So, within the privacy of Dare’s own apartment (which was also conveniently and not-at-all accidentally close to the cluster of rooms belonging to my–our family), I told the woman everything we had found out about this Godfather guy and his goals. At least, what little of his goals we actually understood. Okay, basically all I was able to tell her as far as that went was that it had something to do with getting Vanessa, Tristan, Tabbris, and me in front of the Seosten leadership at some point for… some reason. That was it. Well, that and the fact that he was clearly (even more) completely psychotic from spending so long in that Tartarus place and then having both his Seosten and Fomorian selves merged together. Yeah, that couldn’t have done wonders for his/their mental state, to say the least.
Unsurprisingly, Dare wasn’t exactly thrilled with the news. And who could blame her? After everything she’d given up to keep the Fomorians off Earth, here I was telling the woman that the single most powerful and dangerous one had been right here the whole time. We talked for about an hour about all the possibilities related to this revelation, and still probably didn’t cover anywhere near everything. But on the other hand, given how little we actually knew for certain about this fucker, we were probably getting pretty far ahead of ourselves. The point was, we really needed to find out more about him, preferably before he figured out that we actually knew about him and made his own moves in retaliation. Because as bad as he sounded, at least he was being quiet for the moment. I really didn’t want to see what kind of trouble he could get up to if he felt like lashing out.
But, for the moment, there really wasn’t anything else we could do. Well, nothing I could do, anyway. Dare said that she could look into a few things quietly on her own over the next few days, but said that I should get some rest and enjoy this little break while I had the chance. I could tell there was a lot more she wanted to say, a lot going through her mind now that I had told her about Godfather. But she was clearly locking her reactions down specifically to avoid freaking me out any further. Instead of going on or giving me any details, she simply repeated that I should get some rest and that we would talk about it later. Despite the obvious emotional reaction she was having, her voice was firm and I knew we wouldn’t be getting any more into it that night.
Part of me wanted to push her on that, of course. Koren and I were the only people she had to really open up to with Gaia missing. But we were still–okay, we weren’t kids. But to her we were. And, as much as she possibly could, Dare was still trying to protect us, even from her own emotions. I just… wished she had someone else to talk to, someone she would consider more of a peer than a student. Like Hisao. God, I wished she could tell Hisao all of this. Hell, that was honestly probably why she still kept him somewhat at arm’s length. Because she couldn’t truly open up to him about who she was and about everything in her past. She’d lost her husband and had to erase herself from her daughter’s mind. That was a huge thing in her development, and yet she couldn’t talk to Hisao about it.
But, as much as I wanted to fix all that and give my grandmother someone she could trust to confide in, I had no way of doing that. Not yet, anyway. So, after stepping over and embracing the woman tightly (something she seemed to still be surprised by), I stepped out of her apartment and back into the hallway. For a moment, I glanced down toward the door that divided into my fath–my parents’ place. But I didn’t go that way. Instead, I took out my phone and texted my father to say I was going to my own place for the night and that he should stay with Mom. They deserved to have a lot more time together with just themselves. Adding a second text that I would meet them in the morning for breakfast, and that I loved them, I took a breath and pivoted to head back the way we had come before.
It took me a couple minutes to find my way to the spot Dad had pointed out that led back into the school area, but I eventually managed it. I had just navigated my way through those slightly more familiar halls to the forcefield elevator that led down to the living area and was descending on it when I felt the mental tug of Tabbris checking what was going on and if it was okay to pop in. When I let her know it was safe and that she wasn’t interrupting, the girl recalled and appeared directly beside me on the invisible elevator.
