Hyacinth rolled out of bed and put her feet on the floor. The bare wood felt like an ice floe, despite the socks. She also had socks on her hands. The wind was rattling the merged glass of her window and she thought she heard more snow impacting.

She was glad she had dragged Seth out from under the bridge and imprisoned him, even if knocking in the middle of the night meant another complication.

Erik was standing there with his nightshirt and an empty socket, wincing in the cold. His legs and feet were bare.

Aha. Either Erik has caught Seth’s cold or Mordecai has. Or Mordecai has caught more than a cold and we’re about to have Auntie Enora again.

He snatched her hand and put it on his forehead. She removed the sock. A touch-know worked better that way. Not that she had any doubt. “You’re not feeling so hot, are you, kid?”

He shook his head.

“Want me to check your uncle?”

He nodded with the whole upper half of his body, like he was bowing to some kind of exotic idol.

“Right. Let me give you a blanket. You can quarantine yourself up here for right now.”

On her way to the hall wardrobe and the stairs, the door to Room 202 clicked open and Maggie peeked out. “Cin? Do you need help?”

Erik, who had managed to contain himself up until now, burst into tears.

“Oh, hell,” said Hyacinth. “Look, sit with him.” She threw Maggie blankets. “I’m going to check Mordecai. Erik can’t talk to me about it, it’s quicker to look. I’ll come back.”

The sounds of crying engaged Room 201 and Ann looked out too. “Cin?”

Hyacinth was already halfway down the stairs. She flung an irritated gesture. “Erik has a cold, I’m checking Mordecai. Blankets. Whatever. I’ll be back!”

“Mom, it’s just Erik,” Maggie called over her shoulder. Ann sat down on the top stair and bundled Erik into her lap. Maggie sat down beside them and applied blankets. Erik hid his face against Ann’s shoulder and shook his head.

It was so stupid! He had been so careful — he didn’t go into the basement for anything, he hadn’t had milk for days — and it didn’t even matter. He could’ve set up housekeeping in Seth’s bag of used tissues for all the good it did.

Now he was going to have to be sick in the basement again. And with Seth, which he was pretty sure neither one of them wanted.

“I’m… sorry…” he choked. It didn’t make sense, but it was the only thing he could get out.

“Oh, no, dear,” Ann said. She rocked with him and patted the back of his head, like she was trying to get Lucy settled down. “That’s all right. It’s not your fault, now, is it?” She did not leave space for a reply. “Of course it isn’t.”

“You can camp out in my room if you want, Erik,” Maggie said. “My mom’s got it too. And I’ve probably got it, but it’s not showing yet.”

“Your mother doesn’t seem sick, sweetheart,” Ann said suspiciously. Milo perked up at the back of her mind. How not to seem sick was useful information!

Maggie shrugged. “Yeah, she doesn’t use tissues, she just does deconstructions. There’s no mucus sitting around so it doesn’t make her throat sore or her nose stuffy.”

Milo provided Ann vivid information on why doing deconstructions on your own sinuses was a terrible idea. Erik picked up on it, too, and he lifted his head with a pained expression. “Er, Milo seems to think that might make her head explode, dear,” Ann said.

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, she doesn’t do it to me if I’m sick,” Maggie said. “I’m not really anxious to try it.”

“Get back in that bedroom, damn it!” Hyacinth’s voice said, the volume increasing as she emerged herself.

Mordecai said something in reply, but you couldn’t tell what from upstairs.

“He’s upset because he doesn’t want to get you sick!” said Hyacinth. “So stay in the damn bedroom and don’t get sick! I can be comforting too! …Screw you, Mordecai, yes I can!” She did not quite close the door behind her, but she kept a hand on it, and she called up the stairs, “Erik, he’s fine.” The door jumped against her hand and she pulled it back. “He’s an idiot, but he’s fine.”

Erik nodded rapidly. He felt lots better, like one of the bad guys slipped up and showed him the gun wasn’t loaded, but he still couldn’t talk about it or quit crying.

They fixed everything around him and talked about him like he was a fragile houseplant that needed complicated tending. Blankets and pillows and tissues and medicine. Ann held him and spoke softly to him until Hyacinth asked her to bring a cot up from the basement, then she bundled him up and left him sitting at the top of the stairs with Maggie.

Maggie put an arm around him and tried to be nice, but she wasn’t as good at it as Ann. She teased him and told him he was being dumb. He would’ve hated that from Ann, but Maggie didn’t mean things the same way. Coming from her, it made him feel a little less dumb, somehow.

