Chapter Text
Nobody but the lesbian werewolf saw Aelwyn’s short-lived attempt at making a run for it, but Aelwyn stews in embarrassment and discontent through her whole shower anyway.
It feels like she’s missing something big. There’s some kind of angle here that she’s not in on. If Adaine’s not doing this because their parents decided Aelwyn was a loose end left untied, and if Jawbone just brought breakfast out of the goodness of his heart, then Aelwyn has no earthly idea what protocol to follow here. It would be so much easier if she could be sure that there was a threat looming.
She’s also getting sick of the patronizing, pitying looks from everyone because she can’t figure this out. Adaine’s big sad eyes are annoying too.
With no easy explanation or solution to the issue presenting itself, Aelwyn’s brain loses its grip on the finer details of it, and she gives up in favor of scrubbing herself clean.
The water runs brown and dark green-ish down the drain for a long time. The hot water breaks down the dried blood smeared on her, and turns it back to a brilliant red. Somehow, every part of her body has stinging cuts and scrapes on it, and she discovers a few deeper gashes with bumpy, ugly scabbing--one on her hip, and one stretching over a shoulder blade.
Aelwyn’s arms can’t hold themselves up long enough to wash her hair. She manages two and a half cantrips before her vision starts wavering and her head gets heavy and woozy, warning her that she really doesn’t have magic to spare right now.
Cantrips are supposed to take as much energy as snapping her fingers. Aelwyn presses the heels of her palms to her eyes to stop frustrated tears from spilling.
After a few minutes of sitting very still, Aelwyn feels okay enough to uncurl again. She braces her elbows on her knees and puts shampoo in her hand and then tries, very slowly, to work it into her scalp. Her magic got the worst of the matting out, and the majority of the leaves are now gathered by the drain.
When her arms get too heavy to hold up again, Aelwyn drops them and settles for feebly squeezing the ends of her hair, squishing suds through the ends. For the first time in years, she wishes her hair was shorter. It would be a lot less to deal with.
It feels like it takes about an hour to get shampoo and conditioner into her hair, and then another hour to scrub the rest of the dirt off of her. The shower water goes cold. Aelwyn shivers and rubs stiff fingers over her skin and refuses to give up.
Her teeth have just started chattering again when someone knocks on the door. Over the pattering of the shower, she hears the ranger woman say, “How are we doing? Still alive in there?”
She introduced herself as Sandra Lynn, and she’s another weird piece of this puzzle whom Aelwyn doesn’t understand. Aelwyn woke up with the certainty that she’d met her somewhere before, but if she has, then it was such a brief meeting that there’s still no reason for Sandra Lynn to be taking care of her like this.
Aelwyn sighs. She reaches over and wrenches the handle of the shower to the side, cutting the water off.
“I brought you a change of clothes,” Sandra Lynn says. She’s easier to hear now, with the shower off. “I’ll leave them out here. Okay?”
Aelwyn makes a short sound of agreement. She’s feeling like it would be better to just lay down in the bathtub and fall asleep again.
Sandra Lynn doesn’t say anything else. Aelwyn’s probably alone again.
After a few minutes of shivering and trying to fight off her exhaustion-slash-nausea, Aelwyn slings a heavy arm over the lip of the bathtub and grabs the light blue towel Sandra Lynn left folded on the counter for her.
Standing up sounds so, so difficult. Aelwyn presses the towel to her face, her arms, the tops of her legs, and then loses steam. She goes still again.
It doesn’t make sense to her how she ended up here.
Why didn’t she just stay in the stupid forest to die?
As though summoned by this thought, Adaine’s voice nudges into Aelwyn’s head. It’s less of an abrupt intrusion than last time, but she’s still not welcome.
‘Did you die in there?’ her sister asks, the Sending spell just rubbing in the fact that Aelwyn’s incapable of magic at the moment. ‘Do you want help?’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Aelwyn Sends back, and then stands up with renewed determination.
The finer details of drying herself off with the towel are beyond her ability at the moment. Aelwyn cracks open the door to grab at the clothes Sandra Lynn left, and then shuts and locks the door again to struggle into them.
The first proof of Sandra Lynn’s malintentions is that she’s provided Aelwyn with loose pajama pants patterned with illustrations of plush bears, and a sweatshirt that declares the wearer the proud parent of an Oakshield Middle School Honor Student. Aelwyn feels stupid in them. She’s strictly avoiding her reflection, but she’s sure she looks stupid in them, too.
The socks are more welcome. They’re men’s athletic socks, but they’re warm and not patterned with anything lame.
Her arms aren’t strong enough to pull the ends of her wet hair out of the neck hole of the sweatshirt. Aelwyn gives up on the prospect and opens the bathroom door, finally leaving the haven of semi-steamy air and stepping back into the colder hallway.
Across the house in the kitchen, that tiefling girl’s voice can be heard, accompanied by a short laugh that Aelwyn realizes must be Adaine’s. She hasn’t heard it in a long, long time, outside of the manic forced laugh that Tasha’s Hideous Laughter causes.
