What was that?" Delina breathes, then chances a look up at Maison's face.

His eyes reflect the light back at her, unreal and unmoving, and the expression over his face is an unholy amalgamation between horror and hunger.

She freezes, like a mouse caught in a cat's gaze.

"Delina," Maison says, his voice deep, a tremor hiding beneath it. "Did you do that on purpose?"

Slowly, she shakes her head, and his expression doesn't shift, though his fingers shake against the palm of her hand.

Even without explanation, she somehow knows it's bad by the stillness in his body, and by the horror growing in his eyes.

Like she's the frightening one here.

"Delina," he says again, his voice softer, "if that happens with anyone else, you need to tell me. Tell Gurlien and Chloe. And nobody else."

"That's not good, is it?" Delina asks, small, like the one spark of energy shrunk her down in size.

He hesitates, for a bit too long, then shakes his head and releases her hand.

Her palm is cold without his grasp.

They stare at each other for a few more seconds, his eyes never returning to normal, before she clutches her hand to her chest and flees to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

After a few hours of curling up on the bed, halfway between horror and fear warring inside of her, she ventures out of the bedroom.

It's just Chloe in the kitchen, thankfully, busying herself by sautéing something fragrant in a cast iron pan, though her face pinches together when Delina comes into view.

"Feeling better?" Chloe asks, forcefully cheery. It's awful.

The answer is no, but Delina shrugs.

"Well, Gurlien and Freddy are outside arguing in the dark if you want to join them," Chloe says, bright and sunshiny and fake. "They haven't seen each other in six or so years, they probably have a lot to yell about."

Maison hardly ever yells.

"Freddy already got a chance to stress bake, so it's my turn." Chloe says, pointing down at the pan. "Do you like frittatas?"

"I think I scared them," Delina blurts out, like she's a child who has no control over what she says. "I don't know how, though."

"I'd say you did," Chloe replies, as delicate as a hammer. "Don't worry, we'll get it all figured out."

Chloe certainly is worrying, that's for sure, as she pours in an egg mixture over the top of the veggies, then shoving it in the oven.

"But are you feeling better?" Chloe asks once the idle motions are done. "Physically. Does your head hurt and are you seeing gold still?"

"No on the head, yes on the gold," Delina replies, thankful for the direct question for once.

"And can you tell if I'm uncomfortable?" Somewhere in the conversation, Chloe's face had turned clinical.

So Delina breathes out, and thinks.

Her mind immediately snaps over to the dead bird outside, cold and horrid, but she wrangles it in to the person in the room with her.

Chloe's changed her shoes, now padding around in a pair of comfortable slippers, though the tips of her fingers hurt, like she had grasped something from the freezer for a bit too long.

"Did you touch something really cold?" Delina asks. "Like, ice cold?"

"Nice," Chloe says, and the encouragement is a welcome surprise. "Yep, you got it."

The plastic door slams open, bouncing against the doorframe, and Maison strides in, hair damp and wild, with Gurlien scrambling after him to keep up.

"What did you just do?" Maison demands, and whatever horror or upset he felt earlier is gone from the lines in his shoulder.

"Calm down, I asked her to scan me," Chloe says mildly.

Maison doesn't look very calm.

"She succeeded, too," Chloe says, crossing her arms.

"That didn't feel like a scan," Maison says, and he has no leg to stand on, so Delina levels a glare at him.

"It shouldn't matter to you," Delina says, arching an eyebrow at him. "Ex, remember?"

Gurlien edges his way past Maison, who's blocking most of the doorway to peer at Delina.

"Delina," Gurlien starts, slowly, "do you feel up to a walk around the property?"

After a brief protest from Maison, Delina shakily puts on the magicked rain jacket and this time takes the stupid looking hat, before they all exit out of the plastic door into the night.

It still boggles her mind.

Maison's quiet, his chin tucked in and his eyes narrowed, and whatever argument is brewing there isn't going to be good, but she can't bring herself to care.

Not after he lied to her for five years.

They tromp around the edge of the cabin, and it's far larger than she thought it would be, reaching back into the forest, a simple gravel pathway around it. Rain beats down overhead, shaking the birch leaves and sending pine needles to the forest floor in the darkness.

There's still gold out here, but less. It's on the walls of the cabin, like someone trailed their hand across it while walking, and old footsteps in the gravel, but the rest of the world is thankfully normal.

"Okay," Gurlien says, once they're around, facing the vast black open forest behind the cabin. "Tell me what you feel."

"Irritated," Delina says, and Chloe giggles behind her.

"I mean through magic," Gurlien responds, clearly exasperated, like he's not the one who blacked out that day. "Close your eyes, concentrate, meditate, whatever feels more natural."

"Just don't fall over," Chloe says helpfully. "First time I tried, I fell over."

Delina eyes her, but Maison shifts, his arms still crossed until he's right behind her, so she shuts her eyes instead, trying to think past the sensation of rain beating down on the hat.

The wind's mostly died down, thankfully, and though the leaves shake, they don't seem distressed. Like the tree is built for this weather.

Cold drips down her cheeks, derailing her thoughts, but she exhales past that, past the wrong sensation that she's trying to think of something that's not there. Like reaching towards a missing tooth.

There's a whisper of something, soft, almost outside of her reach. Like hearing words through a wall, or seeing what might be headlights far away while driving all alone at night.

Her breath puffs up around her, almost palpable in the chill.

"Okay," Gurlien says, and his wrist is still hurting him. "Without opening your eyes, point where you could tell the dead bird was."

That's easy.

Even without her eyes open, there's something tugging at her behind her belly button, towards the left and deeper in the forest, so she points.

There's the trademark sound of Maison walking through the underbrush, and though his legs are tired they no longer shake.

She could tell his footsteps anywhere, even without the weird bio-feedback she's getting from him. He's brilliant against her awareness, almost outlined, even with her eyes closed.

She breathes out again, reaching out towards the missing thing again, and Chloe's there as well, a dimmer sort of presence, always moving or twitching, but not nearly as bright as Maison, who almost dominates the environment. Even in the rain and the chill and the dead thing that pulls at her.

"I can tell when you're doing that!" Maison calls out, closer to the dead bird but facing the wrong way.

"Okay, so she can scan that easily, that's useful," Gurlien mutters.

"Can I open my eyes now?

"How far away is he from it?" Gurlien asks instead of answering her question.

"He's facing the wrong direction, I think," Delina says, right as a big drop of water lands on her shoulder and splashes up to her face. She flinches, and all of the awareness of everyone immediately drops away.

She jerks back, her eyes opening, scrubbing the water from her face.

"So your concentration needs work," Gurlien says, crossing his arms against the cold but still holding the flashlight. "But some senses are there."

"Of course her concentration needs work, she's never had to use it for that before," Maison says, stomping back in the underbrush, shifting leaves around, getting closer to the dead bird.

"Now," Gurlien says, his voice low, and Delina doesn't think Maison would be able to hear him. "What do you want to do with the dead bird?"

Chloe whirls around and smacks him in the arm. "That's too much," Chloe says.

"It's cold?" Delina says, unsteady. "I'd probably bury it so it wasn't so cold."

Both Gurlien's and Chloe's eyebrows do a funny thing, like they're trying to not show their expression and fail miserably.

"We definitely need to take you into town," Gurlien says, with a confidence that settles something inside of Delina. She's always liked a steady plan.