“Quit… hanging… on… me,” he managed, finally. “I have germs.”

“Boy germs,” Maggie said. “Yuck.”

“Girl… germs,” he replied and shoved at her.

“What kind of germs do you think Ann and Milo have?”

“…Confused.”

Maggie snickered. “Maybe that’s why they never get sick.”

Erik frowned. He was pretty sure Ann and Milo did get sick, but if you wanted to help them, you’d have to hit them with a blow dart and throw a net over them like those animals in the safari comics: We’re going to relocate this problem rhinoceros, call it in sick at work, and force-feed it chicken soup.

He was also pretty sure if he let that slip around Hyacinth, she’d find a dart gun and go on the hunt. And Ann and Milo would really hate it.

He sighed and hung his head. Oh, damn, there’s that thing I’m not supposed to remember again. His uncle couldn’t help him with it now, he’d have to tough it out.

Maggie wanted to know if he wanted to go back to bed. He nodded. So she left him and went to bug Ann and Hyacinth about getting the cot set up, and he leaned against the stair railing and shut his eye.

Ann came out a little later. When she put arms around him and picked him up, he just let her.

His throat was scratchy like wool socks and his socket ached from the cold, and he couldn’t breathe through his nose — and he was worried about stuff, there was always that — but he fell asleep pretty fast anyway.

He dreamed fragmented things about shots and straitjackets and drowning, woke exhausted and slept again.

◈◈◈

Mordecai slept thinly, if at all, and when he noticed light showing around the edges of the curtains he got up and got dressed to go down to the school.

It was either late morning or too early. The sky was grey and there was no one in the kitchen. He would’ve appreciated an update on Erik, but he knew better than to go upstairs and try to get one. He drank water, lit the stove intending coffee, and then ended up drinking more water while staring blankly at the coffee pot. It didn’t really matter. He couldn’t taste and think at the same time, anyway.

Hyacinth had unloaded both barrels of guilt at him last night, with no care for anything but his physical safety. The result was an emotional hangover that left him wanting to cry and punch people at the same time. This is not fair!

No, but that was how it was. But it still wasn’t fair. But he still couldn’t do anything about it. But it still wasn’t fair.

She’d better be out buying him ice cream and comic books and soda and whatever else he wants, he thought.

She might as well buy things for the whole house, we’re all going to get it. This is pointless!

No, it wasn’t. Because if he didn’t hang around Erik and he got sick anyway, then Erik wouldn’t blame himself.

Sure he will, because I have a diseased brain and it’s contagious.

He sighed. That didn’t matter either. He wouldn’t go upstairs and look in on Erik because if Erik woke up and was frightened to see him, that would hurt too much. Bottom line. So he might as well go out and keep an eye on the school, because there was nothing he could do here. Damage control.

I’ll buy him a comic book, he thought petulantly. She won’t think of that and even if she does she won’t get a good one and if she does get a good one I’ll get a better one. He fished some money out of the glass jar on the counter and jammed it into his coat pocket without looking. Now…

“I swear to the gods, I just want un putain de verre d’eau!” a ragged voice insisted. “Stairs de merde! Casse-toi!”

Mordecai blinked. Verre d’eau?

He shrugged. Well, okay, He might as well do that. He sure as hell didn’t care if Seth felt guilty for getting him sick.

The red man plunked down the basement stairs bearing a glass of water to find Seth curled up in the cot with his head buried in his arms.

Also, on the worktable, a sheet had been flung over the radio and there was a tiny Yule tree blinking with multicoloured lights — and a pitcher of water, a dish with some soda crackers, a bowl of porridge with steam coming off of it, medicine bottles, and a random selection of reading material, mostly novels.

“She’s got you set up like a pet hamster down here,” Mordecai said. “All you need is a little wheel for the exercise. What do you want with a verre d’anything?”

Seth looked up at him. His eyes and nose were running and it was not the cold, not entirely the cold. “It’s the stairs,” he said miserably. “I thought I’d just go while she’s out — I don’t want to be here! — but it’s the damn stairs. I can’t.”

Mordecai folded his arms and held the glass of water at his elbow. “So you thought you would convince them.”

Seth glanced down at the stairs and narrowed his voice to a whisper, “They can think.”

“I see. And what kind of cold medicine has she been giving you?”

He frowned and rested his cheek on his fist like a little kid. His voice came out smushed, “I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s more than I need so I’ll be quiet.”

“Okay.” Mordecai set the water glass down on the table. “I’m going to get out of here and head down to the school before I get both of us in trouble. I thought I’d swing by the drugstore on the way home. You want anything?”

