Seanan McGuire - Midnight Blue-Light Special

“Good.” I looked sternly at Sarah’s still, pale form. “You hear that? You’re going to be fine. And if you’re not, I’m going to kick your ass.” I mean that. Whether you can hear me or not, I mean it.

“You’re a good cousin, Very-Very,” said Grandma.

“I’m a terrible cousin who leads Sarah into the path of danger because I think she needs to get out more,” I said. “I’m also a terrible granddaughter.”

Grandma blinked. “Oh? How’s that?”

“I’m going to let you be the one who tells Artie.”

Much to my relief, she laughed. “Oh, you are a terrible granddaughter.” She paused. “There is one thing you could do to make it up to me.”

“Name it.”

“Can you watch Sarah while I go and get myself something to eat? I haven’t wanted to leave her unattended for long, but it seems to me that you have a pretty good handle on things.”

I smiled. Grandma might not be a receptive telepath, but she knows how to read people, and she knew that I wanted some time with Sarah alone. “Take as long as you need,” I said.

Grandma hugged me before she left the room. I took her seat next to Sarah’s bed, reaching over to take Sarah’s hand in mine. Her skin was cool, but no more than usual. Cuckoos run a little cold compared to humans.

“Hey, Sarah,” I said, trying to mentally project the words as I said them. I wanted her to hear me with her ears, as well as with her mind. “I just wanted to say thank you. I mean, you saved my ass back there. If you hadn’t shown up when you did . . . well, this would be a really different scene, and I don’t make nearly as good of a Sleeping Beauty as you do. Not that you’re a Sleeping Beauty. More of a Snow White, with your coloring. Too bad Artie isn’t here. He could kiss you awake. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Silence from Sarah. There was no change in the mix of thoughts and emotions rolling off of her.

I sighed. “I know you’re feeling pretty rotten right now, but seriously, you found the best solution. You found the answer where everybody walked away. How many cuckoos would have done that? Most of them would have just reached for the matches and watched the whole thing burn. You did the right thing. You did the best thing. You did the thing that saved the most lives, and that’s why I love you.”

Silence from Sarah . . . but I thought, for just a second, that I felt her fingers tighten on mine.

I closed my eyes. “So Grandma says that you get to go back to Ohio for a little while. You like it there, right? You’ll have all your books, and you can pick up your comics from the comic book store for the first time in like, a year. Lots of spandex drama for you to catch up on. Speaking of drama, you realize we’re stuck with Dominic now, right? The Covenant won’t be coming back for him . . .”

I talked until I ran out of words, and then I just sat there and held her hand, “listening” to the mixture of thoughts and images that came pouring off her. This, too, was a part of my life; remembering that everything costs, and sometimes, what it costs is more than we want to pay. But we pay anyway, because that’s the right thing to do. Sarah would get better. She had to.

I was still sitting there, holding Sarah’s hand, when Grandma came back into the room. She came and stood next to me, putting her hand on my shoulder, and the three of us stayed that way for quite some time.

A semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village

Three days later

WITH THE COVENANT out of Manhattan, it was safe to return to my apartment . . . and with the apartment’s actual owner returning from her year-long sabbatical at the end of the month, it was also time to start packing my things. It was time for me to go home.

Uncle Mike was already on the way back to Chicago. He’d taken Grandma Baker and Sarah with him when he left, promising to drop them in Columbus, where Grandma would be able to focus on nursing Sarah back to a reasonable facsimile of normal. Sarah was still asleep when they left. As far as I knew, Grandma was planning to keep her that way all the way home. I didn’t question it. She knew better than I did what was safe for cuckoo biology.

Kitty had accepted my resignation with a minimum of argument once I explained that I was leaving the city. New York was too dangerous for me, at least for a little while. My parents and I were both right when we said that my time in Manhattan would determine my future. I was just wrong when I said that my future was going to be in ballroom dance. That was a good world. It was one that I enjoyed visiting, and would probably be a part of for the rest of my life. But it wasn’t my world.

I was a Price. I was a cryptozoologist. I needed to accept that, with all the good things and bad things that it included, and that meant that I needed to focus on my training. If I was going to be a serious cryptozoologist, I needed to get better. I needed to make sure that I would never be caught flat-footed again. It was time to approach my real calling the way I had always approached dance: with total dedication, and my whole heart.

Well. Most of my heart, anyway. I could save a few bits out for special purposes.

The mice scurried around my feet, carrying small items and articles of my clothing to the appropriate boxes. The Sacred Ritual of Packing All the Crap was one that they knew well, and they were surprisingly good at not getting stepped on.

I was packing my collection of perfume bottles filled with holy water in sheets of eggcup foam when there was a knock at the front door. I straightened. I’d been waiting for that knock all day, but my hands still shook when I heard it. Slowly, I walked to the door, and called, “Who is it?”

“Let me in , you infuriating woman,” said Dominic.

Smiling, I undid the locks and opened the door.

Dominic De Luca was standing in the hall, wearing his oh-so-classic black duster, holding a paper sack of what smelled like fried chicken in one hand. He held it up. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“Starving,” I said, and stepped to the side. “Come in.”

He did, stepping past me before turning to look in my direction. “Verity—”

“I would have called, but I didn’t have your number.” I closed and locked the door. “That’s going to have to change, you know. You can’t be the mysterious disappearing boy anymore if we’re going to do this thing.”

“Do what?” he asked. There was a hopeful note in his voice that told me I was doing the right thing. I’d already been almost sure, but it was still nice to hear it confirmed.

I turned to offer him a shrug and a smile. “I’m leaving for Oregon in the morning. Renting a U-Haul and everything, since I can’t exactly ship the mice across the country via FedEx, and it would be nice to have a little time to just drive. I thought you might want to come with me. There’s a lot more to America than New York, you know.”

“You would want me to come with you?”

This was it, then: this was the moment of truth, for both of us. I reached out and carefully took the bag of chicken from his hand. He let it go without resistance, and didn’t look in the least bit surprised when I chucked it into the kitchen. A river of mice followed the bag, cheering. I stepped closer to him, closing the distance between us.

“You said you loved me, before,” I said. “Did you mean that?”

“With all my foolish heart,” he said.

I put my arms around his shoulders, offering him a very small smile. “Then yes. I want you to come with me. I want you to come to Oregon; I want you to meet my family. You chose me over the Covenant of St. George, so I guess that means I need to show you that you did the right thing.”