It’s the next night that the Bayan plan is put into action.
Ava and Nua and Penny and I say goodbye to Sloan, and she heads down the southern track, towards the entrance near the train station that Ava took us to. She’ll have to cross a river of leaking sewage, Penny tells us, and climb another ladder, and then come back with Bayan in tow. It’ll take some time, I don’t know how long, and Ava is nervous, I can tell. She paces around the fire in the fire forum, watching the smoke rise up through the hole in the ceiling and disappear into the darkness.
“Sit down,” says Penny after a few minutes. “You’re bothering me.”
She makes a face at him, and doesn’t sit down. He’s in the old dirty armchair, Nano at his feet, and Nua and I have moved folding chairs next to each other. I sigh, sliding down in my chair, and lean my head against Nua’s shoulder. “Are we just gonna wait?”
“Nothing else to do,” mutters Penny, watching his sister go around and around the fire, twisting Keol’s ring on her thumb. Her other hand lies on her chest, right over her heart. “I should’ve gone.”
“No,” says Penny with a snort. “But I should’ve. Just to show Mother I’m still alive, see the look on her stupid face.”
“She knows you’re still alive,” says Ava dismissively. “She just doesn’t know how to get to you.”
“All of us, now,” says Penny with a sigh, leaning his head back, and I look up at Nua. He just shrugs a little.
Sloan has only been gone half an hour. She’ll be climbing the ladder by this point, I think, at least, if she’s not out yet. Then she’ll have to get all the way to the house, and she’ll have to sneak in through the garage door, if the code is right. 9-26-67. It might not even work. She might come back empty-handed. But if it is right then she has to sneak through the house, the big stupid beach house, and find Bayan. I don’t even know where Bayan sleeps, does Bayan ever sleep?
“Sit down, duckling,” says Penny after a few moments of quiet only interrupted by the cracking of the fire and Ava’s feet. She looks at him, and I do too, wanting to ask, but I don’t. Nua smiles a bit, and I bite my thumbnail.
Ava does sit, though, but only for a few seconds before she stands up again. “Where’s Shan?”
“I don’t know,” says Penny. “In Shan.”
“I can’t just sit here,” says Ava softly, running her fingers through her hair, and Penny nods, standing. “Then let’s take a walk.”
He gestures for me and Nua, too, and we stand and follow them down the western track. Nano comes too. Sigrid and Alis are in the room where Nua and I met Penny, and we go in to join them. There’s a kettle of tea on the table, and Alis gestures to it when we come in. “Hello, LeGattes.”
I grumble, but accept a cup. Ava grins at me, but there’s anxiety in her eyes, and it’s flitting about in my stomach like a butterfly. Sigrid can tell, because she sits down in one of the folding chairs and says, “So what’s up with you all?”
“Bayan,” says Penny softly, and Sigrid nods, clutching her teacup with both hands. “Ah.”
“You haven’t seen him in what, three years?” Alis asks Penny, and he nods, biting his lip as his dog bumps her head against his hand. He pets her. “But he’s alright.”
“He’s fine,” says Ava softly. “He could be better, but he’s fine, he just needs to be here, god, when my mother found out I was gone…”
And I look at Nua, remembering the day that Bayan came into our room to give us breakfast, and his lip was broken, his face bruised. That was about a week and a half after he had taken Ava away, so she was already still alive. She must have already been gone. That must’ve been why. “Did he help you?”
“Of course,” says Ava quietly, sitting down on the ground, right in the dirt. She holds her cup in both hands too, and takes a sip, but her hands are shaking. “He took me out of the hospital, said he wanted me to get some fresh air.”
“And Sloan was waiting,” says Alis, and Ava looks at him, and nods. “Yeah. And I just left him.”
“So did we,” says Nua softly. I sit down on the ground next to Ava, but look up at him. “Why did we leave him?”
“Because he told you to,” answers Ava, her voice quiet. She takes another sip of tea, and then puts the cup down on the ground. “Because he’s fucking stupid, because he wanted you to go, he, he.”
Nua shakes his head. “No. He’s smart.”
