Scout and Tristan

“Hey, I’m sorry.“

Scout started a little bit at the unexpected voice. Not only was she not actively using her enhanced hearing, she had also been lost in thought while sitting out on the grass of the school grounds. It was the same night that Flick and the others had gotten back, and they would be visiting the hospital the next day.

It was Tristan. As Scout blinked up at the boy, he settled down onto his knees nearby, wincing a little bit. “And now I’m sorry again, for surprising you that time.”

Hesitating slightly, Scout offered him a small shrug, “What for? The first time,” she asked quietly.

“I’m sorry we didn’t bring Sands back with us,” the boy clarified. “That’s what you were thinking about, right?”

Now she blushed, looking down a bit guiltily before murmuring, “I’m glad you’re all safe.”

Immediately giving her one of his charming smiles, Tristan winked. “Well of course you are, we are pretty useful to have around.” His expression sobered then, as he added, “But we’re not your sister. Trust me, I get that. I get it more than a lot of people. Plus, your mom’s out there. Your mom and your sister. So yeah, I’m sorry we didn’t bring them back with us. But hey, they’re out there. And they’re coming.”

He was right, of course. Scout had been obsessively thinking about how much she wished her mother and sister had made it back. It seemed selfish, but she wanted them to be there. She didn’t want to wait for them anymore, especially with everything that was going on with her dad. She needed Sands and their mom. Needed them more than she could explain, even to herself.

Giving a tiny nod then, she whispered, “You would have brought them if you could.”

“Damn straight we would have,” Tristan assured her. Meeting her gaze, he added, “And believe me, they want to see you as much as you want to see them. Especially your mom.”

When Scout smiled that time, it wasn’t forced at all. “I’m glad you got to save your mom.”

Okay, that time when he smiled it was less about being deliberately charming and more genuine happiness when he thought about his mother. His smile always had an effect on Scout, just like it affected most girls. But seeing that particular smile right then made her stomach do funny things.

Maybe it was the fact that she missed her mother and her sister so much. Maybe it was the fact that Avalon had been taken. Maybe it was a lot of different things. But seeing that genuine smile right then made the girl realize how much she liked seeing it. And how much she wanted to see more of it. Not his cocky grin that he used all the time, but the real smile, the private smile.

“You have a really nice smile, you know that?“

That wasn’t her. It was Tristan, saying it to her. Taken aback, the girl blinked up at him before blushing even more. Shifting her weight a little, she offered a weak, “Thank you.”

After a brief pause, Scout reached to the box tucked in her lap before offering the open end of it to him. “Cookie?”

“Oooh.” Taking one, the boy grinned. “You sure know how to treat a guy.“

You have a nice smile too.

She didn’t say that. She thought about it, and almost did. But in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to actually say it out loud. She was too confused and uncertain about things. And nervous, definitely nervous.

But maybe someday she would.

Maybe.

******

Miles Cleary (Son of the Bogeyman)

“You’re sure it was them?”

As he murmured the question, Miles glanced to the Hispanic boy next to him. The two of them were sitting in the cafeteria, poking a bit at the food on their plates while listening to a slight commotion from the other side of the room.

Chas Mena, Miles’ teammate, gave a short nod without looking up from his own plate of french toast. “It was them, dude. Trust me, I talked to Jiorge, who talked to Connor, who talked to Dana. She saw it with her own eyes. They were the ones with that book.”

Frowning a little, Miles looked down at the piece of paper with names scribbled on it.

Vanessa Moon, Koren Fellows, Rudolph Parsons, and Felicity Chambers.

Still frowning, the boy glanced toward the source of the commotion that had only somewhat quieted with the arrival of one of the security guys. Even before that glance, he knew what had happened. That Scout girl had punched one of the first year boys for harassing her or her friends. Zeke, he was pretty sure the guy’s name was.

Lowering his voice despite the privacy spells that he and Chas both had running, Miles murmured, “Hang on a second, let me think…”

He had spent most of the year scouring every inch of the library for books that mention the guy who had his parents. Every inch of it. And somehow, somehow, it turned out that months earlier, there had been a few first year students looking at a book that mentioned Fossor. A book that, from the description given, he’d never seen before. Never seen. Ever. And those first year students had just picked it up in the exact same library that he’d searched a dozen times.

Oh, and to make matters even more confusing, the first year students who were using it happened to be that Felicity Chambers girl, who kept disappearing and getting in weird trouble; Rudolph Parsons, who was part of the new team that formed when half of hers and half of his up and vanished; Vanessa Moon, who also disappeared for awhile and whose twin brother miraculously appeared earlier that year; and Koren Fellows, who had some weird thing going on with Chambers too that no one seemed to have a straight answer about.

With all of that in mind, Miles looked over to Chas. “There’s something really fucked up going on around here. I mean, there’s always fucked up things going on, but that Chambers girl seems to have more than her fair share, you know?” After another pause, he asked, “What did Dana hear them say, again?”

