“One thousand nine hundred and thirty two seconds.” I said to Anna as she walked back through the door of the well house, the bugs in my belly stirring at the sight of her.

“Did you really sit here and count the whole time I was gone?” She asked me, throwing a stack of clean white rags onto the floor.

“No. I made up a number to see what you would say.” I had counted, but my mind would begin to wander not long after I had reached one hundred. Not like when it had been blown about, bouncing between the memories of five different sorceresses, but to very specific memories that were only mine and Anna’s

The way my aura had shimmered on her lips after the lich had gone away and when I had dropped my glamor and stopped being Dani came first. How we had fallen asleep holding hands the first night we had stayed in Zenithcidel together, in the little room that had been my first prison, felt more significant than all of the eight years before it. On Morrow’s night, when she had put my hair up in her room and time felt like it had slowed down just for us, it still brought heat to my cheeks when I thought about it.

Those and all the other small moments between us were the clearest memories I had. Even when I had not been able to remember them, the mark they had left on me had made it perfectly clear that calling us friends was akin to when I called Sam a cat. It seemed true on the surface, but there was much more beneath the fur.

“It’s gotten a little late for lunch, but you should eat anyway. Who knows what your mom has planned for us tonight.” Anna said. She had changed out of the soaked dress of mine and into something that reminded me of Arthur’s overalls. It was all one piece, black, with small sleeves that ended before they left her shoulders. The long bottoms had been rolled up and cuffed to keep them from dragging through the water. The dark color did not wash her out like it would have me. It made her skin look warm, almost golden. She made me stand so she could wipe down the still damp bench.

“Did you see the walls around the garden?” I asked at the mention of my mother. The memory of my small glamor compared with what stood just outside of the well house door, still stung. That comparison and only that comparison, made me rewrap my towel around me a little tighter.

“Yeah, how does she do all of that stuff? Is it because she’s old?” Anna asked, throwing one of my white dresses at me. It was clean and dry, unlike the one I had worn into the well house that morning.

I stood and let my towel drop to the floor, pulling the dress over my head and untucking my braid from the back of it. “I could live for a thousand years and never be able to do anything like that.”

“Bullshit. I’m your coach. We can have you doing stuff like that by next week.” Anna said, unwrapping a red table cloth from the kitchen and revealing two sandwiches that were both spilling scrambled eggs out of their sides.

I snatched the one off the top as quickly as I could get my fingers around it. Losing your mind was hard work, and I finished the sandwich before Anna had finished chewing the first bite of her own. “I stole food from the kitchen whenever I could, but an egg sandwich was the first thing you ever made for me. You left them outside my door with a note.”

“I remember that,” She said, reaching up and wiping what could only be a scrap of egg off my face with her thumb. “That’s when I found you on the floor,” She looked up at the ceiling, its stone still blackened by the fire that had rolled across it when I had returned. “Before I got to know you, I thought you were actually crazy. You’re lucky I didn’t ask Ma to throw you out.”

“Why did you not?” I asked her, feeling my heart beginning to speed in my chest.

“Honestly? If you hadn't flashed me the first time we met, I might have,” She said with a smile. “But seeing the seal and how cute you were when you realized you weren’t wearing anything, I just had a feeling that you needed someone. It didn’t take very long, but I figured out I wanted to be that someone for you,”She laughed. “Shit, you called me Autumn like ten seconds after we met. You were a mess.”

I stood. I needed to hide myself away from her, find somewhere to quiet my mind and slow the thumping in my chest. She wanted to be my someone. . . She was my someone. Few truths I knew felt as certain as that, but what did that mean? I had done none of the great things any of The Mother in Red’s lovers had done for her. The way Zara had looked at Bess, I felt that way when I looked at Anna. Nothing made me happier than seeing her asleep on her side of the bed every morning. We had not been together the way Ola and Mother Aster had. Did she want that?

Did I want that. . .

I wanted to give her something like what Haimi had given Isla. Not a necklace made of what I could pull out of oysters specifically, but something to show her how I felt so I didn’t have to try and find the words.

“Autumn?” Anna said, bringing my thoughts and my heart and the fluttering insects all together within me.

“I’m still a fucking mess,” I blurted. She was looking up at me like there was nothing in all of chaos that could possibly amuse her more. I clenched my fists and told her how that made me feel. “I want to go swimming.”

Anna cocked her eyebrow up at me and huffed out of her nose. “Yeah? There needs to be water in your pool to do that.”

“No,” I snapped, surprised at the heat in my voice. “I want to go swimming with you. Not in the pool, but in the ocean. I see all these places and watch all of these things happening and I know I want to do them and see them for myself, but I want to do them with you. I want to do everything with you,” The words came out of me all at once. “If you were trapped by a demon, I’d steal all the werelights. I would paint stars on the ceiling for you if you asked me to,” I sighed, dropping back down beside her and holding my head in my hands. “I know I’m not making any sense. I’ve never felt this way before for myself, and I don’t want to fuck it up.”

