Mare Marginis

TIMELINE: AUGUST 18, 2017. THREE DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

Part of Isabella is screaming that this is how teenage white girls die in the horror movies. She doesn't listen, because the rest of her is just screaming, screaming without end, and she's not sure it's ever going to stop again. She has to know. She has to see.

She finishes her turn.

The Catrina-thing is sprawled across the living room floor, only a few feet behind her. It looks… unraveled, somehow, like its seams have been unstitched. It looks more like a puppet whose puppeteer has cast it carelessly aside than anything real. Nothing about it seems like it could have been moving or speaking or attacking only a moment before.

Blood seeps from the splits in its skin, forming a pool around the body. From where Isabella stands, she can see that some of those splits are fresher than others, but she can't imagine what distinguishes them from one another. She's an hechicera, trained and skilled, and this is not her area of expertise; this is not what she wants to be doing right now, or ever.

The body of her husband blocks the doorway, and it's only a matter of time before one of the neighbors comes home or steps out of their apartment and sees him, a chaotic tumble of strong limbs rendered useless by the slaughter of the man who once controlled them. Tears burn in her eyes. She refuses to let them fall. Once she starts crying, she may never stop, and she should be dead right now, ripped apart by the thing that wore the face of her student and somewhat friend. The alchemists who made it and set it on her trail should have won.

So why didn't they?

There is a brightness in the air beside the door, one that her eyes shy away from, refusing to focus. She frowns and forces the issue, staring at the bright spot as hard as she can until her vision blurs and the brightness begins to look like a woman, olive-skinned and dark-haired, still dressed in UC Berkeley athletic gear even after a long day of breaking nature's laws and defying the constants of the universe. Even after she's isolated Artemis's outline from the brightness, the other woman is shaky and out of focus, illuminated from the inside, not quite solid and not quite real.

The hunting bow she holds gleams a sparkling moon-dark silver, and as Isabella watches, Artemis releases the string and lowers her hand, letting the bow go. It dissolves into glittering nothing, and the brightness fades, the blur around Artemis clearing like someone has wiped a window clean, revealing the person on the other side of the glass.

"I'm sorry," says Artemis. Her words are too big: she's not shouting, she's not even speaking particularly loudly, but they fall into the silence of the living room with a weight and importance that makes it feel like they've been brought in from some other scene, like she's been set up with a body mic and a hidden speaker. "I got here as quickly as I could."

"What did you do?" Isabella's voice shakes, and her words are small, the size words are meant to be, sliding easily into the spaces the world has made for them. No one should speak larger than this. No one should glisten and glow, either, or appear out of nowhere with a disappearing bow in hand.

"The woman had been subjected to some form of alchemical transmutation. I can't tell you precisely what it was, only that they used it to rip her out of this reality, show her the Impossible City, and then return her to this world. I don't know who did it, or what instructions they gave her, or how she found your apartment, but I promise you, that was not your friend anymore. By the time I let my arrow fly, your friend was gone."

Hysterical laughter bubbles up in Isabella's throat as her tears finally begin to fall. "She wasn't my friend. She was just… she was someone I knew. Juan, is he…?"

"You don't want to see what she did to him." Artemis moves, putting herself between Isabella and Juan's body. "Get your son and a suitcase. We can't stay here."

"You don't understand," says Isabella, looking at Artemis, pleading with the younger woman to see what she's trying to say. "My husband—"

"Your husband is gone," says Artemis gently. "All you do now is harm yourself by trying to see the manner of his passage. Let him go, let him be gone, and save what can be saved."

"Mama?"

Isabella whips around, eyes seeking Luis. He's in the kitchen doorway, clutching Bobby's collar with one hand, staring at her in dazed bewilderment. The Catrina-thing is a product of the alchemical world, twisted and distorted away from anything that should be truly possible. He may not be able to see her. Whether he can see the body of his father is a question for greater minds than hers. He isn't screaming, which is either a good sign—he can't see what's really happening—or a terrible one—he's in shock. There is no middle ground.

Maybe there's never a middle ground. Maybe the middle ground is a pretty fiction people tell themselves to make the world seem a little bit less hostile.

