“Hey, Mordecai, you can teach basic math and literacy, can’t you?” said Hyacinth.

“Ahhhh!” Mordecai replied, as this conversation was taking place in a pitch-dark room and Hyacinth had just woken him up by leaning over him and breathing on him. “Oh, gods!” He began to cough.

She folded her arms and sat back on the rug. “Well?”

“Uncle?” Erik said.

“I’m all right! Your Auntie Hyacinth has just failed to give me a heart attack!” He wiped his mouth with a tissue. It joined the others in the pile beside the bed. “Hyacinth, why is this important now?”

“We’re having a minor crisis in the basement. I just sent Maggie out to do the papers for him, but he’s moved on to being worried about people taking things from the school and the kids not knowing where he is. He’s a wily one.” As if she were attempting to land a fish, or maybe keep a lizard trapped in a shoebox.

Did you at least poke some holes in the lid, Hyacinth? thought Mordecai. He stood up and selected a blanket to wrap around his shoulders while he went after some clothes. “Why did you think it was a good idea to ask me to do this in the predawn hours while it’s below freezing out there?”

“Because you have to be out of the house anyway, you don’t have a baby or a job, and you’re not the General,” said Hyacinth. “And you don’t have to go now. Just make some noises like you will later, after the sun comes up. He’s just making excuses, anyway, but it’s easier to smile and nod than to tie him up and stuff medicine into him by force.”

“You know, you have got him locked in the basement. You might as well.” He had put on pants, socks and shoes and was debating whether to exchange his nightshirt for a shirt-shirt with Hyacinth in the room. It’s not like she hasn’t seen me… But it’s not like it was voluntary.

“It isn’t a lock,” said Hyacinth. There was no door, so, naturally, no lock.

“You had Milo put magic on the stairs so he can’t leave, what do you want to call that?”

“Gentle discouragement,” Hyacinth said firmly.

“So is a flamethrower… Will you get out of here so I can get dressed the rest of the way?”

“Honestly, you have less of a chest than I do,” said Hyacinth. But she did get up from the rug and extricate herself.

A few minutes later, Mordecai presented himself at the top of the basement stairs in full winter regalia and called down, “Seth? Are you down there?”

Hyacinth answered, “He’s not allowed anywhere else!”

“Well, is he listening and coherent?”

“…Yes,” came a ragged reply. This was followed by the sound of a tissue being put to use.

“Okay. Look, once it warms up a little, I’m going to go down to the school and make sure it’s still there. And if there are any kids around, I’ll let them know what happened. I’ll leave a note on the blackboard.”

“Don’t!” said the basement. “If there’s a sign saying I’m not going to be back, they’ll walk off with everything!”

“Well, I’ll put something in there about how I’ll be back… And I’ll say how you’re not feeling well and you’ll be back later. I’m good at emotional blackmail.” He smiled. There was no answering indication of good humour from the basement. Hyacinth did not understand the concept of emotional blackmail and appeared completely immune to it, and Seth probably understood it a little too well. “Seth, are you sure you want me to try teaching them?”

“Hyacinth can’t,” Seth said weakly, which was not quite a vote of confidence. “Sometimes they just want someone to talk to. You can do that.” A pause, which Mordecai could not help reading bitterness into. “Can you get it warm under the bridge for them? I’ve got spells anchored at the corners, you can see the circles.”

“Ah, yeah, I’m probably not going to be able to do that. I know how to build trash can fires!”

Sounds of a scuffle, and then Hyacinth’s voice, “Seth, put the goddamn toaster down! You need the toaster!”

Mordecai was aware that Milo had done something to the toaster. He had also made a preliminary attempt with the eggbeater, but apparently that didn’t have enough gears. It wasn’t an actual heater, it was some kind of automated heating charm casting thing. Mordecai had no idea whether it could still make toast. The eggbeater sure as hell didn’t work anymore, it set the curtains on fire. From across the room.

“We don’t even know if the damn thing will work outside of the basement! Put it down! If we break it, I don’t know what in the hell he’ll come up with next! Do not make me decide whether to kick a sick man in the testicles or let Milo burn down the house!”

“Listen, you two, what if I just bring the kids here?” Mordecai offered from above, like a concerned deity. It wasn’t exactly a paradise, but it had walls and a roof. People could sit on the stairs.

“Then there’s no one at the school,” Seth said.

“If we have the kids here, he’s going to scream bloody murder until I let him teach them,” Hyacinth said, a great deal more sharply. “He is going to rest and you’re gonna help me out so I don’t have to put him in a coma to get him to do that, right, Mordecai?”