Sandra Lynn appears at the end of the hallway, summoned from the living room by the sound of the bathroom door. She quirks one corner of her mouth with a halfhearted smile and asks, “All clean?”
Aelwyn eyes her with distrust, and doesn’t answer that. It’s a dumb question--obviously Aelwyn is clean, after about six hours in the shower.
“Can I help dry your hair?” Sandra Lynn asks. “Or do you want Adaine to do it?”
“I’m fine,” Aelwyn says. She doesn’t want Sandra Lynn anywhere near her hair, and obviously Adaine is an even worse option.
She remembers, with a sick feeling unrelated to her exhaustion, that Aelwyn used to just sit aside and watch out of the corner of her eye while Arianwen subjected Adaine to a harsh brushing of hair every morning. Adaine was tenderheaded and wailed the whole time, struggling and crying while Arianwen wrenched a brush through her hair to get ready for school.
Aelwyn realizes only now that that must have been some kind of training or practice to inspire discipline in Adaine. Their mother could have just as easily used magic for that.
Aelwyn sat by and did nothing and she knows that she was snide about Adaine’s red, teary eyes after the ordeal every day. She didn’t even tell Adaine her own secret, which was that she brushed her own hair before Arianwen could get her hands on it, because Aelwyn’s smart enough to handle herself.
The point being--Aelwyn has no intention of letting Adaine take revenge.
“You’re going to get cold,” Sandra Lynn warns.
“So what?” Aelwyn says.
“Come have a seat,” Sandra Lynn says. “I’ll bring you your breakfast, and Adaine’ll brush your hair. Come on.”
Aelwyn’s words of protest get all mushed and twisted together in a disorienting mess, refusing to leave her mouth. She shakes her head instead.
“Or I can do it,” Sandra Lynn amends. “Or Fig. I don’t want you turning blue again, let’s go.”
Aelwyn reluctantly follows Sandra Lynn back to the bed in the living room, and climbs back onto the mattress and slips under the blanket. A plate piled with food is placed on her lap, and Aelwyn forgets how nauseous she’s been all morning in favor of picking up a sausage link with her fingers and shoving it into her mouth as soon as Sandra Lynn turns to leave again.
Her rushed, desperate mode of eating is only embarrassing when she pauses for breath and wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and she remembers that she’s in a real person’s house, and that people can probably hear her smacking and chewing in the other room. It’s hard to slow down, when she’s been so hungry for so long.
She corrals some scrambled eggs onto a slice of toast and folds the whole mess into her mouth. All that remains of this crime against table manners or the plate of food when Adaine appears next to the mattress is the empty plate set on the end of the bed and a smear of grease on Aelwyn’s upper lip that she wipes away.
Adaine’s holding a hairbrush. Aelwyn looks from the brush to Adaine’s face, wary.
“I’ll be gentle,” Adaine says.
Aelwyn leans away from her. Their last altercation had been…unpleasant--mostly Adaine’s fault--and she doesn’t want to repeat it right now. Her manic ability to defend herself has burned itself out.
Adaine’s tiefling friend--Fig, is probably her name--pops into the living room behind Adaine. “Hi, Aelwyn!” Her eyes are focused like a hawk’s, and her smile is too wide. Aelwyn feels like a zoo exhibit. “Nice sweatshirt.”
Ugh. Fig was probably the Oakshield Honor Student that the garment refers to. Aelwyn rolls her eyes and looks away, feeling more irritated when this dismissal only makes Fig laugh.
Adaine creeps around the back of the couch, ignoring how Aelwyn tenses up and curls away from her as she approaches. When she’s standing directly behind Aelwyn, Adaine swings one leg, then the other over the back of the couch and perches there, at a proper angle to mess with Aelwyn’s hair.
Aelwyn sits, filled with enough tension to make her feel taxidermied, while Adaine slowly gathers Aelwyn’s hair, her fingertips brushing Aelwyn’s neck. She pulls the wet ends up out of the sweatshirt, then flops them down over Aelwyn’s shoulders. For a brief moment, the feeling of someone holding all of her hair in their fist makes Aelwyn dizzy, anxious, but then it passes without Adaine yanking her head backwards.
Fig flops onto the far side of the mattress, forcing a casual air as she asks, “So, where’d you go?”
“What?” Aelwyn asks. She’s staring at nothing, braced for the first pass of the brush through her hair.
“You left Solace,” Fig says slowly, “so…what happened next? Did you go somewhere cool?”
Aelwyn’s voice is hoarse; the more she talks, the more she feels it. “No.” She clears her throat. “Just the Mountains of Chaos. It was nothing special.”
Adaine picks up a chunk of Aelwyn’s hair. Aelwyn clenches her teeth in anticipation, but when she hears the rip of a brush through knotted hair, she feels nothing at all.