“Yes,” agrees Ava with a sigh, running her fingers through her hair. “He still had something, or things, he needed to do. And I don’t know what they were, and I just, she might’ve killed him before he could’ve done them, god, we just left him there.”
“He’s on his way, now,” I say quietly, and Ava glances at her watch. “I hope so.”
Nova comes in a little while later. Ava and I are still sitting on the ground, and Nua’s leaning against the table with Penny, and she smiles when we look over at her. “Just waiting?”
“How long should it take?” asks Penny, and she shrugs. Ava leans back until she’s lying down, closing her eyes. “She’ll be at the house by now.”
“You think?” asks Nua quietly, and she nods. “Not that far.”
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Not that far at all, except Sloan went a different way. She has to go all the way back from the train station to the house, and get in, and get Bayan, and come back, and we don’t even know if she can get in. My fingers are trembling a little bit, because all I can imagine is going back to the house. I’m not even there, but I can imagine it, imagine how Bayan must have felt watching us go, leaving him alone with Miss Lilly. I remember, after Keol died, she wanted to talk to me, and I hardly remember anything she said because all I can remember is her trailing her fingers over my arm, taking my chin in her hands, and I shiver.
Sigrid looks at me. “You alright?”
“Yeah,” I murmur. Ava opens an eye, and then sits up again, and says, “Nova.”
“Yes, dear,” says Nova, and Sigrid smiles a bit. Ava does too, and says, “Did Marissa ever get the vitamins Alicia went up for?”
Nova makes a face, sitting on Sigrid’s lap, and I look at Ava when she does it, remembering her sitting on mine. Ava’s standing up now, though, and Alis says, “We had some issues with some of my food distribution people.”
“Why?”
Nova shrugs, her arm around Sigrid’s shoulders. “Some people wondering why we got them just for Marissa when there are people down here all the time who need vitamin D.”
“She’s pregnant,” says Ava, as if we didn’t know, and Nova laughs. “Yeah. I had to step in for that one and moderate, but we got it all figured out. I don’t know if she’s taken them yet, though, wanna go ask?”
Ava looks down at me, and I say softly, “Go.”
She raises her eyebrows, and I pick up my cup of tea again. “Get your mind off it, for a minute. We’ll come get you when they get back.”
She looks at me a moment more, and then nods. Nova stands with a sigh, and Penny watches them go out together, and then looks at Alis and Sigrid, sitting in the stools by the table. “Is she okay?”
“Which she?” asks Sigrid, looking after Nova as she goes, and Penny shrugs, sinking into a folding chair and putting his head in his hands. “I don’t know. Any of them. All of them. What time is it?”
I don’t have a watch. Alis does. “3:42.”
“In the morning?” I ask in surprise, and he laughs, nodding. “Sloan left around an hour ago.”
“She should be back soon,” murmurs Nua. And then Sloan bursts through the open space where a door should be, dragging someone behind her, and that someone is Bayan.
His face is a mess again. One eye is swollen and his lip is broken, even worse than before, and even on his forearms where his sleeves are a little rolled up I can see bruises flowing against his brown skin. There’s a cut on his nose, too, but he just looks at me and Nua, and then past us, to Penny.
And we look at Penny too, but he doesn’t seem to even remember we’re there. He stares at Bayan, tears filling his eyes, and then goes to him and wraps him up close to him. I can see Bayan wince a little, but he hugs Penny back, shaking now. He turns his head, burying his face in Penny’s long hair, and then Penny says softly, “I missed you.”
Bayan just nods, and they don’t let go for a long moment. Sigrid and Alis leave quietly, to go get Ava, she left at just the wrong moment. Sloan puts the things she’s holding down on the table, including a manilla folder that looks just like the one Ava gave me about Abigala, and then slips out of the room too. Finally Penny pulls away and puts his hand on Bayan’s cheek, running his thumb over the bruise under his eye. Bayan just shakes his head. “It’s fine.”
Penny shakes his head, pressing his lips together. “We shouldn’t’ve left you there.”
Bayan just smiles slightly, as much as he can, and says quietly, “We all made it.”