“Chambers got really interested as soon as that Koren chick mentioned the name Fossor,” the other boy replied. “Grabbed the book right out of her hand. The book was talking about how the old Heretics back in the day made an alliance with Fossor and he betrayed them to make the Black Death. And, uhh, there’s something else. The guy who made the alliance was Gabriel Ruthers.”

Doing a quick doubletake at that, Miles blurted, “The old headmaster? What—” Opening and shutting his mouth, he finally sighed. “And now that Chambers girl and the Moon twins just showed up again, without the others.”

“She knows about Fossor, that’s for sure,” Chas pointed out quietly. “Maybe he’s involved with whatever’s going on with that group? Doesn’t someone keep attacking Headmistress Sinclaire’s hot new Eden’s Garden daughter? You think they went outside Crossroads for help with that and ended up getting in bed with Fossor just like Ruthers and the old Heretics did? Err, and by in bed, I mean metaphorically because eeeuuugghhh.”

Shaking his head, Miles sighed. “I dunno. We need to find out more.”

“And how do you propose we do that?” Chas asked.

Looking back to the boy, Miles replied, “We need to talk to Royce. He’s the investigator.

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“And we need to investigate Felicity Chambers, Vanessa Moon, Koren Fellows, and Rudolph Parsons.”

******

Dylan Averty

“It’s the eggs.”

Blinking at the statement, a tall, heavy-set, dark-skinned man with graying hair glanced to the figure beside him. Both were as different as night and day. Where he was dark, tall, overweight, and old, she was young, pale, thin to the point of near anorexia, and had hair that was incredibly dark. The only similarity between the two were the dark blue uniform shirts they wore with the name of the store they both worked at and were currently standing in stenciled across the front.

“What’s the eggs?” Hubert Longs carefully asked, knowing he would likely regret doing so.

“They’re spies,” came the answer that proved his suspicion correct, as the young brunette narrowed her gaze across the back end of the store, glaring at the cartons in question as though she could intimidate them into confession.

Slowly, Hubert looked from the girl, to the egg cartons in the distance, then back again. “They’re eggs,” he spoke in a voice that made it clear he felt ridiculous even needing to point that out. “Dylan, eggs can’t be spies.”

The girl, Dylan Averty, snapped her gaze to him. “Can’t they? Who would suspect them?”

Letting out a long breath, Hubert shook his head. “Look, kid, I was with you for most of this, right? I helped you put those weird symbols on all the grocery carts and in the baskets. I even went on the roof and the petals from those weird flowers you brought in, and I still have a rash from that. I helped you make those creepy dolls of all our coworkers because I thought you had some weird prank or something in mind. Then I remembered it’s almost May. You missed April Fools completely and it’s months before Halloween.”

“I told you,” Dylan insisted, “If one of our coworkers turns evil or gets possessed, you’re going to be glad that we have voodoo dolls to handle it. It’s called being prepared. And I don’t see your point.”

“My point,” Hubert informed her, “is that I’ve gone along with all that. And more. But eggs? They can’t be spying on us. They don’t even have eyes. You’re thinking of potatoes.” He tried to joke at the last bit, smiling at her.

She wasn’t smiling. “Not anymore, they don’t,” the girl informed him while holding up a paring knife in one hand with a chunk of potato still stuck to it. “You think I’d leave that kind of security risk like some kind of amateur?”

Doing a quick doubletake at that, Hubert caught himself. “Err, you–okay, look, the point is that I’ve gone along with most of this because I know it makes you feel better after… after what you went through. All this weird stuff, I know it’s your way of coping. But eggs? What do you want us to do with all the eggs?”

“Throw them out,” Dylan announced immediately. “They’re spying on us. Or me. Or you. Or someone. I don’t know, but they are. Someone put a spell on them. Or maybe on the cartons. Or…” She sighed then, squirming as she admitted, “I don’t know, not exactly. But I feel funny when I walk past them. Funny in my stomach. There’s a spell on them. I can feel it.”

“A spell… on the eggs, turning them into spies, so you want to throw all of them away?” Hubert concluded, staring at the girl. “You want to throw out hundreds of dollars worth of eggs, because you get a funny feeling when you walk past them.”

“Oh good,” Dylan announced then. “So we’re on the same page. You start on that end, I’ll start on this one.” She started for the eggs.

“Leeeeeeeeeet’s not,” Hubert corrected, reaching out to catch the girl’s shoulder in mid-step. “Look, is there another… uhh, ‘spell’ we can use to stop the eggs from spying on anyone?”

Frowning, Dylan shrugged. “Uhh, maybe? I dunno. It’d be easier just to break them.”

“That depends on your definition of easy,” Hubert retorted. “If it’d make you feel better, we can volunteer for clean-up duty tonight and I’ll help you use whatever magic spell you want to, okay? Whatever makes you feel better. But we’re not breaking all those cartons-worth of eggs.”

“Not even if I say that it’s the best way to keep Galazien the Iron-Souled off of our plane of existence?” Dylan asked, while batting her eyelashes at him with a forlorn puppy look.

Hubert’s head shook at that. “Sorry, the Iron-Soul scares me less than getting fired. Or you getting fired, kid.”