“Did you walk?” Fig asks, unabashedly staring. “You’re all sunburned.”
Aelwyn twists halfway and sees that Adaine’s clutching the chunk of hair midway down, holding it still so that the brush’s attack on the knots doesn’t tug on Aelwyn’s scalp. It doesn’t make sense to her--this is Adaine’s chance to hurt Aelwyn back, with no social consequences, and she’s not taking it.
Adaine adds, eyes trained on the task at hand, “I didn’t even know elves could get sunburned.”
“Sunburned?” Aelwyn asks, feeling stupid.
“Oh my god,” Fig says, which only makes Aelwyn feel worse.
Adaine works her way around Aelwyn’s hair, detangling it and returning it to its natural state of falling in straight lines, drying more quickly without being all gnarled together. Aelwyn begrudgingly gives answers to Fig’s incessant questions about the weird village she slept in outside of Solace, until Adaine finishes brushing.
The brush passes all the way from the crown of Aelwyn’s head to the ends without catching. Adaine’s done it all without yanking Aelwyn’s scalp once, and Aelwyn finds that she’s relaxed into the feeling against her will. Aelwyn sits up straight, starting to twist away.
Fig says, “Can I braid it?”
Fig’s hair is already in braids, and her mom’s an elf--she must have some kind of practice. Aelwyn doesn’t like how she’s been corralled into this like a practice mannequin bust for aestheticians, but it’s not like she has the energy to run.
“Fine,” Aelwyn says. Adaine and Fig trade places. Now, Adaine’s staring at Aelwyn’s face, and Fig’s out of sight, her knees on either side of Aelwyn’s shoulders.
Aelwyn takes a deep breath when Fig takes hold of a few strands near her hairline and pulls them taut.
“Were our parents more angry that you were at a club, or that you turned into a werewolf?” Adaine asks.
Aelwyn blinks, too surprised to even feel offended. She winces when Fig’s fingers start moving near her scalp. “What the hell?” she asks.
“I’m curious,” Adaine says. She must have told Fig beforehand to make this switch, so she could interrogate Aelwyn more easily. “Tell me.”
All of the scratches on Aelwyn’s arms and legs feel itchy. She rubs at her right forearm over the top of the sweatshirt sleeve. “Why does it matter?”
“You’re my sister.”
“No, I’m not.” Aelwyn hated when Tracker said that, and she hates it now.
Adaine frowns. This statement seems to have actually hurt her; her eyes start brimming. God.
“Don’t be a crybaby,” Aelwyn tells her. She looks away, not able to stand the betrayed look on Adaine’s face.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Adaine blinking rapidly. Then Adaine says, “If our parents don’t want to be your parents anymore, they aren’t mine either.”
This makes Aelwyn so angry that she forgets how to talk for a second. She sputters something, something that’s barely noise--much less words--and then Fig pulls on her hair to weave another lock of the braid and Aelwyn flinches more violently, pitching forward to get her hair out of Fig’s grip, and she snaps, “Stop. I’m done.”
When she twists, prepared to throw an elbow at Fig, Fig has her hands up and she’s given up on the hairstyle already. There’s nothing and no one for Aelwyn to lash out at without being the bad guy here.
Fig’s eyebrows have furrowed, and she says, “Dude. You don’t have to do this by yourself.”
Aelwyn feels her face twist into a snarl and she considers shoving Fig backwards off of the couch, but Fig has already hopped off, out of reach by the time Aelwyn can get her arms to move. Her body is getting heavy again, and she doesn’t like her odds of fighting her way out of this house if she puts it off much longer.
She lurches forward, getting to her knees first with intent to sweep her legs off of the mattress.
Adaine lunges too, hitting Aelwyn with a tackle that has some of the worst form Aelwyn’s ever experienced. Aelwyn’s unable to withstand it, though, and she flumps down face-first with Adaine on top of her and writhes weakly under her hold.
“Get--” Aelwyn gasps, thrashing.
Adaine says, “No,” and pins Aelwyn with her arm around Aelwyn’s neck. The crook of her elbow threatens to cut off Aelwyn’s air. Right next to her ear, Aelwyn hears, “Stop running away.”
“Woo!” Fig yells, like this is a spectator sport. “Get ‘em, Adaine!”
Aelwyn makes two more pathetic attempts at bucking Adaine off before she has to slump and ride out a wave of lightheadedness-slash-nausea, the same result of overexertion she’d gotten whilst climbing into the truck.
“I want to help you,” Adaine says harshly, “even though you’re making it so damn hard.”
Aelwyn tries to turn back over, one hand braced on the thin mattress, but Adaine’s somehow become eight times heavier than she’s ever been before, with her knees on either side of the small of Aelwyn’s back.
“This wasn’t your fault,” Adaine says. “Just tell me what happened.”
“You already know what happened!”
“I actually don’t! Because Mother tried to convince me you never existed.” Adaine tightens her elbow. “I’m never going to forgive what they did to you. Let me help.”
