The rest of breakfast went on in silence. It was very important for Mom and Dad that nobody spoke and instead focused on the food, which was OK for Waverly because she felt like if she said anything, she would say the wrong thing again, and that would be absolutely bad, and she would get into trouble.
So instead, she just focused on her toast, eggs, and bacon and ate them as slowly as she could. As always, it wasn’t quite enough for her, but at least her brothers and sisters seemed to have gotten their fill. They stared at Mom and Dad with wide eyes, eager to get up. Waverly was just debating whether or not she should get up and sneak upstairs as soon as possible, or stay down here and at least try to make nice with her parents, which nearly always was a really bad idea, because sooner or later she would put her foot in her mouth, when her Dad answered the brats' unspoken question with a silent nod, and they all exploded away from the table trying to get out of the way of any chores.
But then her Mom threw her another look, and Waverly remembered, held up her hand, and snapped her fingers. She pointed at three random rascals, nodded towards the kitchen, and for once they didn’t complain or anything. They just collected all the plates and loaded the dishwasher. Must be some sort of Bonus respect she accrued by not being there for a while.
“It’s good that you’re back,” said her Mom. “The kids were getting unruly with you gone.”
Her Dad crossed his arms over his muscular chest and nodded at that. “We were thinking about taking one shift less so that one of us could be home to watch them.”
“Isn’t, like, the second litter old enough now?” Waverly asked, unable to hide an irritated twitch in her ears, and a quiet whine in her voice.
She knew that it was totally a mistake, but she just couldn’t help herself, she hadn’t really slept all night and was just looking forward to getting into her bed, but her bed was now Satan knows where, and she would probably have to ask about that at some point, which was not a conversation she was looking forward to having.
“They’re all useless,” her Dad rumbled, and Waverly flicked a look into the kitchen where some of her oldest siblings were still working. The look that she threw at her Dad when she looked back wasn’t exactly reproachful, just pleading.
He ignored it, as did her Mom.
“But, like, I have to study…” she said, even though she knew better than to complain, because she really did need to get up ahead on next semester’s curriculum, and review the old one and…
Her Mom perked up at that. Her ears swiveled in Waverly's direction ominously, and even though Waverly didn’t know how, that one thing told her that she had majorly messed up.
“Are you getting bad grades?” her Mom asked, and there it was, that special kind of disappointment that Waverly had never gotten used to.
She shook her head. “No, like, actually pretty good ones…”
“Then why do you need to study?” her Dad asked, leaning forward on the table. “More than usual, I mean. It worked out well in high school, didn’t it?”
It kinda had, but also it kinda hadn’t. She’d always been tired.
One of the cool things about college had been that she had so much time for other stuff, like meeting Victor, or sometimes just sleeping in. She’d gotten used to it, but if she told her parents that, they would have told her she’d become soft or something and that was not a discussion she wanted to have, either.
“What about Wesley, Wyatt, and the others?” Waverly asked. “They are done with high school, too, right? Why don’t they do it?”
Her Mom and Dad threw each other a glance and if she had known better, for a second, Waverly would have thought that there was something like guilt or regret. But then, of course, her Dad raised his voice and slammed his palm on the table.
“They’re even more useless than the second litter!”
“They were getting uppity,” Mom said, quieter, but just as stern. “We decided they had to get a job and support us or leave. Wyatt chose to leave, which is just as well. He’ll do fine on his own, he was always a loner.”
Waverly’s tension and confusion must have shown because her Dad quieted down a little and answered her unspoken question.
“Got two of them in entry-level dungeons, and the other two are in vocational school. It’s expensive, but it will pay off in time when they go out and earn.”
The two platinum Denars were burning a hole in Waverly’s pocket. Victor had paid for the CDs and the players, even though she had protested, but Bal didn’t have change for a Denar anyway, and so…
She swallowed, and her parents instantly turned to her in the way that parents always do whenever they suspect something is up and usually they’re right.
And maybe they were right this time too. Well, kinda, because while Waverly knew that she should be giving this money to her parents so that they could provide for the pack, she also kind of felt as though the money was hers. She had earned it fair and square, well not really earned it, gambled it, more like.
By betting. In the bar that her parents told her not to go to, during the Fight Night that she was not supposed to participate in.
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The guilt felt like little weights on her ears, dragging them down further and further, which her parents totally noticed, and now she was really screwed. She knew this, because her father started squinting, and her Mom had laid back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. If the City Council ever considered opening a new police constabulary down here in the Dregs, she was going to put her Mom and dad in the running for chief interrogators. They were such a good team it was a complete marvel to behold if you weren’t the one they were putting the thumbscrews on.
Or perhaps, if they could convince the Spaniards to team up again, maybe Mom and Dad could join with them and…
“Waverly?” her Mom’s voice was a barely audible growl. She could have totally said more, like “What did you do?” or “You are in so much trouble, young miss”, but she totally didn’t need to, because Waverly knew exactly what was going on, and so did they, so why waste the breath?
So, with her ears flat against her skull, Waverly pulled out one of her platinum dinars and put it on the table with a soft clack that echoed in the room like a gunshot.