"Baby." She rushes across the room, sweeping him into her arms. Bobby, released, trots over to sniff at Artemis before he wuffs a greeting, tail beginning to wave.

"Dogs like me," says Artemis. "Almost as much as deer do." She caresses Bobby's head and he stands up tall and proud, looking every inch the hunting hound, looking like he's ready to bring down the stars if it will please this woman he's just met. "If not for the Old Man, they would probably have given me a dog. Do you need me to help you pack?"

"Pack?" asks Luis. "Are we going somewhere, Mama? Will Papa be there?"

Isabella gasps a small, choking laugh that turns halfway into a sob before she can swallow it back. Being unable to see the situation isn't entirely a blessing. Sure, he may avoid nightmares, but how is she supposed to make him understand?

"You're going to come stay with some friends of ours," says Artemis. "They're nice, but weird. They have too many cookies. You'll have to help us eat them all."

"I'm good at eating cookies," says Luis.

"I thought you might be. Go pack for a sleepover."

Luis looks to Isabella, waiting for her to tell him it's all right. When she nods, he grins, the afternoon's fears apparently forgotten, and runs down the hall to get his overnight bag. Isabella looks to Artemis, scowling.

"You better not go around bewitching my boy," she says. "I don't want you to do that."

"I'm not," says Artemis. "I'm just pumping as much moonlight as I can into the room, and hoping that between that and the alchemical nature of these deaths, he'll be able to make it out of here with his psyche in one piece. This isn't the sort of thing a child should see. Hell, this isn't the sort of thing an adult should see. I wish you hadn't seen it."

"Where did that bow go?"

"It went where the moonlight goes when the moon's behind a cloud. I couldn't have pulled it at all if I'd been outside; there's too much sunlight for the Moon to make her wishes known. Get your things. We're not coming back here."

Isabella knows enough about this sort of situation to know that the bodies will be moved or covered while she's out of the room packing a bag, adding one more layer of deniability to protect her and Luis. Just one more service the magical world has to offer when it's busy destroying your entire life. Her chest is too tight, and she's breathing too fast; she'll pass out soon if she doesn't get this under control. And yet…

That might be a mercy.

Juan was the man she chose to spend her life with. It's not possible for him to be gone, just like that. It's not something she can accept. He certainly can't be gone because their son wanted to help a strange girl he found sleeping in the garden. This is all too much, too fast, and she can't endure it.

She looks to Artemis and finds the other woman—the goddess—the girl watching her with open sympathy. Artemis doesn't say a word, only bows her head, then gestures toward the hall. The message couldn't be clearer.

Isabella scowls, then follows her son's path deeper into the apartment.

He's in his room when she glances through the open door, shoving clothes into a duffel bag almost mechanically. His teddy bear is missing from the bed, where it has remained stubbornly keeping watch even as its plushy peers were outgrown and pushed aside. She can't see anything else that isn't where it ought to be. Briefly, she considers going in and making sure he's bringing enough underwear, the necessities like his hairbrush and deodorant, but in the end, she continues onward. Those are things that can be replaced, and they may not return here. He's younger than she is; he has less to lose. Let him pack the things he'd miss if they were gone.

The bedroom she shares—shared—with Juan is dark, curtains drawn to keep nosy neighbors from "just looking" as they walk by outside. This is their private space, always has been, and even Luis asks before he comes inside, into the cocoon of his parents' presence. The air smells of candle wax and sweat, the blood from the living room not yet having drifted this far back. Isabella stops and breathes in deeply, unable to fight a feeling of unreality. This smell will fade, soon enough, and one more piece of Juan will be lost forever.

But the most essential part—his son—will remain, and she has to protect Luis. She holds to that thought as she moves toward the closet, taking out the suitcase she uses when she flies back to Puerto Rico to see her family. For the first time, she wishes it were bigger, that she hadn't consciously chosen something small to keep the weight down and prevent her parents from sending her home with too many unwanted gifts every time she came to visit. She'll be able to save so little of the life she's just lost.