Aelwyn can’t breathe, and it’s not because of the chokehold that Adaine’s poorly executing.
“What the hell is--” says a different voice, approaching from the hallway. Sandra Lynn has been alerted by the sound of Fig’s yelling. “--Fuck. Adaine. Get off of--”
“Let me help,” Adaine repeats. “You’re obviously not handling it on your own.”
“ God, shut up, you’re so--” Aelwyn tries to say, though the breath has left her lungs. She isn’t even sure how she was going to end the sentence; maybe with annoying, sanctimonious, or delusional, but Sandra Lynn cuts her off before she can get there.
“Alright, that’s enough,” Sandra Lynn shouts, and Aelwyn only sees a flash of movement before Adaine’s weight disappears. Aelwyn twists her head to the side to see Sandra Lynn hauling Adaine away with arm around Adaine waist, while Adaine squeaks in protest, hoisted like a stunt actor on a line.
Aelwyn turns onto her back and shoves herself backwards, heels digging into the twisted mess of bedding, until the arm of the sofa digs into her spine. From here, she can see Fig with hands raised, ready for spellcasting. It’s too late to do anything about the spell that Fig has cast to dig into Aelwyn’s head. Whatever it is, it’s too cloying to be a Detect Thoughts, and bard magic is slippery and honeyed and it makes Aelwyn want to throw up.
“Don’t,” Aelwyn starts to yell, her scarred throat twisting the word all up. She can’t fight anyone off right now, physically or mentally, but she doesn’t want anyone in her head. She just wants one single fucking day where nobody gets in there and takes what they want because Aelwyn won’t give it to them. “Get-- get--”
“Fig,” Sandra Lynn says, in a scary tone that actually gets Fig to look over, eyes wide, blood leaving her face.
“I was just,” Fig starts.
“I thought I told you to stop casting your damn spells this morning,” Sandra Lynn says. “Did I not?”
“Yes, but--”
“Do you think you’re being helpful?”
Fig’s almost whining when she defends herself with, “Nobody else is doing anything! She’s not going to tell us--”
“Go upstairs,” Sandra Lynn says, “before I have to ask you again.” She looks to her right, where Adaine is basically cowering, and says, “Adaine, take a walk.”
“Yes ma’am,” Adaine breathes, and turns and all but runs out of the room.
Fig casts a furious, shiny-eyed glare in Aelwyn’s direction before following Adaine’s lead. She knocks shoulders with her mom as she storms past, but Sandra Lynn takes the hit unflinchingly and keeps her focus on Aelwyn, who’s now the only person left to yell at.
Feet thunder up the stairs, but the room itself is eerily quiet, other than Aelwyn’s shallow breaths.
Sandra Lynn’s arms have folded across her chest. There’s color high in her cheeks, suppressed anger that she didn’t fully unleash on her daughter or on Adaine. Aelwyn braces for it to be unloaded on her, instead.
Instead, Sandra Lynn’s voice comes out in an even tone when she speaks again. She asks, “Do you want more breakfast?”
Slowly, Aelwyn shakes her head. She’s hungry but not hungry enough to ask for more.
From the unimpressed lift of one of Sandra Lynn’s eyebrows, this much is obvious.
Upstairs, a door slams, and a few seconds later, rock music booms through the floor loudly enough to make Aelwyn’s teeth buzz. Sandra Lynn sighs out through her nose.
“A cleric is stopping by soon,” Sandra Lynn says, “but if you want me to put some aloe on you, I can do that.”
“What is that?” Aelwyn asks.
“Aloe vera?” Sandra Lynn asks, just as nonplussed. “For your sunburn?” Aelwyn still doesn’t show any recognition, and Sandra Lynn sighs again with a weird, uninterpretable look on her face. “Okay. I’ll go get some. It’ll help you stop itching.”
Aelwyn realizes she’s been rubbing at her arm over the top of her sleeve again. She stills her hand as Sandra Lynn leaves the room, then comes back with a plastic bottle full of green goop.
Sandra Lynn sits down on the side of the mattress and gestures for Aelwyn to scoot closer. “Roll up your sleeves. Are your shoulders burned, too?”
Aelwyn shakes her head. Her heart still hasn’t calmed all the way from when Adaine tackled her, and she feels jumpy. She follows Sandra Lynn’s orders, baring her forearms.
The first touch of the aloe vera is a sting of cold on her skin, and Aelwyn jumps. Sandra Lynn efficiently rubs it in, sending tingles of cold and then a soothing feeling in its wake.
“Next time we’ll wear sunscreen,” Sandra Lynn says.
Aelwyn doesn’t know what that means. It sounds like a threat. She keeps her mouth shut.
Sandra Lynn coats the tops of Aelwyn’s arms, and then says, “Can I touch your face?”
Aelwyn shrugs. Then nods, when Sandra Lynn keeps staring at her as though she needs a concrete answer. For her trouble, Aelwyn gets goop smeared onto her cheeks and forehead and nose.