“Okay! I wasn’t trying to get out of it,” (Yes, he was.) “I was just trying to keep you two from killing each other!” He softened his tone, “Seth, I’ll do the best I can. I’ll try the spells. Sometimes I can get things to work.”

He did a lot better with things that had moving parts — they seemed to rely on pure automation, rather than his own personal conductivity, or lack thereof. On a good day, he could get a mage light going!

“They eat mice,” Seth said. “Insects work, too, but they don’t go as long.”

“Thank you. I will, um, swing by an appliance store.” (No, he would not.) “As long as I’m up, do you want breakfast?”

“No, thank you.”

“Yes! Make something hot! And some more tea!”

On the way to the kitchen, Mordecai found Erik peeking out of the bedroom with a concerned expression. He had also gotten dressed. Mordecai tried smiling at him. “Dear one, what would you like for breakfast? Pancakes?”

Erik drew a few slow breaths, which Mordecai recognized as the boy trying to get on top of what he was feeling so that he could talk. Mordecai tried to help him with it, “Erik, I know this is upsetting you…”

Erik put up a hand. He shook his head. “Seth… would like… oatmeal… honey and… cinnamon.” His expression darkened further. “But… won’t… say it.”

“Okay,” said Mordecai. “I will make that. But I know that’s not what you’re upset about. Do you want to try to talk about it?”

Erik shook his head.

Mordecai sighed. “Do you want me to just make oatmeal so Seth has something he likes?”

Erik nodded.

“Do you want to try to write about it while I do that? You can be in the kitchen where it’s warm.” He tried smiling again. “You could use your stencil.”

Mordecai was not entirely thrilled with the advent of the stencil. Ann and Milo had given it for Erik’s birthday. Well, Ann had given it, but Milo had input and included a card: We both think you draw just fine and we don’t mind about the letters, but I know you mind, so maybe this’ll help.

It did help. Erik was over the moon about it. He wasn’t too interested in the simple shapes that were included (though he had expressed a fondness for the star), he wanted the alphabet. It was only the capitals, but he didn’t care. He could finally get the letters right all on his own!

Mordecai did not like to remind him at this juncture that he was not getting the letters right all on his own, he was getting them right with a stencil, but it seemed like a few more weeks of stencil-stencil-stencil might get the boy’s handwriting to atrophy altogether.

He needed to be able to write on his own. It was faster, for one, and while Mordecai did not think Erik was going to improve about flipping his letters around, he did think Erik might get a little less embarrassed about it with practice. That needed to happen, too, or he was going to be filling out job applications with a stencil — or not at all.

But Erik didn’t write very fast when he was upset, anyway, and he did like the stencil. And he only got it a few days ago, maybe he’d get sick of it, like that puzzle with the shapes.

Erik nodded. He still wasn’t happy, but he liked the kitchen, and the smells of cooking. And the stencil. “Okay.”

Milo was in the kitchen. He had a bowl of cereal but he was not doing anything about that. This was his time to eat and get himself together when it was quiet and that was not happening today. He also had the kitchen pad and a pencil, which was much more attractive and distracting than the bowl of cereal. However, he did still notice people coming into the kitchen. He dropped the pencil, then he glanced up and winced.

Erik had produced quite a long missive for Milo last night, employing the stencil, on the subject of Seth. Erik did not like Milo going around all the time with a little black rain cloud of ugly thoughts following him — it was almost as bad as when he and Calliope were hiding from each other. So Erik had attempted to disabuse Milo of his notion that Seth was evil because he liked needles. Also, he had mentioned that Seth’s whole family got shot to death and it was Yule and he was sick and unhappy.

(Erik was quite well-versed in emotional blackmail, though he wouldn’t have known to call it that. He was Mordecai’s child.)

He rounded the whole thing out with a reminder that he still loved Milo a whole lot, it just made him sad when Milo was mean: I know you’re not mean, just scared. Please don’t be mean to Seth. Be nice to him. It’s Yule. And he added a couple hearts and some stars, and wrote his name without using the stencil, because you were supposed to do that; it was a signature. Sincerely, Erik Weitz.

(“Sincerely.” That was almost as bad as “siege.” It was nice of Hester to put the spelling for things in his head, even if she couldn’t help him get the letters right. He was sure it was her because his writing suffered when he was out of the house and she couldn’t follow.)

Erik is mad at me, Milo thought.

Erik’s muddled description of how Seth used to have to get up every day and have needles or else people would die was a lot harder to process than the part where Erik was mad at him. He might’ve dismissed it altogether if Erik didn’t mention about cigarettes and Auntie Enora. Milo knew Erik didn’t want to get up every day and have coffee and cigarettes and no food or sleep.

