“-it would be very much appreciated,” Blake finished.
She made a big splash as she broke the surface.
The bathroom was bright, the gathered crowd a little out of sorts.
“Jesus,” a boy she didn’t recognize said. He looked almost like Blake, but with finer features. And no branches or birds or any of that. Clean.
She liked Blake more.
“Green Eyes,” Blake said. He was standing in the middle of the bathroom mirror, above the sink. Black paint had been scraped off with a chisel or some similar tool.
“Blake,” she said, smiling.
“Man, those teeth,” the Blake-family-member said.
“I’m not sure if I should be wowed or disappointed,” a black-skinned boy in the hallway said. “Leaning toward wowed.”
Blake spoke, “We need help, do you want-“
“Yes.”
“Can you-“
“Yes,” she said. She put her arms on the edge of the tub and lifted her tail over. “I can help.”
“Hi!” the bird-morsel said.
“Hi,” Green Eyes replied.
“Thanks for that,” Blake said. “We’ll catch up later.”
“Great!”
“Stay out of the way of the innocents on the ground floor, and the one we’ve got in the bedroom across from you. They’re… complications for the enemy. Don’t eat humans, don’t eat Evan.”
“Please,” the bird-morsel said.
“I’ll be good,” Green Eyes told Blake, still propping herself up on the side of the bathtub.
“Here we go,” Blake said. “Clock’s ticking down, there aren’t any great options left. Everything else that’s worth summoning was summoned in the last few weeks, killed, has specific rules, or some other complication we can’t work with.”
“You’ve got odd friends,” Blake’s relative said.
“Yes,” Blake replied.
“I remember when the family got together, I was jealous of-”
;
The town bell tolled. Green Eyes liked the town bell.
“Being?”
A second toll.
“Sorry, was going to say jealous, but…”
“Of?”
Third toll.
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “Paige, Molly, and-”
Fourth toll.
“Me?” Blake asked.
With the fifth toll marking sundown, the house shuddered.
12.01
Alexis, Tiff, and Ty weren’t doing so hot, to put it lightly.
Alexis wasn’t letting me look right at her face. Ty looked pale, in addition to the thin lines of red that criss-crossed his face and hands and the beads of blood here and there. Only Tiff seemed sort of together. Cut up, but she hadn’t broken down. Nervous, mostly. When she hesitated to step out of the sanctuary of the library, I suggested she stay behind and read up on possible spells to protect us. She’d agreed, and we closed the door, sealing her within.
Not ideal, but we had a lot of very resourceful individuals in very bad shape, and when it might only take one dramatic move like the priest’s smiting to bowl us all over like so many pins, spreading out felt like the better plan.
Against all horror-movie logic, but still the better plan.
Evan was guarding Andy and making sure Andy kept breathing. Tiff was gone.
Alexis had decided to wear the hand mirror that Evan had brought into the house, which made it harder for me to see just how she was doing. I could tell how slowly she was moving. Doubly so when I saw just how spry Eva was. Periodically, I moved to nearby puddles of water to try to get a glimpse of Alexis’ face, but couldn’t make much out. She seemed to notice me and look away before I got a really good look.
Bad cuts. Worse than Ty or Tiff had suffered.
Together, we made our way down to the ground floor. The sink had stopped overflowing. Someone had turned off the water under the sink, or something like that.
Entering the living room, the most obvious fact was that the Thorburns weren’t in great shape either. Roxanne, face swollen, hand black and blue, Kathryn with a bruise crawling across the side of her head, and Callan, who looked like he’d been to hell and back, but had been rolled out of the couch, alive and breathing, sitting up with his arms around Christoff, hair plastered to his head with sweat. Ellie looked okay, but was pacing.
I could see them tense as Eva came down the stairs with us.
“Holy shit,” Ellie said, her pacing stopping immediately. “What the fuck? The psycho bitch?”
“Ratface Thorburn,” the witch hunter commented, “We meet again.”
“Fuck you,” Ellie said.
“We’ve got her brother hostage,” Peter volunteered.