Sandra Lynn works quietly, neither looking pleased or displeased with this task. It’s efficient, as though she’s done this four thousand times and she doesn’t need to think much about it anymore, but it’s not painful or anything. It’s a specific kind of brisk motherly movement that Aelwyn hasn’t experienced since she first started wearing foundation and her mother told her that she did it wrong.
“I don’t know what your plan is,” Sandra Lynn says as she’s putting the cap back on the bottle, “or if you have one. But your sister and Fig both--I know they annoy you--they want to help you.”
Aelwyn’s face is cold from the gel, and from the absence of someone touching her.
“Adaine’s right that your parents shouldn’t have done this to you.” Sandra Lynn watches Aelwyn’s face. The more she speaks, the more that Aelwyn realizes that Sandra Lynn’s neutral expression is a mask, covering up something a lot rockier. “If you want help going to the police, or--”
“I can’t,” Aelwyn says.
“You don’t have to right this second.”
“They said if I,” Aelwyn starts, and then shuts her mouth.
Sandra Lynn’s eyes sharpen. She looks like that freaky griffon in the front yard for a moment. “They told you not to get the police involved?”
“They’re,” Aelwyn says. She wishes that it was as simple as just trusting Adaine’s friend’s mom. “I’m. I shouldn’t…Just, forget it.”
Sandra Lynn’s eyes soften, perhaps with disappointment. She says, “Okay. If you change your mind…It’s not my first rodeo.”
“With what?” Aelwyn asks. “Werewolves?”
“With leaving home,” Sandra Lynn says, smiling thin-lipped. “Involuntarily.”
Kristen’s parents are thrilled that she’s being called on to heal the sick, etcetera. Kristen sits through three hours of church with douche-chills attacking her from all sides every time someone mentions Helio and she remembers his nasty Birkenstock sandals--but afterwards, her parents gladly drop her off at Fig’s house and only make a couple of snide comments about the run-down state of the house before driving off to get post-church food for the screaming younger brothers in the backseat of the van.
Unfortunately for Kristen’s current state of mind, Aelwyn Abernant has the same blue eyes and strong nose as Adaine. Fig’s mom shows Kristen to the living room with a whispered warning about Aelwyn being in a bad mood, but no warnings are given about the fact that Aelwyn is two years older, sharply beautiful under a glossy still-drying vaguely wavy curtain of blonde hair, and watching Kristen with the kind of open contempt that makes Kristen’s stomach flutter.
“Let me guess,” Aelwyn says, “Church of Sol.”
Kristen knows that her flip-flops, jean shorts, tie-dyed t-shirt all paint a specific picture. Her hand is sweaty on the spine of her staff. “You got me,” she says, and is unable to stop babbling after that. “Right, right, I get it. Guilty, take me away.”
Aelwyn’s eyes, weighed down with dark circles, cut sideways to look at Sandra Lynn. Kristen awkwardly climbs up onto the pullout sofa’s mattress, kneeling on the twisted comforter, and extends her hand.
“Don’t bite me, haha,” Kristen says. She winces when Aelwyn looks at her like she wants nothing more than to rip her head off her shoulders. “Sorry. You can bite if you want, I’m into it.”
Aelwyn starts to say, “Are you fucking kidding--?” but Fig’s mom interrupts with, “Kristen, this isn’t the time for that.”
Kristen says, “Sorry.” She puts her palm on the top of Aelwyn’s head and summons up one of the Cure Wounds she prepared while Pastor Amelia basically begged for someone to come up and rededicate their life to Helio during the invitational. The visible cuts and scrapes on Aelwyn’s face and hands smooth over, though the scarring that mars her neck goes nowhere. Her nose, which appeared broken, crunches back into place, though there’s still a slight irregularity to the bridge that might be permanent.
Aelwyn’s nose starts bleeding. Kristen quickly uses another one of her prepared spells so it’ll stop before anyone notices.
“Ow,” Aelwyn says dryly. She swipes at her upper lip, smearing the small amount of blood Kristen couldn’t catch.
“How are we feeling?” Kristen asks. “Thumbs-up?”
Aelwyn shrugs, which is the opposite of helpful. Though her surface-level wounds appear to have healed, she doesn’t look any more well-rested than before. From the healing classes that Kristen’s taken so far this semester, she knows enough to say confidently, “The rest of the stuff won’t be better until you sleep it off.”
“I thought it was your job to fix all of it,” Aelwyn says, prickly.
“That’s not what we say to someone helping us for free,” Fig’s mom says.
Aelwyn actually listens, which Kristen didn’t expect based on her sour attitude. Aelwyn wipes more of the blood off of her face and looks away and mutters, “I guess you did more than Tracker did.”
“Tracker?” Kristen asks, feeling a new warmth in her face. She’s glad she doesn’t need to touch Aelwyn again; her palms are sweaty already. “You know her?”