He didn’t like to think of Seth that way. Seth was in the mental box with the needles and the straitjacket and awful things and Milo did not want to start taking things out of that box. Not when it was already Yule with the blinking lights and the loud music and people and presents, and now Seth in the house, and he still had to be worried about hurting Calliope and not do that again…

…But I think maybe being mean to Seth is being that bad person who doesn’t care and made Calliope so mad she hit me.

He didn’t think Erik wanted to hit him, but he wasn’t totally sure.

He didn’t want upstairs with the mirror, he didn’t want Ann to start talking to him about this again, but there was nowhere else to go.

Anyway, he had a project now — and a time limit! Finding some way to keep Mordecai warm and alive under the bridge in Cinders Alley before it was time to get on the bus for work! He had until nine. Maybe Ann would be quiet and just let him do that. He took the pencil and the tablet, abandoned the cereal, and sidled out the other kitchen doorway, giving Erik a wide berth.

“Do you still not want to tell me what you wrote for Milo?” Mordecai said.

Erik looked irritated at him. “Not… now.”

“Oh. Right. I’m sorry.” Mordecai walked into the pantry, in search of the oatmeal. Erik began opening drawers, in search of his stencil. He never should’ve left it in the kitchen, things in the kitchen grew legs. It might be in Hyacinth’s doctor bag by now.

Maggie swung in the back door with snow-muddied boots before Mordecai was even finished dishing Erik his oatmeal. (Seth and Hyacinth got their portions first. Hyacinth had insisted.) “Aw, just oatmeal?” she said.

“That was suspiciously fast paper-delivery, Magnificent,” Mordecai said. It was still dark out.

She beamed at him. “It was, wasn’t it?” She had the last one tucked under her arm and she deposited it on the table. “There! I’m all done! Food reward, please.”

“What do you want on it?”

“Give it two seconds, let’s see if they’ll tell Erik.” Maggie was not in the habit of noticing unhappy people when she was pleased with herself.

Erik regarded her for a moment. He closed his grey eye and covered the metal one. He spoke as if pronouncing the health of a very old man, “Tuna salad.”

Maggie cackled. “And mustard, Erik! You forgot the mustard!”

Milo walked in with his head down, collected the entire bowl of contraceptive charms from under the kitchen sink, and walked out again without engaging the people or the oatmeal.

“O… kay,” Mordecai said.

“I really hope he sets the curtains on fire again,” Maggie said.

“I hope to the gods he doesn’t set something else on fire,” Mordecai said.

Maggie threw her head back and cackled again.

Mordecai helpfully re-flavoured her oatmeal for her. She ate it. While grimly maintaining eye-contact with him the entire time. Which zoomed right past “humorous” and “weird” and set up housekeeping at “terrifying.”

The grey sky was blush with sunlight when Calliope came into the kitchen with Lucy in tow. She inquired after Seth and expressed her oatmeal preference. “Oh, hey, another ransom note,” she said.

Erik’s brief manifesto on sick people and concern was folded up near the stove. Mordecai had already read it, but he didn’t feel right just throwing it away. Erik could do that if he wanted.

“Can I have this one, Erik? You done with it?” She glanced over the words, not absorbing them as a coherent statement, but as building blocks for a potential collage.

Erik nodded slowly. He guessed he didn’t mind Calliope knowing he was worried about stuff, or anyone. It wasn’t like it made any difference. Nobody wanted him to call Auntie Enora… and Seth wouldn’t be okay calling Beauty for a cold, given the potential consequences.

Of course, a dead uncle was also a potential consequence, but Uncle Mordecai got sick a lot and that usually didn’t happen. Well, he’d never died yet, but the almost-dying thing. Erik was more comfortable getting shut up in his own head for potentially two weeks again than rolling the dice on a dead uncle, but everybody else felt the exact opposite. And he was eight and he didn’t get to pick.

“You could have the whole stencil,” he added. It was a lot easier talking about… absolutely anything else. “Then you can write whatever you want.”

“That’s no fun,” Calliope said. “This is significant!” She brandished the note. “This is you talking, but crystallized, like Milo’s cards. It means something!”

“It says what it means,” Erik said, mystified.

Calliope waved both hands and shook her head. “No, no, no. More than that!” She looked faintly messianic, and a little like Barnaby. She turned the note around and admired it at arms’ length. She grinned. The Barnaby-ness dissolved. “And it looks totally cool like this. ‘Give us the money and you can have the girl!’”

Before she could further expound on the writing or sample her oatmeal, a man clutching a bloody dishtowel to his face banged into the kitchen via the back door. He was not readily identifiable, but he seemed to be wearing his coat over pyjama pants. “Huzzin!” he said.