“No.” The blue man flung a gesture. “She’s getting it. I don’t even know what I asked for. Popsicles au chocolat or something that doesn’t even make sense.”

“I think us peasants call those choc-ices.”

“Oh. Maybe it did make sense.”

“Seth…” In any other circumstance, he would’ve drawn nearer, but there were scary germs over there. He just laid a hand on the banister. “I mean this in all seriousness and with the utmost sympathy, okay? Give up. Sleep, and eat soda crackers, and do all that sick people stuff, and you’ll get better, then she’ll have to let you out of here. If you’re down here crying and yelling at the stairs, it’s just going to go on for longer. I know it’s not very comforting, but I can’t stay and sit with you…”

“Don’t want you to,” Seth muttered into his hand.

“I know. I’m sorry. Please just try to get some sleep.” Mordecai climbed up the stairs and found himself climbing down them again. “Wait…”

Seth stood. “My gods, you’ve angered them.”

Mordecai frowned. “Don’t be stupid.” He climbed up the stairs and ended back on the basement floor.

Seth pointed a shaking finger. “Do you see? Do you see what I’ve been coping with for three days? Is it any wonder I’m going mental!”

“Well, there’s no reason I need to be down here going mental!” Mordecai snapped. “What the hell do they want with me?”

“You think they can think too!” Seth cried. He coughed and then spat into a tissue.

“I do not! I just…” Mordecai climbed up the stairs and climbed down the stairs. “Well, you’ve obviously broken it, whatever it is!”

Seth considered, tapping the fingers of both hands against his mouth. “Mordecai, did you…” He paused either for dramatic effect or to remember the proper word for it, “…intend to climb up those stairs and go under the bridge and teach school?”

“A fucking intent line?”

“No,” Seth said darkly. “It’s more.”

“No, this is ridiculous. We did these at the wall, and they were practically no help. They are not hard to beat.” Mordecai drew a couple of deep breaths and shook his head. “I will stay home today and read a novel. Even if I get past it, I will not change my mind. Home and a novel today for me.” He climbed up the stairs and climbed down the stairs.

“Are you lying?” Seth said.

“Of course I’m not lying!”

“Deep in your heart of hearts, do you harbour an intense desire to run out of this house and go teach school under the bridge?”

“Definitely not! Listen, they’ve been very nice to me since you asked them not to stab me, but your children creep me out. I’m only trying to keep them from gutting the school so you won’t be unhappy.”

“Did you intend to do that?”

“No!” He trailed off. “I am almost completely certain I did not intend to do that. And even if I did, now I do not!”

“It makes you doubt yourself,” Seth muttered.

“Milo did not invent magical stairs of self-doubt! That is completely stupid! I could do this if you weren’t down here making me paranoid!” Mordecai snatched up a novel from the worktable and brandished it. “I am going to read a novel. I am going to read this novel and I am going to climb these stairs, and that’s final!” He climbed up the stairs and climbed down the stairs.

“Seth,” Mordecai said, quite reasonably, “please explain to the stairs that I need to get out of here so I don’t get sick and this isn’t funny anymore.”

Seth snarled at him, “Tu es le Roi des Cons de merde! Penses-tu vraiment-vraiment I’m gonna stay in cette mince basement de…”

“Speak Anglais! I am not the help, Mr. Desdoux!”

“I wouldn’t still be down here if I could get the stairs to listen, Morph! Think for two seconds! King of the Idiots! Do you need it in Anglais?”

What neither of them knew — although it would not have changed the situation one least little bit — was that it was an intent line. Quite a rudimentary one, because Milo had been annoyed when he put it together. And because he was annoyed, he also added a “two strikes and you’re out” protocol, which Seth had promptly violated so that he was no longer allowed stairs, period. When they needed to get him out of the basement, Milo could dispel the magic. In the meantime, probably the house wouldn’t burn down.

He had also pasted one-way silence spells on the doors of Room 102, Room 103, Room 201 and, after some hesitation, Room 202. Maggie was in there, Maggie was nice. Hyacinth could come down and take care of Seth if he yelled. Or if he would not stop yelling, which had seemed like a possibility at the time.

And his newfound sympathy for Seth had not prompted him to review any part of this system. He was too preoccupied with the implications of Seth being a nice person and possible marriage material for Calliope to remember Seth might die in a fire because of the magic on the stairs.

But, anyway, Mordecai had already blown his two chances to do something other than go teach school under the bridge, and he had no way of knowing it, so he imagined he was coping with some kind of malign intelligence instead of a poorly-thought-out intent line.

