A day passes, and then another. Bayan goes to make us breakfast and dinner with Taymer. Miss Lilly comes home, without Ava, and does not leave her office. Sloan comes back after three days away with Shan; Bayan makes a full meal, finally, for the first time in a while, he and Taymer make it together. The rest of us have dinner around the table without anyone at the head or the foot, and Taymer sits with us, and then he and Bayan clean up afterwards. They talk in the kitchen, about each other, about Miss Lilly, about Ava. But for three and a half days she does not come home.

Shiv the cat has decided that I am her new favorite person, and she follows me around. I lie in Ava’s bed on the fourth day that she’s been gone, staring at the canopy, and Shiv sits on my chest. Her tail curls around her and she’s sleeping, her ears twitching occasionally, and suddenly Penny says, “I’m mad at you, Aberworth.”

I look over at him in surprise. It’s just him and me and Nua in the room; Sloan and Bayan have gone wandering or maybe talking to Taymer again. Apparently he had been sleeping in Nua and my’s old room, until we put Abigala in there, so he’s been slowly moving into a guest bedroom.

“Why?” I answer after a moment, and Penny just sighs. He’s sitting on the couch with Nua, who’s curled up. I don’t know if he’s asleep or not, but he doesn’t say anything. Penny looks at him too, and finally says, “I don’t know. I’m just pissed.”

“Are you sure it’s at me?”

“It’s at somebody,” he says, and then Sloan and Bayan come in the room again. They’ve been in the library, evidently, because they bring an armful of books. Nua rolls over and sits up when Bayan places them down on the coffee table, and then grins.

No one says anything for a moment, and then Penny stands, stretching. “Yeah, it’s definitely at you. I don’t know why, though.”

Sloan just looks up at us. She had gone back down to Shan and then come back up, and is in the process of working with some of Haywood’s people to find a safe place that Marissa and Nerev can go with baby Julian. She came back late last night, but luckily Bayan has been able to keep the electric fence turned off without Miss Lilly knowing or caring so she could come back through the closest entrance.

“Me either,” I say after a moment. “It’s not my fault.”

“What isn’t?” asks Penny, as if he doesn’t know, and I sit up with a sigh, picking Shiv off my chest and moving her next to me. “She’s the one who up and left.”

Shiv complains with a loud mrow, but settles in on the pillow quickly and is quiet. Penny just looks at me, and then looks away.

He wanders away a little while later with Bayan, and Nua comes to sit next to me on the bed with a book. I look over at it, and he shows me the cover, and then he puts it down and says, “Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

He looks at me.

“Her mother said, ‘you need to go back.’”

“Back where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should we have stayed in Shan?” he asks quietly, and I smile a little, but I don’t feel it, and shrug. “I don’t know.”

He smiles a little too, and touches my knee. I sigh, leaning my head on my hand. “I miss my dad.”

“We’ll find them,” says Nua softly. I just sigh.

I want to go to talk to Abigala again, but she is in the office with Miss Lilly and I am not about to go bother them. There is not much for us to do. Penny and Bayan come back with Sloan and sandwiches and the sun comes in through the back windows. I go over to them, there’s a little ledge that I can sit on and I look down at the fountain. The doors are not locked anymore, I could go down to the fountain for real outside, but I just lean my head back against the wall. Nano and Chloe are playing with a ball on the carpet and Bayan and Penny and Sloan are on the couch, all talking softly, well mostly Penny and Sloan, they’re probably talking about Shan. And Nua is reading, like he always is. And then as I am looking around at them the door opens, and with a sigh as she tosses her purse onto a chair Ava announces, “I am so tired.”

“Ava,” say Penny and Nua at the same time; her husband, though, manages to get to her first. Nua wraps her in a hug, and I see her wince, deal with it for a moment, and then wriggle out of his arms. “Oh, Nua, I love you, but I need a moment.”

“A moment?” asks Penny incredulously as she leans against the bed, braced on her hands. “You’ve had four days.”

“Not to myself,” she murmurs, crawling to the middle of her bed.

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“What happened to your arm?” I ask, and she glances down to the crook of her left elbow, covered in bruises. “Blood. They had to draw it.”

“Who?” asks Sloan, and Ava groans. “I went back to the hospital.”

“Why?” asks Bayan, and Ava smiles at the ceiling. “Oh, Bayan, I know, you worked so hard to get me out, I love you too.”

“Are you drunk?” asks Sloan, and Ava laughs, rubbing her eyes. “Nah, just super medicated.”

“Ava,” says Penny, sitting next to her on the bed. “Why did you go back?”

“They needed tests,” she answers simply. “I’m a medical miracle.”

We all start talking at once, barraging her with questions, until she holds her hands up above her head and says loudly, “Boys!