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I felt Anna brush against me. She’s leaving. I thought, the insects buzzing back into sudden panic within me. Gently, she pushed my head out of my hands and brought them down to where she sat below me. She held them within her own and met my eyes.

“You couldn’t if you tried. If it helps, this is new to me too. I’ve never felt this way about another girl.” She said, and kissed the top of my hand.

I would challenge The Circle of Nine Mother’s in open combat if it meant I could feel it again.

“I’ve never felt this way. Ever.” I whispered, watching a red glow slowly grow in her dark eyes.

“So, here is the plan. I’m here for you. This is whatever you want it to be. You have way more on your shoulders to deal with than I do. When you need me to be your coach, I’ll be your coach. When you need me to be your friend, I’ll be your friend. When you want me to be more,” She kissed my hand again. “I’ll be more. I’m following your lead, got it?”

“That’s a terrible idea. How can you follow someone who doesn’t know where they are going?” I asked honestly. It took all of my will to not slide off the bench and show her how much more I needed. If her lips on the skin of my hand felt it as good as it did, how would they feel on my own?

“I don’t need to know where you are going and you don’t either. You just told me that you wanted to do everything with me. That’s enough. It was enough a long time ago.” She smiled.

“You will go swimming with me? When I am done with The Well,” I looked down at my stomach, where the Mother’s seal lay over my navel behind the soft white fabric of my dress. “When I am free, will you go with me?”

“We would go right now if it wasn’t for this.” She answered, placing one of her palms over the unseen seal.

I stuck out my little finger, not asking but telling. “Promise.”

“Promise.” She wrapped her pinky around my own and gave it a small squeeze before standing up. “Alright, It’s getting late. I’ll wipe down the walls if you can handle that.”

I followed her eyes up to the ceiling, seeing the red glow that could only be coming from eyes, and remembered that there had been fire roiling above me when I had returned from The Well. “Sam left so quickly, I did not get the chance to ask him what happened.”

Anna handed me a rag. “It had to be you, right? Samsara uses lightning.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. That makes sense, but I don’t think I can do anything like that. Covering the pillow was beyond my limits.”

“Ask him when he gets back. He is the easiest to deal with after he eats.” Anna said.

Not long after I had met her, she had spent three days alone with my unfriendly familiar. He had gone from detesting her very existence to explaining my status as the thief of The Well to her in that short time. If anybody knew how to deal with him, it was probably her.

“Didn’t you make some manner of compact with Sam? When I was in The Well for three days?”

Sharp knocks sounded on the other side of the well house door and the slab of pink marble swung open slowly.

Bool, the guard I had given my mother cause to heal, stood backlit by the golden glow of the setting sun. “Lady Anna, tonight's celebration is beginning. Lady Aubrey has requested that you make your way to the garden.”

“We should go.” Anna said to me.

Bool did not so much as glance at me. He said what he had been ordered to say, and then turned and walked back into the sun.

“Hey!” I yelled after him.

The guard stopped midstep, one of his arms flinching towards his crotch at the sound of my voice.

“I’m sorry for what I did. I hope your balls are okay.” I said.

Laughter burst out of Anna and a smile spread across my face. I meant the apology, but if making one of the guards laugh had gotten him to acknowledge me, I decided it was worth a try with the rest.

“Thank you, little Aubrey.” Bool grunted in acceptance before continuing to walk away, moving a bit faster than before.

When he had disappeared around the corner of my mother’s wall of aura, Anna took the dress I had worn that morning from where I had thrown it into the corner and laid it out across a section of the floor that she had dried. The leatherbound journal that held notes and records of my nightly training in its front and the list of The Mothers on its back page, tumbled onto the ground.

“We can come back and clean up before we go to bed tonight, I don’t want to keep your mom waiting,” Anna picked the journal up and sat it on the bench, placing the stack of rags and a towel on top of it. “What were you doing with this?”

I followed her out of the wellhouse and closed the door behind me. The well worn footpath felt rough against my water softened feet, but after being in the little stone building for almost an entire day, the change was welcome. I found myself wanting more and took Anna’s hand in my own. “I learned some of the names of The Mothers and needed to write them down. I know it sounds silly, but it makes me feel better if I can learn about them before they come to kill me.”

“They aren’t coming to kill you. They are coming to punish you,” She said as we took up next to one another, walking side by side down the narrow path with my mother’s wall glimmering beside us. “And it’s not silly. That makes a lot of sense.”

We were quiet then, and took our time walking to the mouth of the garden. For the first time since I had been moved to the manor on the hill, I found myself enjoying the gentle heat from Erosette’s sun and no part of me missed the old boarding house.

“If she makes us fight again tonight, you will not get off so easily.” I warned Anna.

She snorted. “Don’t forget, me being whatever you need me to be includes becoming a villain, if I think you need it.”

“What is a villain next to a monster?” I asked, smirking.

“Someone who can tame the monster by flashing her tits.” Anna replied all too quickly.

Clever words and comebacks were not my area of expertise. She had me. It shouldn’t have surprised me though, she always did.