“To hell with this,” said Mordecai. “We have tools and a table. I’ll break the window and go around. I’ll drag you out, too, and we’ll sit in the kitchen where it’s warm and I’ll… No, I’ll have the General watch you. Hyacinth can make a new window. It’s her fault for pointing Milo at the stairs in the first place…”

He had found a hammer under the sheet on the worktable which miraculously had its head intact. He just threw it. If he pitched it out too far to reach, he could wrap his coat around his hand and clear out the rest of the glass that way. They did that all the time during the siege.

The hammer bounced and fell onto the floor with a clatter.

“Oh, Milo, for gods’ sakes!” cried Mordecai.

“It’s magic, you can’t even touch it,” Seth said.

“It is magic, but you’re supposed to be able to break it! I have seen this happen!”

They were both right on this one. Milo’s all-purpose safety spell allowed breakage from the outside. On the inside, well, the kids could get lead poisoning putting their hands or their faces or their mouths on that glass. Or cut themselves! So there was a repel enchantment that stopped all contact a firm one-sixteenth of an inch away. It would also keep off the dust so you didn’t have to wash the windows so much!

(Hyacinth had yet to notice this, she never washed the windows at all.)

Hauling the worktable under the window and beating on the glass (or within one-sixteenth of an inch on the glass) for a good minute confirmed the “no-touchy, no-breaky” component of the spell. Mordecai dropped the hammer and ran up the stairs — to the extent that he could. About twelve seemed safe, which was almost to the doorway but not quite.

He cupped hands around his mouth and called out, “Help! This is Mordecai and I’m trapped in the basement! I need someone to undo whatever horrible thing Milo has done to the stairs! Hello? Please! I know someone’s home! Calliope? Are you there? I really need help!”

He turned to Seth, away from the stairs, lowered his voice to a hiss and opined, “Calliope is ten feet away, for gods’ sakes!”

It was a little more than that, but she was asleep and with a silence spell on her door.

“It’s a curse,” Seth whispered broadly, pointing.

“It is not a curse!” he replied, but even softer. “It is… It is a cascading series of stupid coincidences which have conspired to — Oh, goddammit, Cousin Violet!” He tramped over to the shrine and kicked it. “I will find you and I will summon you and I will force-feed you a hamburger!”

“Dois-je faire?” Seth asked weakly.

Mordecai regarded him, then he looked at his own hands, back and front. No, he did not resemble Nicky any more now than before tackling Milo’s magical stairs of self-doubt. “She has basically removed your brain for your own safety, hasn’t she?” he said.

“Violet?”

“Hyacinth!”

Seth grumbled and wiped his nose with a tissue. “I mean, I’m sick too. If Violet’s messing with us, it’s hopeless. We just have to wait for Hyacinth to get back with the choc-ices.” He turned his head slowly and gazed wide-eyed at the walls, “Unless we have fallen into some kind of private hell-dimension.” He sneezed and pulled out another tissue.

“Why did you send Hyacinth out looking for choc-ices in January?” Mordecai demanded of him.

“I’m on a lot of drugs and I’m not feeling very well! Qu’est-ce que c’est… What’s your excuse?”

“You said you wanted a glass of water! Now I’m going to get sick and die because you didn’t have enough sense not to chug two bottles of expired cold medicine and Erik’s going to think it’s all his fault! So what are you going to do about that?”

Seth emitted a low, miserable sound like a wounded animal. He pressed both hands over his face and began to cry.

“Oh, gods…” Mordecai took two steps forward then turned around like he’d hit another intent line (or whatever it was) and went back to the stairs. He sat down on the second from the bottom and put his head in his hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean it like that. I’m not going to die, I’m just worried Erik thinks I’m going to and what he might do about it. That’s not your fault.”

Seth did not take down his hands or lift his head. He pressed against the wall and turned his face to the rough surface as if hiding from a blow. “It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault. Everything isn’t my fault. I can’t do all these things. There isn’t enough of me. Why is it always my fault? Why is it always my fault? Why is it always my fault…?” He had slid down like he was trying to creep into the join between the wall and the floor.

“Seth…” Mordecai lifted a hand and dropped it. It had been a long time since he’d seen this too. Like Seth being spaced out on drugs and wanting him to play some Dylan on the violin.

He knew how to fix it, that was the hell of it. You had to sit next to him or pull him down to your level, put your hands on his shoulders and speak very seriously to him. And very sincerely. And not lie, but tell him the very specific truth: We can’t do this right now. This is an emergency situation and I need you to help me. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard. But you’re all I have.