“Hi, Flick!” she blurted before quickly hugging me as tightly as she could. “Isn’t this great?! Your mom’s home! I mean back, she’s back. She’s really back! And your dad’s here, and they all know everything, and they’re together, and they get to spend time together and you get to spend time with them and your brother and sister are here too and they all get to be together at the same time in the same place, and–”
Laughing a bit despite myself, I quickly returned the hug and lifted the girl up a bit. My throat had a lump in it that I had to swallow back before I could force the words out in a shaking, emotional voice. “Yes. Yes, it’s amazing. I can’t–I can’t believe it’s real, Tabs. I keep thinking I’m about to wake up and find out I’m back in that… in that place with Fossor and this whole thing was just a fucked-up magic mind joke that he used to punish me for something, or that Mom never got away, or that we’re–” Cutting myself off, I shook my head quickly while trying to shove all those worries down as far as I could. “I think it’s gonna take a long time before I let myself believe that it’s real and that it’s really sticking.”
Unable to go on for a moment, I just hugged my little sister tighter to me while getting myself back under control. We stood there like that, clinging to one another, even after the elevator finished descending and we were left standing there in the middle of the miniature town that made up the adult-student living area.
Finally, I felt Tabbris pinch my arm. It didn’t hurt or anything, but I still gasped and let her go. Landing on her feet, the younger girl smiled up at me and held her fingers up pointedly. “Do you believe you’re awake now? Cuz I’ll keep pinching you as many times as it takes, you know. I’m helpful like that.”
Snorting despite myself, I held up both hands and shook my head. “No, no, that’s okay. Thanks for the offer, but I think I can get along without being pinched again. Jeez, you’ve got strong fingers.” After a brief hesitation, I smiled and quietly added, “This is pretty amazing, isn’t it?”
Tabbris’s broad, beaming smile basically eclipsed my own as she quickly latched onto me once more. She didn’t say anything out loud in response. She didn’t need to. I felt everything through that embrace, which went on for another minute or so before we both heard the warning beep that someone else was descending on the elevator and we needed to get our butts out of the way so that it could actually finish coming down instead of hovering above us.
Quickly, I moved out of the way with the other girl, and we watched as the forcefield lift finished lowering down to where we had been, and the occupants stepped off. It was Aylen and Avalon, both of them looking at us curiously. They were also holding hands, and from the looks on their faces, I could tell they had both clearly just been involved in an emotional discussion about something. They’d been talking about– Oh.
“You told her about him?” I hesitantly asked, realizing what their discussion had probably been about. Godfather. Of course, I’d thought that I would have to talk to Aylen about that, but it obviously made sense that Avalon would do that. After all, the two of them were… yeah. Of course Valley would want to be the one to talk about it with her.
Sure enough, Aylen glanced toward Avalon before giving a short nod as she released the other girl’s hand. Her voice was quiet. “She told me. I–we knew he was around, that he was… that he was a problem that was only going to get worse eventually. But we didn’t know he was actually already making moves.” She snorted then, head shaking. “Sorry, I guess ‘already’ isn’t the right word. It’s been a long time. I just–I think we were all just hoping he’d never show himself. Or maybe that he fell into a black hole somewhere and disappeared forever. And now it turns out he’s been doing things this whole time. What does he even want to do to the Seosten leaders?”
“We don’t know,” Avalon answered, glancing toward me with a sigh. “Nobody knows what he’s planning. But it involves Felicity, Tabbris, and the Moon twins. So nothing we want to see.”
Coughing, I gave a quick nod. “Yeah, believe me, I don’t have any interest in following his little plan, whatever it is. We’re gonna find out what he’s up to, Aylen. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. Just, hopefully without one of us being abducted and held prisoner for a couple of months first.” I tried to make light of it that way, but from the way they both squinted at me, I was pretty sure the attempted joke had pretty much fallen flat. Yeah, probably not the best time for that.
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So, shaking that off, I exchanged a brief glance with Tabbris (who was squinting at me with a look that made it clear she wasn’t a fan of the joke either), before turning back to the other two. “Sorry, the point is, we’ll find him. Come on, I know he’s super-scary and all, but it’s like I said back on the ship, one of his biggest advantages has been the fact that almost no one knew about him. Now we do. And we’ll deal with it. Or, you know, Athena, Sariel, Mom–they’ll all help deal with it. They’ll help your family stop him, Aylen. We all will. You guys aren’t alone in this anymore, okay?”