First, her jewelry box, and Juan's small selection of precious things—his father's watch, his mother's earrings, the things he kept in his nightstand. The money from the cookie jar on top of the dresser, her small makeup case, and finally clothing to fill the gaps. Her wedding dress she leaves behind, too large and awkward to waste space on packing; their wedding album, she takes, and the precious family photo album that contains the best pictures of their life together. That's what Luis will have to remember his father by, more than anything else.

Finally, the basket that keeps her working tools, the accessories of her art; she hates it right now, that art and practice, wishes she had never flirted with the spirit world or heard the universe speaking to her. If she had been as unattuned as most people, she would have looked at the gangly woman her son brought in from the garden and seen nothing worth sheltering, nothing worth being curious about. Kelpie would have been sent on her way, and Juan would be alive. More than that, she would never have formed a coven to help her with her practice, and Catrina would never have come to the alchemist's attention. Two lives would have been saved, if she weren't an hechicera.

Oh, how she loathes the things she has gathered with such loving care, the things that allow her to perform the small wonders and necessary miracles she was made for! And still she takes them, granting them their share of the scant space inside her suitcase, because leaving them behind is not an option.

She hesitates. She doesn't know what happens next. This was a murder committed in the shadow lands that skirt normal reality, and she knows how the universe glosses those over, obscures the clues, dulls the interest of the people who stumble across them. Juan's death will be written off as a home invasion gone wrong, and the only real question is whether Catrina's body will be something the coroners recognize as human. If it is, they may actually find something worth sensationalizing, and Catrina will finally have the fame she craved so deeply. "White woman murdered" is probably not the headline she would have wanted, but any port in a storm, as the sages say.

Isabella smiles slightly at the thought of Catrina's rage upon being reported as a victim. Oh, she would be so mad. That would have been something to see. But if the dead walk, she's never seen it; the spirits who speak to her are spirits of place and prayer, embodied aspects of the universe without the strength or weight to move all the way to incarnation. If all ideas incarnated, there would be no lares or pentates. No people, either, just small gods and natural forces walking around, all playing at being human, all convinced they were the only ones.

She starts to close the suitcase, hesitates, and grabs one of Juan's T-shirts from the hamper, putting it in on top of her own clothes. The smell of him won't linger forever. It will linger long enough that she might remember how to sleep before it fades. There's nothing else.

There are so many things she'd love to take, if she had the time to box it all and consider every piece. But time is a luxury she doesn't have, and so she shuts the suitcase on the memories she can carry, hoists it, weighing it out with her arm and her heart at the same time—this is the weight of a life; can you balance it against a feather?—and turns her back on the bed she'll never sleep in again.

Nostrils full of the scent of Juan, she goes to retrieve their son. He has finished his packing; he's staring at the wall. He looks around when she enters the room.

"Something bad is happening, isn't it?" he asks.

Isabella pauses. "Yes, sweetheart. Something bad is happening. I'm sorry."

But he doesn't want her apologies. She's his mother. He wants her strength and support, wants her to have all the answers he doesn't. His face screws up, just a little, as he thinks. Finally, he says, "It sounded bad. But I don't remember why it sounded bad. If it's so bad, I should remember it, shouldn't I?"

"Sometimes your mind doesn't want to remember the bad things," says Isabella. "If it's important enough, you'll remember it later."

"Oh." He picks up his duffel bag, looks to the suitcase in her hand. "Are we going somewhere?"

"Yes, we are. Your friend Kelpie from last night, she'll be there, too."

"Oh!" He brightens, just for a moment, then asks, with heartbreaking wariness, "Is she why a bad thing happened?"

That answer is huge and complex. Isabella goes for the shorter, simpler one: "No, and neither are you. This is no one's fault."

No one but the alchemists, may they rot for what they've done to her family. All of them, everywhere in the world, may they rot where they stand. She sees no purpose to them, no reason for the universe to continue their appearance or allow their education. They are nothing but parasites attaching themselves to the spiritual skin of the universe, taking and taking and giving nothing back, and she hates them as she has never hated anything in all her life, as she did not know she could hate. It doesn't seem possible that she could hate this much, but she does, as she takes her son by his free hand and leads him back to the living room.