He looks over Penny’s shoulder at us, and Penny looks at us too, and then steps out of the way. I hug Bayan gently too, and whisper, “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” he says, pulling away, and Nua gives him a hug, too. “You just relax now, for a while, okay?”
“Yes,” says Bayan with another small smile, and suddenly Ava runs into the room too.
She stops short when she sees him, then takes a deep breath. “Bayan.”
“Miss Ava,” he says softly. She stares at him for a moment, then says quietly, “I’m glad you’re safe.”
He nods, smiling slightly, and then she moves forward and hugs him. He squeezes her back, and when she lets go he says, “And trust me, I was not at all shocked to hear that the twins forbade each other from coming.”
Ava glances at Penny, smiling slightly, and Bayan nods at her. “Thank you.”
Ava exhales, rubbing her lips together, and nods. Penny examines his fingernails on the other side of the room. “How’s darling mother?”
Ava looks at her feet as Bayan’s gaze flickers between the twins, and then he says quietly, “Angry.”
Ava swallows, running her eyes over the bruises on his face. He directs his next words to her. “And she misses you.”
Ava crosses her arms over her chest, not looking at her twin nor her former servant, then nods shortly. “Well, I’m glad we got you out, then.”
He nods again. “It’s appreciated, Miss Ava.”
She closes her eyes for a moment, and then turns to slip quietly out of the room. Bayan watches her go, and I put my hand on the folder on the table. “What’s this?”
Bayan looks back at me, and then looks at Penny and sighs. “That’s for you.”
“Oh?” says Penny with a grin. “A present.”
I hand it to him, and he opens it. The smile slides off his face, and he furrows his eyebrows. After a moment he says again, “Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” says Bayan softly as Penny looks through the rest of the papers inside. “I just…I thought you should know.”
“No,” says Penny quietly, blinking back tears. “No, yeah, I, thank you. You didn’t have to.”
Bayan just smiles a little, but he looks sad. Penny closes the folder and hands it back to him. “I’m gonna go tell Ava, I guess.”
Bayan nods, and watches him go out of the room, Nano padding softly behind him. I look at the folder. “What is it?”
Bayan just holds it out, and Nua takes it this time. He raises his eyebrows when he opens it, and says, “Aiden LeGatte.”
“Miss Lilly’s first and only husband,” says Bayan softly. “Their father.”
“Oh,” I say softly.
“He died when they were six,” says Bayan softly. “I never knew him, I think that’s why she got me.” He rubs his lips together, and then continues. “She, um. Miss Ava has always suspected that she had something to do with it.”
“Did she?” I ask quietly, and Nua shrugs. “Hospital records. They say they checked for foreign or suspicious substances, but he died before the results came back, what does that mean?”
Bayan does not say anything for a moment, and then after a moment he murmurs, “Poison.”
My eyes widen, and Bayan shrugs too, looking away. “I don’t know if it was on purpose. I don’t know, really. But the doctors, they suspected something, too.”
“God,” says Nua softly. “How evil can she get?”
Bayan just smiles slightly. “Trust me, Master Nua.”
We do. He leaves after that, to go find Penny again, and Nua looks at me. “We were in more danger than we knew in that stupid house.”
“Ignorance is bliss,” I murmur, and he comes to me, leaning against the table too. He shakes hair out of his eyes and asks, “So now what?”
“Now what?” I ask. He shrugs. “Abigala?”
I sigh, looking away. “My parents.”
“Yeah,” agrees Nua.
“I don’t know what happened to them,” I say softly, looking back at him. His eyes sparkle blue in the light of the lantern. “I know what happened to Abigala, I guess, but I don’t really know why. But I don’t know about my parents at all.”
“Haywood can help you with that, can’t he?” asks Nua, reaching his hand out for mine. He takes my fingers in his, and I smile a little, pressing our palms together. “Yeah. I was gonna talk to him as soon as we got Bayan back.”
“We can ask him tomorrow,” says Nua softly, lacing our fingers together. I nod. “Okay.”
“You alright?” asks Nua, and I nod. “Yeah.”
“Good.”