“Where,” her father began, and her Mom finished, “Did you get this?”
As always, millions and millions of ideas rushed through Waverly’s head so fast that she couldn’t decide which one to pick. She could totally lie and say it was a college stipend, or she could say she found a job, or she could maybe make up something about investing in the stockade market, but it was all too much and all too fast, and she just wanted that feeling that threatened to burst her chest apart to stop, and she had promised herself she'd be true to herself. Before she thought her next thought, which was this is absolutely not the right time to do this, Waverly, her mouth was already open and the words had blurted out.
“I, like, won it by betting…”
In the sounds that followed, her father leaned forward very slowly, put one finger on the coin, and slid it over to him. It scraped over the table and to Waverly, it sounded way worse than claws on a chalkboard, and she raised her shoulders and tried to sink into her own shirt. She was also kinda sure that she was getting very, very red in the face, which was a terrible thing to do, especially when her parents were like this.
“Where?” her Mom asked. She didn’t need to say more.
“CrowBar?” Waverly couldn’t stop herself from making it sound like she was asking, "What are you going to do about it?" Which was obviously a huge mistake. Another one. She was such a damn ditz.
Before she could apologize, her Dad had already done the thing.
The thing where he became deathly quiet, in the way that made sure Waverly realized that he could flip the massive oak table for 20 people (which was a hand-me-down from the days when torture was still the biggest export of hell) if he wanted, but he didn’t because he was exerting an absurd amount of self-control, which she, Waverly, was threatening.
So she did the only thing she could, which was to pin her tail to the underside of her chair, keep her ears folded down as hard as she could, lower her head without breaking eye contact, and shut her devil-damned trap before so much as a whine or, even worse, more stupid words could escape.
While her dad was busy trying not to drill his claws into the wood, her Mom said a single word. To Waverly, it was the most devastating word in the hellish language.
“Disappointing.”
Waverly flinched.
—
“… and I expect you to be home by the time we get back from work! And you better believe that we will check.”
Good! For exerting dominance over your pack, you have earned 1 [Werewolf] experience point.
William Bloodhowl was still seething by the time he was done tying his boots. He mentally shoved the notification aside, pulled the door open, and walked out, only taking enough time to look over his shoulder and fix Waverly with another stare.
It took all he had not to slam the door shut behind him. Repairing that thing was too damn expensive by half. Besides, he would scare the kids.
Willow was already outside, waiting for him, and he joined her with a drawn-out sigh.
“She’s easily the best of all of them, but she keeps throwing it away,” he said as he and his wife made their way towards the Hellevator.
“Yes, Satan help us,” Willow said with a weary sigh. “If only we knew what was wrong with her. Maybe we should bring her to the priests? Angelic possession is the last thing I can think of.”
William snorted. Both he and his wife were staunch Satanists, but even though they made damn sure to keep a Satan-fearing household, they could read the signs of the times, and even if this was a few dozen years back, Satanic conversion therapy would have been a few steps too far.
They'd met in black Bible study after Satanic mass, back when it was the 19th century on Earth. The times had been changing so fast back then, what with all the change from good, honest torturing souls to a more industrialized way of living. But Lord Satan had decreed it so, and he hadn’t steered them wrong over the millennia, so William and Willow had both stopped tearing souls to pieces and looked for guidance in faith as they acclimatized to the factories.
Which meant they were kindred spirits and once William had mustered up the nerve to ask Willow if he could join her ritual circle, one thing had led to another.
By the time Willow had become pregnant with the first litter, though, Earth was already in its 20th century, and it was obvious that things wouldn’t go back to the way they were before. So they had decided that while their kids would never use Satan's name in vain, they also wouldn't be dragging them to mass every Saturday. Perhaps that had been a mistake. But even though the Chronomancers had finally found out how to synchronize Hell time and Earth time, and even create the time pockets that made the dungeons possible, there still was no way to turn back time, and so that was that.
As always, Willow had to be thinking the same thing as he, because she said, “Do you think we need to be more strict with her?”
“Hm. Keep her living at home, even when she’s going to college?”
“Mhm,” Willow said, and he put an arm over her shoulders. Her Jacket was getting a bit thin, but he didn’t mention it. Nothing to do about it.
“True, the dorms might be too distracting for her. You know how she gets.”
“They do seem to feed her well, though. She’s looking very healthy.”
They turned the corner to Famine Street.
“And feeding her doesn’t cost us anything.”
Willow chuckled at that, but it sounded sad and lost, just how William felt.
“Perhaps after the older batch starts bringing in some money. We could expand the second floor again. But right now, there’s just not enough space,” Willow said.
“Yeah, I swear to the devil, every time I get home one of the small ones has already grown out of their latest clothes,” William agreed and pulled out his wallet to scan his Charon card on one of the few ticket booths that wasn’t broken.
As he followed Willow into the Hellevator, he held the worn leather of his wallet for a while, as usual. He always made sure to take a moment to look at each of the 26 faces smiling back at him from their little photographs, before he went up to the portal to fight, and die, for Satan.