Huffing, Dylan folded her arms, muttering, “That’s just because you haven’t seen his fire-breathing skeleton horses. But fine, I guess we can use a spell instead.”

“Great,” Hubert replied with relief. “But in the meantime, let’s go see about stocking the soda in aisle four before Perry has a conniption fit.”

As the two walked that way, they distantly heard a voice crying out from the direction of the produce and vegetable aisles.

“Who the hell stabbed all the potatoes!?”

******

Sariel and Gaia

Do you know how many planets the leaders of my people would sacrifice to have someone loyal to them where I am right now?

In response to Sariel’s mental voice, Gaia paused briefly before responding simply, Somehow, I do not think that ‘reunited with your children’ is what you mean by that.

There was silence for a moment then, before Sariel replied, Hold on a second. I think I can…

Abruptly, the Seosten woman appeared, standing in the middle of a vast white emptiness. A second later, Gaia appeared in front of her.

It wasn’t really them, of course. Or at least, it wasn’t their physical bodies. Gaia was still standing in that desert, talking to the Committee. And Sariel was still possessing her. These were simply manifestations of the two created within a mental landscape.

“There,” Sariel’s mental construct spoke. “This might be an easier way for us to talk. Unless you find it too distracting.”

Focusing on her after glancing around briefly, Gaia’s mental projection shook her head. “Trust me, I have learned to multitask quite well over the centuries. But you…” She paused, looking the other woman up and down. “Even in a construct created entirely by your own mind, you look exhausted, Mrs. Moon. And please, do not say that you will be fine. That may work on your children, but it has been quite some time since I was a child.”

Opening her mouth and then shutting it at the repudiation, Sariel finally nodded. “You’re right, I’m barely holding it together. I have been tortured, broken, raped, treated as breeding stock, and had children taken away from me to be put through Cronus knows what. For the past decade, my life has been–” Cutting herself off, the woman shook a bit with emotion before swallowing hard. “And it’s my fault. Puriel found us because I went looking for Joselyn. I was trying to help her and all I ended up doing was leading them right back to our home so that they could rip my own family apart.”

“Yes,” Gaia replied quietly, “sometimes even our best intentions may end poorly. Though some would say that you have had more than your fair share of bad luck in that regard. There are those who might guess that you were cursed somehow.”

“Cursed…” Muttering the word under her breath, Sariel snorted before looking up again. “I know what you’re planning to do. Those things that you sent the two vampires, the Pooka, and the pixie to collect. I know what you’re going to do with them. I can hear the thoughts, the plans, right there on the surface of your thoughts. But then, you knew that I’d know. You knew that I’d hear those thoughts, that you couldn’t keep them from me. And you still let me in your head.”

“I need an expert,” Gaia informed her. “Someone who can tell me what I’ve missed, and how to do it properly. Because there will be no second chances.”

Sariel hesitated, squinting at her. “And you believe that I can help you with it? More to the point, you said yourself that I seem to be cursed. So what makes you believe that I would be a safe partner to have with something as important as that? Like you said, there will only be one chance. My people won’t see it coming, but if you try and fail… that’s it.”

Nodding once, Gaia pointedly replied, “Precisely why I need your help, Mrs. Moon. You are perhaps one of the only people on this planet who could help with something like this. And I do not believe you are cursed. You have enemies, and a tragic lack of self-confidence or sense of self-worth. But I do not believe that you are magically cursed.”

The Seosten woman was silent for a few seconds, looking away before she turned her attention back to Gaia. “Every time I try to help, something goes wrong. How can you say that I’m not cursed? How can you say that you want to risk that, given what you’re trying to do? You know that the enormity of that task will not allow for mistakes.”

“It must be perfect,” Gaia agreed. “And you can help with that. This is a very complicated bit of magic. There are a million tiny ways it could go wrong. One incorrect syllable, one component placed one millimeter out of line, one thing done anything less than perfect, and it will all be for naught. You have a perfect memory. You understand what I am doing, and why.”

“Not to mention,” Sariel put in then, “that focusing on that will take a couple weeks. And between that and spending time with my children, I won’t have time to get into any other trouble.”

“It will keep your mind occupied,” the other woman confirmed. “And it will take more than a couple of weeks. I believe it will take at least a month, if not more. Because I expect you to spend most of your time with your people, with the other Seosten once we awaken them, and with your children. And, in time, with your husband. That has priority. But when you have a free moment, yes, your skills as a… proofreader, if you will, of this spell would be most welcome.”

Sariel smiled just a little at that. “You really do want to keep me busy. Caring for my people and spending time with my family… you want me to use the time that I would otherwise spend brooding or obsessing over my captivity on this spell.”

“I find keeping oneself occupied is quite useful at those times,” Gaia informed her with a small smile in return. “And I believe that you are the very best possible person for this job. Everything that has happened to you, good and bad, has led you to have the children that you do. And it has led you here. Your skills, your expertise, they are what is needed to finish this project. Will you help?”

For the briefest of moments, Sariel was quiet. Then she straightened a bit, giving the other woman a slight nod. “Of course.

“If nothing else, I can’t wait to see the look on my people’s faces when you pull it off.”