Mordecai was practised at decoding screaming and, anyway, “Hyacinth” was already implied. He departed to get her. Calliope put the man in a chair and asked him what he liked on his oatmeal.

“Hah?” A pair of blue eyes appeared above the dishtowel.

Calliope shrugged. “I mean, Cin’ll take care of the other thing. We’ve got cereal too.”

The man was bleeding next to a box of Marshmallow Smiles when Hyacinth scrambled into the kitchen. “What happened? Can you talk?” She put a hand on the towel and tried to guide it down.

“Newpufferhimmeinnafaaaze!” Why, Miss Hyacinth, I do believe a newspaper has hit me in the face.

Erik and Mordecai, and eventually Hyacinth and Calliope, turned to look at Maggie.

Maggie made a delicate gesture with thumb and forefinger. “It has just now occurred to me that maybe I should’ve specified the addresses on that list instead of the names.”

There was a frantic knocking on the back door.

“Oh, gods, Maggie, can you stop them? …Mordecai, get the damn door!”

“Not unless you want to get Milo and my mom to kludge us some time travel, and I think they might break the universe if they figured it out.”

“No, no, you’re right,” said Hyacinth. “Let’s confine the crisis to all subscribers of the Daily News within a four-mile radius and leave the universe out of it.”

“It’s four miles total, that’s only a few blocks! And it can’t have hit all of them in the nose!”

It had not. This gentleman had a black eye that was swelling shut, as well as a bloody lip that he was trying to staunch with tissues.

“You know, Hyacinth,” said Mordecai. “It’s warm enough. I think I might just toddle off to the school. We wouldn’t want Seth to worry. Erik, will you come…?”

“Erik is staying to help me distribute tissues and plot your hideous demise,” Hyacinth said.

Mordecai appeared suddenly concerned. “But I don’t know any of them.” Erik might not be able to advise him on academics, but he would at least know the names — and have some idea of their capacity for violence. This was not a good neighbourhood. Mordecai didn’t even like to play violin here when he could help it.

“Oh, gee. A couple cute little kids you don’t know who’d like you to teach them the alphabet or four miles worth of angry newspaper subscribers with head injuries?” Hyacinth said. “It’s a real conundrum. I anxiously await your decision.”

“Dear one, will you be all right? You don’t have to stay just because she says so.”

Erik nodded. He didn’t think he could manage words right now, but he wasn’t upset about a houseful of hurt people, that happened all the time, and this time it wasn’t even his fault. He might go back and be upset about Seth being sick in the basement in a little while, but now there was a new situation to deal with

 Now, he was glaring at Maggie and thinking only, If you got Seth fired, I am gonna be so mad at you!

It had never even occurred to him that his uncle might be scared of a bunch of little kids — not a brave adult person who’d been through a war.

When the third patient showed up with pieces of a broken coffee cup lodged in his face that needed to be removed with tweezers, the brave adult person who had been through a war decided coping with a bunch of scary little kids was at least preferable to throwing up in the kitchen, and left.

◈◈◈

The end table had been placed directly in front of the front door and a folded paper bag with a white card hard-stuck to it was awaiting Mordecai in Milo’s absence. (He didn’t want to go back into the kitchen and talk to people, of course, and he didn’t have time to change.)

The bag was full of contraceptive charms. “Contraceptive” had been crossed out on each one, and “Heat” written above it in pencil.

Oh, gods, Milo, no, thought Mordecai.

Maybe he got rid of the glitter, thought Mordecai. He selected a single square packet and tore it open.

Milo had not got rid of the glitter. A gay little shower of silver and gold sparkles poured out and faded like embers before they hit the ground. Hooray! Someone is getting laid!

Do not use if torn or punctured, the packet advised. If glitter fails to engage, charm may have been used or expired. Used and expired charms do not prevent pregnancy!

…For the idiots in the room, thought Mordecai.

He sighed. The damn thing was working. It was positively toasty, all the way down to his shoes. That feeling you get when you put your hands on a warm cup of coffee, but full body and no giant coffee cup required. It was so much easier to breathe like this, as if a zaftig snowman had been evicted from his chest. Summer air, without the attendant coal dust. If he reached out he could breach the limits of the charm, and the air there was like needles in his fingertips.

So. He could either humiliate himself with glitter every thirty minutes or stand out in the cold all day, come home and scare the hell out of Erik with coughing. Erik had been up repeatedly last night, wanting to know if he was okay and not getting sick. This morning after Hyacinth tried to kill him was only the latest iteration.

Mordecai stuffed the bag in his coat pocket. Damn you for giving me the glitter option, Milo.

The snow melted around him when he walked down the street.