A very faint smile crossed Avalon’s face as she met my gaze before turning to Aylen to speak quietly while putting a hand on her shoulder. “She’s right. She’s kind of a dork, but she’s still right. You and your family aren’t alone. We’ll figure out how to deal with this Seorian bogeyman.”
“Oooh, did we settle on Seorian?” I put in. “Yeah, that’s probably better than Fomorsten.”
With a screech, Sovereign came flying down out of the sky, landing on Aylen’s raised and waiting arm as she replied, “Whatever you end up calling him, he’s dangerous. More dangerous than you could ever–” Stopping herself, she exhaled long and low, clearly steadying herself. “I’m sorry. I know you do understand how dangerous. I just–the idea of that creature being out there is the only thing I ever saw actually scare my mother and Grandfather. And anything that scares them is bad, Felicity. Really…” She took a breath and let it out. “Really bad.”
The four of us started walking together then. On the way, I took Jaq and Gus and perched them on Sovereign’s back. Valley did the same with Porthos. The little mice and lizard were able to lock in so they wouldn’t fall off as the metal hawk went flying off, giving all three a ride. I could hear my little buddies squeaking excitedly, while Avalon’s astonishingly brave lizard chittered loudly. I couldn’t understand him, of course, but from the tone I was pretty sure he was calling out threats to anyone who wanted to challenge them. So, pretty much the same old Porthos.
For a few minutes, we just walked and talked a bit more about the Godfather situation. But honestly, there wasn’t that much more we could say about it. Nothing important or that we hadn’t already said, anyway. We just repeated ourselves a bit, promised to take it seriously, and said we couldn’t do anything about him right now. Aylen assured us that she would talk to her family about what happened, and arrange a time for everyone who was in the know to have a full, real conversation with them about it. Maybe they’d come up with a game plan that way.
Eventually, we reached the house. Once we’d separated the cyberforms (all of whom were quite happy about their little flight) Avalon stepped away with Aylen to walk the other girl next door to her own house, with the promise of being back soon. Meanwhile, Tabbris and I headed in, with one mouse on each of our left shoulders. It was late, so we were as quiet as possible. Not that it really mattered given the fact that each room was soundproofed, but hey. It was the thought that counted?
Still, despite how quiet we were, the moment the two of us stepped inside the house, we were met with slightly glowing eyes coming from down the dark hall where the archway leading into the equally dark kitchen was. A moment later, Triss (the white-and-brown-furred Nekomata girl) stepped into view. Her ears were down a bit as she squinted while holding an ice cream carton in one hand (wait, was paw the right word?). There was partially melted ice cream in the fur around her face, which kind of took away from the image she was trying to portray of being dangerous.
Belatedly, her eyes softened a bit and her ears went up. “Wh–oh, it’s you guys. Wait, it’s you guys?” Quickly, she came forward, little pink nose sniffing a bit curiously as she reached out to flick on the nearby light switch and stared at me. “You really came back. I mean, I know you survived and all, I just–I didn’t expect to… I thought it’d be a lot longer before you came down here.” There was a brief, somewhat awkward pause before she added, “Are you–uh, you know… okay?” From the look on the cat-girl’s face, she realized how awkward that sounded.
Rubbing the back of my neck, I nodded. “Well, my mom and dad are sort of… reuniting themselves, so… you know, I wanted to give them time and space and not be anywhere near that.” Grimacing, I shrugged. “Tabs and I figured we might as well head down here and see if you guys managed to sublet our room out or not.” Yeah, Tabbris hadn’t been with Fossor (thank every god and/or mysterious power in the universe), but she had let me know that she hadn’t slept down here at all since I disappeared. She’d spent the whole time either with Dad or with her mother.
With a very slight smirk, Triss too-casually replied, “Oh, well, you know. We had a guy living in there, but he couldn’t keep up his end of the rent and all so we had to give him the boot.” That said, she glanced down at the carton in her hand before offering it our way. “Ice cream? It’s Mint Chip with caramel.”