The shattered shape of the Catrina-thing is still sprawled across the floor, difficult to look upon or truly comprehend; Isabella is deep enough into the elemental world that she should be able to see it more clearly than this, or at least feels like she should. The back of the woman's clothing appears to have been sliced through and stitched back together, the seam visible due to the otherwise seamless slickness of the fabric. The back of the creature's neck and arms makes it clear that the seams go all the way to the bone, that what was cut into was more than merely fabric.

Once she comes to understand that, Isabella looks no deeper, suddenly grateful that Luis doesn't seem to see the body at all. Instead, he focuses on Artemis, and Bobby, who is standing rigidly at heel beside her, posture tight and perfect, ready for the hunt. He looks like a sighthound, like something bred to follow prey through ancient, endless forests. Bobby has never seemed noble before, but in this moment, in this light, he does.

"That's my dog," says Luis, almost petulantly. "Who are you?"

Artemis looks at him and smiles, sweet and gentle, like she's trying not to upset him. "My name's Anna, but my friends call me ‘Artemis,'" she says.

"You mean like from Percy Jackson?" asks Luis, brightening.

"Yes. Just like from Percy Jackson," says Artemis. "I'm a friend of your mother's. I'm here to walk you to where you'll be staying tonight."

Isabella remembers that in the old stories, Artemis is also the goddess responsible for child care, and feels a vast surge of sudden relief. Artemis will make sure Luis is safe, even if Isabella can't protect him herself.

"Now," Artemis continues. "I like taking walks, especially walks with a dog as good as Bobby here, but I like it even better when we can play a game at the same time. Do you want to play a game with me?"

Luis nods, enthusiastically

"Wonderful. For this game, I need you to close your eyes and follow the sound of my voice, and don't open them until I say you can. Do you think you can do that?"

"I can," says Luis, and screws his eyes obediently closed. Curious, he asks, "What game is this?"

"Um… I call it Bats! Because we're traveling by echolocation, see, and you need to trust your ears since you can't trust your eyes when they're closed. Real bats don't fly with their eyes closed, but their eyes are very small, and they do almost all of their hunting in the dark, which means they have to find their food by sending out sounds and following them."

"Okay," says Luis.

Artemis looks at Isabella and winks broadly, before taking several steps back and saying, "Okay, walk toward me."

Bobby follows her, and Luis walks toward the sound of her voice, Artemis calling out directions and corrections to lead him where he needs to be. She manages, somehow, to steer him out of the apartment without stepping on the body of his father, which has fallen to halfway block the exit; Isabella can't understand quite how that worked out but, now that she's looking, can see that it's true.

"Juan, I am so sorry," she says to the empty apartment once the others are gone. She keeps her voice low, to avoid attracting Luis's attention. Artemis has him outside without understanding what's happened. She doesn't want to change that. "I had no idea this could happen. I swear, if I'd even suspected, I would never have let her in, I would never have let you go to work today, I would have done so many things so very differently. I will never stop wishing this had gone differently, and I will never stop loving you. I'll keep our boy safe. You have my word."

There is no reply. There so rarely is, when talking to the dead. She sighs, feeling as emptied-out as the husk that was Catrina, and follows her son and the goddess of the moon out of the apartment.

She doesn't even try to shut the shattered door. She just keeps walking.

Artemis has managed to guide Luis all the way to the end of the courtyard. The two of them are waiting there, giving her the space and time she needs to catch up. She hurries to join them. Her husband is dead but her son is alive, and the alchemist who transformed her not-quite-friend into something monstrous and sent it hunting for their escaped lab project is still out there. They need to get Luis to safety.

That means the house of the Doctrine, and Isabella is relieved when Artemis waves and starts walking in that direction, destination already set and verified. Luis keeps his eyes shut as he follows; he hasn't realized yet that they're never going back. Isabella's heart aches for the moment when he'll understand, which is coming faster than either of them would like and will change absolutely everything.

Still, she falls into step, and they walk without speaking to each other. Artemis continues to call out instructions to Luis, keeping him on the sidewalk, distracting anyone who sees them from the oddness of two women, one with a suitcase and the other with an unleashed dog, cutting through the neighborhood at this hour of the day. Not that Isabella is truly worried about being seen: they might not all have the preternatural camouflage the universe affords to incarnations like Kelpie, but for the most part, people see what they want to see, and they ignore the rest. She and Artemis are safe, as long as they're not covered in blood and actively discussing murder.