“What?” Aelwyn asks. She gives Kristen such a shocked-slash-disturbed-slash-darkly delighted expression that Kristen recoils even before Aelwyn says, “Wait, do you like her?”
Her tone tells Kristen that Aelwyn would have fit into the Penelope Everpetal tier of students at Aguefort in another life, unswervingly mean unless acting otherwise would benefit her. It kind of makes Kristen even more attracted to her, in a way that she knows is a maladaptive coping mechanism.
“Aelwyn,” Fig’s mom says, intervening again with an even sharper tone.
Aelwyn backs off, though she still looks vaguely disgusted with Kristen as she bites out, “Thanks.”
“For?” Fig’s mom prompts.
Like she’s having teeth extracted, Aelwyn slowly, sullenly says, “Thanks for the healing.”
“Oh, pshh,” Kristen says, unable to stop talking once she starts, “consider it potat--small potatoes. It’s small potatoes. Not importance.”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Fig’s mom rescues Kristen from herself, as she takes hold of Kristen’s arm and pulls her away from Aelwyn. “Thanks, Kristen. Aelwyn needs some rest.”
Riz sleeps for about eighteen uninterrupted hours when he gets home from Bill Seacaster’s training montage-slash-child abuse seminar. For the first time in about six years, his mom wakes him up, instead of finding him already hunched by his desk in his room.
“Are you feeling sick?” she asks, concerned.
Riz does, in fact, feel like dog shit, but that’s probably less due to illness and more about Fig peer-pressuring him into drinking and then many, many hours of physical exertion following that. He’s sore and his legs feel weirdly shaky but he’s not sick. It’s a Gukgak tradition to firmly tell any oncoming illness that it isn’t welcome, and it almost always scares the virus away.
So Riz tells both his looming cold and his mother, “Nope.”
His voice is creaky, but it’ll be okay.
“Take it easy today,” his mom says. There’s still a lingering heaviness around them, leftover from the lecture that Sklonda subjected him to for his complete radio silence since going to the Black Pit on Friday night. She was really fucking worried. Riz has the urge to slink around in her peripheral vision, showing excessive deference until she’s not upset anymore.
He gets it. He’d be mad at him, too, for pulling something like that.
With this baggage in the air, Riz doesn’t want to pry about her work. She’s reticent with details about any of her cases, even the deal with Adaine’s sister.
Shit, Adaine’s sister.
It was the full moon last night, and Riz forgot.
Riz sits up straight in bed, forgetting about the heaviness in his lungs. He scrabbles to pull his crystal off its charger on his nightstand.
“Woah, what’s happening?” Sklonda asks.
Adaine hasn’t sent anything, but Fig has. Several texts, actually. First a text like a clickbait headline that says ‘adaine TOTALLY trying to make moves on my mom(?!?!?!)’ and then this morning, in the group chat, ‘we got her boys hahahahaha.’ And then, when Fabian asked what the hell she was talking about, Fig clarified, ‘aelwyn obv.’
“They found Aelwyn,” Riz says, as surprised as Gorgug seems to be, in the chat.
“Who did?” his mom asks, eyes brightening.
“I guess Fig?” Riz is already swiping and tapping to call her, hungry for details. He’s also trying very hard to suppress pangs of jealousy that someone else made progress in a mystery without him. “Could we stop by her house?”
Sklonda waffles for a moment. Riz knows what she’s debating--Riz is grounded for scaring the shit out of her, but this is related to one of her open cases too. Finally, she sighs, “Okay. Just to say hi and check in, though. Promise not to have fun or anything.”
The last part is said with a soft, exhausted smile. Riz feels so fucking guilty about basically everything he’s ever done to stress her out.
“Okay, I won’t,” he promises. She kisses his forehead and leaves him alone to get ready.
The two of them are in the car ten minutes later, both crunching identical slices of peanut butter toast. Sklonda clamps hers between her teeth to put on her seatbelt and wrestle their car into gear, and Riz does his thing where he tries to be helpful and anticipate what she needs throughout the drive so she’ll forget how badly he’s behaved this weekend.
Riz has never been to Fig’s house. He didn’t have a clear expectation in mind, but the reality more or less matches it. The tiny window for the attic room has been cracked open and smoke is wisping out, which Riz hopes is due to Fig smoking and not a house fire.
Riz puts his hand on the door handle, but his mom stops him with a hand on his knee.
“Hold up a second.” Sklonda’s looking the house over with a wary eye. “How about you text Adaine first, and see if she wants us in there.”
Riz looks at his crystal for clues, but Fig hasn’t sent any updates. Kristen is already inside, and Gorgug and Fabian are going to swing by later. “I could scout around the back.”
“We don’t case our friend’s houses,” Sklonda tells him.
Inwardly, Riz disagrees, but he still texts Adaine and Fig for permission to enter. Fig sends back a thumbs-up with a displeased emoji face, which doesn’t really clear things up, while Adaine says, ‘let me come outside first.’