“And Sloan,” she adds after a moment when we all fall silent. Nano hops onto the bed and curls up next to her, and Penny scratches under her chin. Ava takes a deep breath, burying her face in her hands, and then runs her fingers through her hair. “I’m sorry.”

No one says anything.

“I will explain,” she continues, rolling onto her side, “after I get some rest.”

“You couldn’t sleep there?” asks Nua under his breath as Nano follows Penny over to the couch, and then he sits next to her where the dog was. She snorts, shaking her head. “With all the needles they had in me, hardly. I’ll explain more in the morning.”

“It is the morning,” says Penny, pointing to the window where the sun streams in. His sister pulls the blankets up and over her head. “Next morning, Penrin. Tomorrow morning. God, let me sleep this off, I’m gonna have a wicked headache tomorrow.”

She looks up at me, and she smiles, and then, just like she says, she sleeps. Once she’s out she’s out. Sloan and Bayan start a card game on the carpet and Penny takes a shower, singing the birdie lullaby so loudly that we can hear him through the door. Chloe and Nano take turns jumping up onto the bed and curling up next to her and then jumping off, and Shiv takes a nice long nap on her stomach. For a while Nua sits by the side of the bed and just stares at her as she sleeps. But through the afternoon and into the night, nothing wakes her.

The doors aren’t locked anymore, but still the only time we leave is for dinner. Ava’s mother says nothing about her daughter, but we keep stealing glances at the empty chair at the head of the table, expecting Ava to come in every few minutes, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.

But when we go back up to her bedroom she’s still sprawled across the mattress, her arm around Nano, who sleeps next to her. Penny laughs in exasperation, shaking his head at her, and Nua sits next to her, running his hand over the dog. I sit next to her on the other side like usual, and pick up her left hand, the one that’s not on Nano. She’s still wearing her wedding ring, as am I and Nua, and Keol’s is wrapped around her thumb still, but she hasn’t figured out what to do with Owen’s yet. It falls onto the blanket from her loose grasp as I pick up her hand.

Nua looks over and raises his eyebrows. I nod. “Owen’s.”

Penny and Bayan both look over as I gently place the ring on the table next to me, and sigh. “She misses them. Both.”

Nua inhales deeply, brushing some hair away from her face. She sighs a little in her sleep too, and Nua smiles a bit. “They were the only people who really knew her.”

Penny clears his throat. Nua laughs slightly. “Well, Keol was the only person still around, then.”

“I never knew Keol,” says Penny thoughtfully.

“I never knew Owen,” says Nua. “When it was just me and Keol, well, she was angry, and sad, and desperate, and since Keol had been there longer than I had I guess she just attached herself to him.”

“She said she hated him,” I whisper. “She said love had nothing to do with it.”

“It didn’t,” murmured Ava.

I jump, and Penny snorts. “Welcome back.”

She keeps her eyes closed, adjusting herself slightly, and then says softly, “I loved Penny but he went away and I loved Owen but I had to have Keol and I loved Keol but I had to have you and I loved both of you but I had to leave you, to find Penny again. I’ve never had all of you at once and admitting it would make it real.”

Her voice goes almost completely quiet at the end, and no one says anything for a moment. I feel her hand squeezing mine, and then she says, her voice breaking, “It’s just too much.”

“It’s never been enough,” I murmur. Her fingers rub against mine. “I should be grateful.”

“For what?” says Penny with a snort, and she smiles, but a tear trickles down her cheek. “That I got almost all of you, at least.”

Nua looks at me, and Penny shakes his head and stands. He does not seem angry, just frustrated, and not at his sister. I watch him for a moment, and then look back down at her. “You’re just missing Keol.”

And she sighs again, and smiles again, and puts her hand over her heart, and shakes her head.

She stays in bed still, but I know she’s awake because her hands stroke over Nano’s head, over and over. I just lie with her, until finally I reach over and touch the bruises in the crook of her elbow. She smiles a little, and whispers, “Seventeen vials of blood.”

“How many?” says Nua in surprise, he’s on the other side of her like usual and Penny and Bayan and Sloan are on the couch, I don’t know if they can hear. Ava laughs a bit. “Seventeen. Total. Over the whole time I was there, though, not at once.”

“That would kill you, all at once,” murmurs Penny over on the couch, I suppose he can hear us. Ava laughs a bit again, and sighs, and shrugs. She rolls over onto her back and stretches her hands up in in the air in front of her. “They just needed to take out the stitches, and make sure it was all healed, and then they wanted to run some tests. Apparently it’s never actually worked before.”

“Wow,” says Penny softly.

“I’m sorry I left,” she says softly. “I won’t, again, not without telling you.”

“It’s okay,” murmurs Penny. I think Bayan is asleep, so he has to be quiet. “You had to go to the hospital.”

“Are you still mad at me?” I ask, looking over at him, and he shrugs. “Don’t know.”

I roll my eyes, and Ava smiles at me. We sleep.