The last thing she wants to talk about right now is her husband's murder. She knows she's not going to have a choice soon: it's going to matter to the people she hopes will shelter them, and if the alchemists have moved to turning innocents into weapons and setting them against their enemies, that's going to make a difference. That's going to be the sort of thing the Doctrine, at the very least, should know about. But she's had a long day. She's tired. Her husband is dead, her home is effectively lost, and she's not sure either one of them thought to grab dog food.

The thought summons the immediate, burning desire to turn and go back. It's not an excuse; it's an actual need to go get something the dog requires. And she knows she can't give in. Even if, by some miracle, no one has noticed the smashed-in door or the body yet, giving in now will mean she never finds the strength to leave again. Let her son grow up in the care of the gods of the moon; she'll stay with her love, who needs her now as much as ever.

She fights the urge and looks to Artemis, who is watching her with sympathy. She wonders what the other woman sees when she looks at her, whether she thinks Isabella brought this on herself by getting involved with forces beyond her comprehension, whether she's angry. None of those questions lead anywhere good, and so she leaves them all unasked, instead asking, "How did you know to come?"

"Erin," says Artemis. "She came outside and said there was a lot of disorganization rising from your area, and that if I wanted to stop some serious chaos, I should head over. Kelpie didn't want to come, so she's waiting back at the house. Unless she's taken this as an opportunity to run for the hills."

"What will you do if she has?"

Artemis shrugs. "Grieve, I guess. We both know the people who made her aren't going to stop looking, and she doesn't seem to have any natural defenses. I'm… more, when she's with me, and echoes of it last a little while, or seem to. I couldn't normally pull my bow even in a dark apartment with the sun still this high in the sky, but it came easily today, and I feel like I could pull it again if I needed to, although it wouldn't last long. Maybe that's what the companions are for. They make us more."

"I'm glad you came. Luis doesn't know it yet, but he's glad too."

"Yeah, well." Artemis raises her voice. "Three big steps forward, and then stop."

Luis does as he's told, coming to a quivering halt on the corner, only about a foot and a half from the street. He stays frozen until the adults catch up to him, when Artemis gives the next instruction and he starts walking again, clearly enjoying this break from his usual routine, even if he doesn't understand it.

"What was that back at the apartment?"

"Do you really want to have this conversation now?" asks Artemis, and nods her head toward Luis.

Isabella sighs, very slightly. "No, I suppose not. Soon."

"Oh, absolutely." Artemis pauses, then laughs, almost under her breath. "This has been a fun game, but he shouldn't miss this. Open your eyes now!"

Luis stops and opens his eyes, then gasps at the sight of the carnival-bright house in front of him. He looks over his shoulder at the adults, a question in his eyes.

"Yes, that's where we're going," says Isabella.

"The clown house?"

"Yes, please tell the nice people who live there that that's what you and your friends call the house," says Artemis, deadpan. "I'm sure that won't upset them at all."

Luis looks between her and his mother, uncertain. Isabella sighs again.

"No, buddy, she's not being serious. You can go ahead and go into the yard, and even up the steps, but you wait for us there, you understand?"

Luis beams. "Okay, Mama!" He unhooks the gate and bounces into the unseasonably green yard, delighted as only a young boy on an adventure can be.

Isabella takes a great, shuddering breath, trying to grapple with the enormity of it all. She flinches when a hand settles on her shoulder, then turns to find Artemis watching her with sympathy.

"He's safe," she says. "That house isn't even there when they don't want it to be. No one's going to find him or hurt him while they have him in their care, and they said you could come here for shelter. I don't know how long-term that's going to be, but for right now, he's safe. I swear. Now let's get you safe, too."

Artemis leads her to the garden gate. Isabella steps through, and she's paying attention this time, she feels the moment when the air changes, turning into something timeless and out-of-season, like the house runs on its own chronology. And maybe it does. It would be no stranger than anything else that's happened today.

Luis is waiting at the top of the steps, eagerly looking at the glorious wonders around him, and Isabella can't help being grateful that if this all had to happen, it happened now, while he's young enough to be delighted by the adventure and not dwell on the reasons it would be happening. There's time for grief later—and it will come, she knows.