I started to decline, but Tabbris took the carton, plucked up a large scoop with the spoon that was still in it, and happily took a bite. With her mouth full, she started to blurt something before quickly swallowing. “Oh! I gotta show you something! Dad said they’d send it down and all but I don’t–” She was starting to move, only to belatedly realize she still had the ice cream carton and started to hand it back to the other girl.
“Keep it, I’ve had enough,” Triss replied, holding up both hands to wave her off before looking to me once more. As always, I got that same hint of reflexive suspicion that came from her every time she looked at a Bosch Heretic before smothering it. Her ears popped back up, as she pointedly added, “I’m glad you made it back, Flick. It’s been… well, not boring around here without you. But pretty depressing. I mean, I know I don’t really know you, and I haven’t been the most… open. We’re not like…” The girl trailed off, eyes twitching a bit as she realized she was rambling before focusing. “But seriously, I’m glad you’re not stuck with that figlio di puttana.”
“Uhhh, me too, I think.” I murmured that a bit blankly before meeting her gaze. “And I’m sorry I haven’t really had much of a chance to get to know you either, Triss. Hopefully that can change now, cuz I’m not planning on getting–ow.” That last bit, of course, came from Tabbris pointedly kicking me in the leg for almost jinxing it again. “Right, sorry. What I mean is, I’ll be around. And hey, maybe I can even go back to attending some classes now and then.”
Promising to talk to the girl some more later, I headed off with Tabbris. The two of us went to the stairs and quietly made our way up. Well, quietly aside from the sound of my little sister cheerfully enjoying the ice cream out of the carton the whole way up. Not that it mattered, considering the rooms were soundproofed. Still, it was kind of amusing to hear just how much she was enjoying that stuff. The happy noises she made while she licked the spoon clean were adorable.
Also adorable? The noise she made when we made it all the way up and back to our room. The moment the two of us stepped through, she immediately looked to the side and squealed happily. “They moved it in! They really got it here! Flick, check it out!”
‘It’, in this case, was what looked like an ordinary, average goldfish bowl sitting on the table next to her bed. But it was far more than that, as I soon found out. Apparently, the interior of the bowl was actually the size of a full bedroom all by itself. There was a forcefield across the top, and Tabbris could shift the view through the glass to see any part of the inside.
And what happened to be inside? Fish, of course. Lots and lots of fish. Colorful fish, drab-looking fish, exotic fish, normal fish, just… fish. So many fish. Tabbris loved them. Apparently she really liked all kinds of fish, to the point that she had named all of the dozens in there. She knew each of them by sight, and very excitedly panned the view around to make sure that I was introduced to each and every one.
For the next forty minutes or so, the two of us sat there on her bed and carefully fed each of the fish. Tabs had different fish food for each type that was in there, and she made sure they all got everything they needed. Then she set the bowl back on the table, perched up on her knees, and proceeded to tell the fish a story that amounted to Little Red Riding Hood in marine animal form. Yeah, she literally told her fish a bedtime story. And the weird part? I was pretty sure they were listening.
By that point, Avalon and Shiori had both arrived and were listening at the door. The latter stepped over once I slipped over to my own bed, whispering that Asenath apparently had something important to talk about in the morning, but that it would wait that long. Which was good, because I really couldn’t take another immediate emergency popping up the second I sat down.
Eventually, Tabbris finished her story, wished her fish good night, and then looked over to me. There was a small, knowing smile on her face. “I’ll sleep in my own bed tonight,” she informed us. “More room.”
With that, she reached out and hit the button that activated the privacy screen that had been installed, bathing her bed in pitch black, impeneratable shadows.
Which, of course, left me sitting on my bed with Shiori next to me and Avalon approaching. “Well, hey there, girls,” I offered with a little smile. “Do you think you could help me? See, this bed here is awfully big and I do get so lonely with–”
“Finish that sentence, Chambers,” Avalon interrupted, “and you’ll find out just how big and empty that bed can be.”
My fingers made the zipping motion across my lips, while Shiori giggled. Then I reached out and hit the button for my own privacy mode.
And for the rest of the night, I definitely wasn’t lonely at all.