He tilts the screen so Sklonda can see. She squints and takes his crystal, holding it up to her face like she does when he shows her anything, and then she nods and hands it back.
“I think that might mean Aelwyn doesn’t want me involved yet,” Sklonda says.
Riz frowns. He looks up at the house again, but all that’s changed is that the griffon has lost interest in their car, and Fig’s now sticking her head out the window to make faces at him. “Why wouldn’t she?”
“Adaine’s parents are pretty important.” Sklonda twists her keys to turn the car off. “These cases are complicated even without diplomatic immunity involved.”
Back when Riz walked Adaine home to snoop around her house, Adaine had been so scared of walking in that she’d used about sixteen cantrips to fix up her appearance on the bus ride home--and those were just the ones Riz noticed. It doesn’t seem like there’s too much that’s complicated about that. Even though Riz hadn’t found anything incriminating in the empty bedroom, something is seriously rotten in that house.
“It doesn’t seem that complicated,” Riz mutters, though he knows he’s just being obstinate. If it was cut-and-dry, Adaine would have already had her parents arrested.
He’s trying to be respectful about how stressed Adaine is, but he really really wants to snoop more in the Abernant home. Adaine’s spotty retelling of the last night she saw Aelwyn hinted that some kind of clue could be in her parents’ study. Riz would like to ask Aelwyn about that. He’d also like to ask who turned her into a werewolf, and if they know anything about Zayn Darkshadow.
Not everything that happens in this town is directly related, but Aelwyn had been at the Black Pit that night. Riz has chased flimsier leads.
The front door opens and Adaine darts out. She has her back to them, as she pulls the door shut. It’s like she’s trying to trap a poison gas inside the house or something.
She turns and meets Riz’s eye. Even across the yard, Riz can see that she’s had a rough morning.
Adaine runs past the griffon, skirting it with a respectful buffer, and slows to a stop outside of Riz’s window. Riz rolls it down. Adaine's breathing is a bit labored, hinting that she’d run all the way from Fig’s room.
Fig is still in the window, smoking. Riz isn’t sure if his mom has noticed her yet.
“Hi, Adaine,” Riz’s mom says, smiling a bracing smile.
“Hi Mrs. Gu--Hi Mrs. Detective Gukgak,” Adaine says, voice thin. Her eyelashes are wet when she stands up straighter, finding an even more uncomfortable upright posture. “She, um. I mean, how are you?”
“I’m okay,” Sklonda says gently. She squeezes Riz’s elbow. “We just wanted to check in on you.”
Riz jumps at her touch and remembers to say, “Hi,” instead of just staring Adaine down for clues about what’s happened. “Are you…cool? Is she okay?”
Adaine’s jaw hardens. She looks over her shoulder, but nobody’s followed her out the front door. She looks back. “She’s alive,” she says. Contrary to Riz’s first impression, she may be less devastated and more pissed off; her hands are fists at her sides. “Kristen is fixing her up. Apparently it’s going to take a few days of rest.”
Sklonda asks, “How are you?”
Adaine shrugs. She laughs an unhappy laugh. “Um, we aren’t getting along. I mean, Fig’s mom yelled at us.” She shrugs again. She’s kind of shaking.
Riz opens his car door and Adaine steps around it and Riz opens his arms, offering a hug.
In an instant, Adaine has accepted it. She wraps her arms around his waist and her browbone meets the crook of his shoulder. The huge hoodie she’s wearing smells like Gorgug, somehow.
Neither he nor Adaine are very good at hugging. Riz chalks it up to lack of experience. He wishes Penny was here. She would know what to say.
It isn’t his mom’s first day of parenting, though. It’s a relief when she reaches out and pats Adaine’s head and says, “It’s okay, kiddo. You did a good job. You found her.”
While Riz uselessly pats Adaine’s back, trying to copy what his mom does when he’s upset, he looks to the mom in question for guidance.
Sklonda’s worrying her lip with her teeth, deep in thought. She stares at the front of Fig’s house for a solid five seconds before focus comes back to her eyes and they move to meet Riz’s. The times when Sklonda gets hard to read are when she’s starting to slip into work mode instead of mom mode. This is how Riz knows she’s thinking about how to get as much information as she can without scaring off either Abernant sister.
Adaine leans away from him, and Riz lets go of her. When both Riz and his mom can confirm that Adaine isn’t secretly crying, Sklonda speaks again. Her tone is kind, with an undercurrent of authority that makes it clear that she needs to be listened to on this.
“I’m going to say hi to Fig’s mom,” Sklonda tells Adaine, “and then we’ll leave and give you some space. Then Riz can go back to being grounded.” Riz’s face automatically scrunches into a displeased frown, before he can iron it out. He sees his mom smile a brief, amused smile at him before looking back at Adaine. “I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
Mouth shut tight, Adaine nods.
“Take advantage of this,” Sklonda tells Riz, half-joking. Then she opens her door and slides out, feet finding the ground and then her door swinging shut.