Grief is the ultimate ambush predator. If it fails to catch its prey in the moment, it will retreat and lurk until its time arrives. And its time always arrives. It is the price we pay for having loved something, the misery that pours in to fill the holes that are left behind when it departs.

Isabella is already at the start of her grieving. She'll do what she can to keep Luis from starting his before he's ready.

Artemis flashes him a smile as bright as summer and rings the doorbell, the sound echoing through the house and not quite fading before the door opens and Erin is standing there, looking starkly unsurprised by the assembly on the porch.

"Guest room's down the hall, last door on the left before the bathroom," she says. "Just ignore the books, and the boxes. Dodger shoves anything she doesn't want left out in the open in there, says it's unrealistic for us to have a basement in this part of California, and since I live in the attic, she's trying to respect my privacy."

"How many rooms does this place have?" asks Isabella, stepping inside and gesturing for Luis to follow.

"How many does it need?" asks Erin philosophically. She looks to Luis as he crosses the threshold, her gaze startlingly like a hawk's. It's sharp, and predatory, and pins him in place. "Who are you?"

"This is my—" begins Isabella.

Erin shifts that sharp, predatory look over to her. "Did I ask you?"

"No," says Isabella.

Erin looks back to Luis. "Just checking. Who are you?"

Luis swallows hard. "I'm, um. I'm Luis Diaz? Anna and my mom said we had to come here for a while. I'm in sixth grade and your eyes are really blue. I've never seen eyes like yours. Are you wearing anime contacts?"

"No," says Erin. "These are just my eyes. But that's a good question, and it's always a good idea to look at people's eyes. You can tell a lot of things from eyes. Are you going to be okay sharing a room with your mother for a few days?"

Isabella holds her breath as she awaits the answer. She's sure if he says "no," Erin will nod and casually mention another guest room, keeping to her promise that they have as many rooms as they need. But she doesn't want him in a different room. She's a widow so recent that she doesn't even have a death certificate yet, and she doesn't want to be alone.

"Oh, yeah," says Luis. "We share a hotel room when we drive to LA to see my grandparents. It's fun. Like sleepaway camp, only my parents are there."

"Very well, then," says Erin. "Enter freely, and be not afraid."

Luis giggles. "You're funny," he says, and heads down the hall. Isabella follows.

Artemis is the last of the three to step inside. She waits until Isabella and Luis pass out of earshot, then sighs heavily and shakes her head.

"You were right," she says. "I needed to be there. I just needed to be there a little sooner than I was, that's all."

"Her husband's not going to join them, is he?" asks Erin, as she looks at Bobby, who has settled at Artemis's feet, sitting as politely as any long-trained show dog.

Artemis shakes her head.

"Well, shit."

"Yes, that sums it up nicely." Artemis sighs. "I need to go check on my—on Kelpie. Can you handle them from here?"

"Can she tell me what happened? Because I'd like to know before you go if you're not sure she can."

"One of the alchemists who's been sniffing around the place recently got hold of someone Isabella knew, and used them as the basis for making an auf. Then they set it loose, and it followed Kelpie's trail back to Isabella's apartment complex."

Erin frowns. "She said she'd put up wards."

"Well, something took them down." Artemis shrugs. "The creature was in the process of breaking down the apartment door when Isabella's husband came home and interrupted. The auf backed off to let him undo the locks, and then ripped out most of his internal organs through his back."

Erin's frown becomes a grimace. "Oof. That's a nasty way to die."

"At least it's a fast one. He went down, the auf broke the door open as I was getting there, and I shot it before it could get to Isabella." Artemis pauses, looking at Erin. "I pulled my bow before moonrise. I pulled it, and it was solid and real and when I shot the auf, the auf went down. During the day. I've never been able to do that before."

"It's almost the eclipse, and you found your Hind," says Erin. "Both those things turn your power up. She's out back, by the way. Máni is out there with her. Chang'e came inside when she finished checking out the peach tree, thanked me for letting her look, and then she did that funky trick you people do, where she stepped back and let someone else take over. The human chick she's time-sharing with. Judy? She's in Roger's office now, probably quizzing him on verb tenses or something."

"I hope they're having a nice time?" says Artemis uncertainly, glancing toward the kitchen door. "Do you mind if I…?"

"No, go ahead. I'll stay here and deal with the sad human and her son."

Artemis smiles before she flees for the kitchen with the dog at her heels, running away from the relative complexity of ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances, returning to the comforting familiarity of the divine. Erin watches her go and sighs. It must be nice to be able to move between two worlds as easily as breathing, to slide from one into the other when either becomes too difficult to withstand. She's never had that option. None of the people living in this semi-coherent, unreasonably malleable house have. Even Smita, who could technically still return to the world of the living if she wanted to put in the time and effort, has slipped too far into the alchemical mire to go back to what she was.

Turning, Erin wanders down the hall toward the guest room she half-identified, half-conjured for their unwilling houseguests. The door is open; from inside, she hears Isabella trying to explain to Luis that his father isn't coming to join them. The boy doesn't understand yet, based on the querulous noises he's making. He will, and Erin doesn't want to be here for that. She keeps walking, heading for the door with the PLEASE, NO sign advising her to stay away.

She can't read all the languages on the sign, but she knows what they say, and she figures that's close enough for government work. Raising one hand, she knocks briskly.

There's a pause before Roger calls, "Is the house on fire?"

"If the house were on fire, Dodger would be in your head demanding you tell it to stop," says Erin reasonably. "It's me."

The door opens, and Roger is there, hair slightly mussed in the way that means he's been running his hands through it. It's strangely appealing. She hasn't seen him looking like that in a while—not since he became the living Doctrine and stopped being strictly human. It's a nervous habit that comes out when he's confronted with an interesting linguistic problem, something he has to think about, not just snap his fingers and solve. Manifesting as the living incarnation of language has made it harder for him to find things that intellectually excite him.

Erin's always been a little sorry about that, although not sorry enough to recommend they try another reset and pass the Doctrine to Kim and Tim. There's a reality where they survive and one where they don't, and she prefers to stay in the one where they do.

"What?" he asks, eyes bright and cheeks flushed with what could be irritation—or arousal. He used to look at her like that.

Doctrine's gonna bag a moon goddess,she thinks, and it's a sufficiently amusing concept to take the sting out of the idea. "Isabella's back. She brought her kid."

"She told us she was going to." He moves to shut the door.

Erin grabs hold of it before he can. "She didn't bring her husband, and she's not going to. The alchemists found her before we could get her back here."

"What?" He lets go of the door and stares at her. Behind him, Erin hears someone moving around. Judy, coming to listen.

"They made an auf—a sort of flesh-puppet thing that replaces a real person, like splitting the difference between a construct and a clone; they're fast and dirty work, starting with coring out the person you want to replace—and sent it to track Kelpie's steps. It found Isabella, and it killed her husband. Artemis got there before it could kill her and the kid, and she brought them back here for safety's sake."

"And now we have houseguests," concludes Roger grimly. "You get them situated?"

"Yeah. They're sharing a room downstairs. Kid's as normal as normal comes. I'm not sure he'll notice anything weird the whole time he's here."

"Oh, he'll notice plenty that's weird," says Roger. "It'll just be all the normal sort of weird, like Kim making breakfast-cereal sandwiches, or Dodger doing differential equations on the window in Sharpie. Still, it's good to know we'll need to pull back around him."

"Unless you want to make his future therapy bills even higher," says Erin.

Roger, who has more experience with traumatized teens than he ever expected he would, sighs. "And they'll already be high enough."

Erin nods. "They will, and this isn't over yet. We have some additional tasks to complete."

"Make sure Isabella isn't being held responsible for her husband's murder, get rid of the alchemists that attacked her, find her that house we promised, get her out of our guest room," says Roger, rapid-fire.

Erin nods again. "And deal with the infestation of moon gods we seem to have developed."

"I don't know," says Roger. "I like a few of them."

"Mm-hmm. I can see that. You two have fun. We've got about an hour before we'll need to head for campus." Erin grins, sudden and sharp. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

She turns and walks away before Roger can answer her. Some statements don't need replies.