Sklonda walks around the front of the car to approach the front door. The griffon in the front yard swings its head towards her, and Riz tries not to laugh as Sklonda’s gait stutters when her instincts tell her to jump-slash-run away from the huge creature.
As soon as Sklonda is out of earshot, Adaine asks, “Are you on house arrest?”
Riz makes a weird laughing sound, taken off-guard. “No. Well, kind of. Yes. I’m grounded.” He frowns and asks, “Did you go home after yesterday?”
Adaine shakes her head, cringing.
“Is that…?” Riz begins to ask.
“I’m either in enormous trouble or they haven’t even noticed I’m missing,” Adaine says. She’s trying to convince Riz that she’s not worried about it, but her hands are trembling. “I’m taking the bus back when Kristen’s done.”
“We could give you a ride home,” Riz offers without asking his mom first.
“Um. Yeah. Maybe.” To avoid talking more about this, Adaine looks over her shoulder to follow Sklonda’s path. Riz looks too, and finds his mom in conversation with an elf that must be Fig’s mom.
Fig’s mom holds the screen door open, and Sklonda steps inside with a thankful nod of her head.
“Text Fig,” Adaine says suddenly. “See if she can hear them.”
Riz is already doing it, having had the same idea.
Two seconds after his text is sent, he gets a Message spell from Fig in his head, dropped in like an envelope forced through a mail slot. She whispers, “Holy shit, our moms are talking.”
Riz relays this message to Adaine. Adaine’s lips twitch, torn between amused and nervous.
“About what?” she asks. “Aelwyn?”
“Is your mom bi?” Fig Messages into Riz’s ear.
Riz can’t help the startled, incredulous look that pops onto his face. Adaine demands, “What?”
“Fig is--” Riz laughs, disoriented. “I don’t get it.” Fig probably isn’t going to be any help now--they’ll have to reconvene later to debrief. Riz doesn’t want to distract her while she’s eavesdropping. “I’ll text her after. She’s being weird.”
Adaine slumps, frustrated, but she gets it. Riz doesn’t want to just sit here in awkward quiet for the next few minutes--and he wants Adaine to stop glancing back at the doorstep as though Sklonda is going up to the house to assassinate Aelwyn with piano wire--so he changes the subject to distract them both.
He asks, “Are you going to look for more clues in your house?”
Adaine tilts her head, frowns. “We found Aelwyn already, though.”
Her cloudy expression clears just a second later. She brightens with the first spark of her normal self that Riz has seen today. “Wait, I should. Actually. Aelwyn was really fucking weird when I mentioned the police this morning.”
She fills Riz in, more or less giving a play-by-play of earlier. The efficient retelling, punctuated by Adaine checking over her shoulder for Sklonda’s return, tells Riz that it’s worth checking the Abernant home just in case, even if this ends up being a dead-end. Adaine’s less convinced, but Riz insists twice until she shrugs and says she might as well try.
“I’ll have to play it by ear,” Adaine says.
Riz looks closer at Adaine’s face, as though squinting at her will help him understand her micro-expressions better as he asks, “Is that going to be cool? Going home?”
“I’ll survive,” Adaine says, her face a neutral mask that wouldn’t tell Riz anything, even if Riz was the slightest bit proficient at telling what Adaine was thinking or feeling.
Riz isn’t convinced in the slightest. He wants to push further into the issue, but the screen door swishes open again and Sklonda’s back in sight. She waves goodbye to Fig’s mom and then takes her same wide arc around the griffon’s stomping ground to approach the car again.
“Text me how it goes?” Riz asks.
Adaine nods. She smiles, though it’s a sort of queasy look. “I’ll try.”
“Time’s up,” Sklonda says, having reached them by now. She stops on Riz’s side of the car to offer an arm out, and Adaine slides under it to accept a sideways squeeze around the shoulders. Sklonda’s hand rubs up and down Adaine’s upper arm, comforting. “Keep in touch, okay?” Sklonda says. “You’re doing a good job.”
Adaine folds into Riz’s mom’s side like a baby kangaroo finding a pouch, and doesn’t respond.
“Keep safe.” Sklonda pats Adaine’s shoulder once more and then slowly steps away. “Riz is in trouble but if you need him or me, you can call anytime.”
As Sklonda drives them away, Riz watches in the side mirror as Adaine stands on the sidewalk alone, dwarfed by the sweatshirt someone stole from Gorgug’s house.
“Did you find anything out?” Riz asks his mom. “With Aelwyn or anything?”
Sklonda’s voice is completely different when she responds, worlds away from the gentle tone she used on Adaine. Her hands are tight on the steering wheel when she says, “Adaine’s parents are going to regret ever moving to Elmville.”
“Are they…I mean, does diplomatic immunity--?”
“Put your seatbelt on,” his mom tells him, a sharp sideways look telling him that she’s too pissed to talk right now.
“Yes ma’am,” Riz says, and wisely shuts his mouth.