Oh, yeah. That was brilliant. You’re the only one who can do this made more sense during the siege, but you’re all I have? Yeah, that would work right now. And then, in with the solution: I need you to help me get out of this basement, so I won’t get sick and Erik won’t hurt himself. I know you can do this.

I need you to call someone.

Yeah. No more crying. No more being stuck in the basement. Even if Seth came back with Taggart, he would probably come up with something. That would solve everything.

But that was not in any way “fixing” it! That hadn’t even been fixing it at the time. That had been a way of getting a man with a broken leg bone sticking out of a compound fracture to walk a couple more miles to an aid station so we can save everyone. Hey, you’re a hero! It’s almost a decade since the siege and your leg ain’t never gonna be right, but thanks for saving us! Again and again and again.

And why in every god’s name was it still so easy to do this? Nevermind how Seth would respond to it (he was queasily certain that would go just fine too), why was it so easy for him to figure out just what to do? Like a human being in emotional pain was a balky radio he was familiar with operating. Oh, yeah. You hit it once here, twice here, twist this dial all the way over until it screams… There! Now you can tune in any station you want!

He wanted to do it. He knew it would work and he wanted to do it. Not just because he wanted out of the basement but because he thought it was really clever and he wanted to see if he was right. He wanted to be right.

He had fallen into being a handler because he knew how to make a chocolate cake with no eggs or butter, but he had landed on both feet and quickly learned how to dance — even with people shooting at him. They taught him a little basic psychology and threw books at him, but he’d already had a lifetime of training. He just needed a little while to grasp the basic concept of what they were doing.

They were not “providing the ultimate support system for our most valuable assets, both mortal and divine,” like it said in the manual. “We help extraordinary people do extraordinary things!” which got bandied about like a motto and a mission statement, was a little closer, but hopelessly naȉve. Nobody wanted to say, “We decide what needs doing and then force you to do it!” but it wasn’t all that hard to figure out.

Sometimes it was getting an exhausted person to eat some custard and get some sleep so they wouldn’t die… and sometimes it was getting that same person to give up their body for a three-day heroin bender so everyone else wouldn’t die.

And he was really great at it. By the end of his brief marriage he’d been able to make Cathy scream merely by opening cans in a certain way that he was aware she hated. Getting a bunch of people whom society had already trained to value nobility and self-sacrifice to be noble and self-sacrificing was a piece of chocolate cake.

Seth was fundamentally motivated by a wobbly self-esteem that Mordecai and Seth’s primary handler and bilingual best friend, Nicole, had done their level best to hobble with repeated blows. He’d grown up wealthy, he was pretty sure his success was luck-based, and he didn’t think he really deserved it, but he wanted to. He’d volunteered, not with a grand sense of patriotic duty like Diane, but because he thought if he helped some people and was really nice and did good things, he might be worthy of love and happiness.

He functioned best… No. That was not “functioning.” He performed best in an environment of alternating positive attention and cold rejection: aware at all times that any love or joy or companionship he might be experiencing could be revoked if at any point he did something disappointing. A disappointing event could be supplied as needed, and then he would work himself to the literal brink of death to get back in your good graces.

Oh, boy, when they pushed him far enough that he came over all Southern and started ordering them around, they had a field day! Seth, I thought we were your friends/Seth, have you been talking down to me all this time? And then, as if in unison: That’s really hurtful. Am I just a servant to you? I thought you were nice.

Oh, no. No, no, no. I’m so sorry, Mordecai. I just got upset. I won’t do it again. (He would, because they never stopped pushing, not even when he was sick from the drugs.) Nicky, je suis désolé. Hey, Nicky, que dois-je faire? What do you need me to do to get you to love me again? I don’t want to be a bad person! Please!

They called an awful lot of gods and helped an awful lot of people that way. Seth had pinpoint accuracy compared to the others (save Alba) and he was so easy to operate sometimes Mordecai still wondered if he was putting them on.

But that was only some subsystem in Mordecai’s brain that was trying to absolve him of guilt, and it never worked very well.

He’s just whining again, he recalled Nicole saying… So many times. When Seth was sequestered in another room in a state very much like this, or had hidden himself in some small space as if they couldn’t hurt him if they couldn’t physically reach him. I’ll deal with him, don’t worry.

I’m so tired, that was usually it. Blurred with just a hint of an accent like he was drunk or numb. Not pissed off Low Southern like they’d screwed up polishing his tea set. Not It’s always my fault, like now, which was the sound of a couple years of concentrated mental abuse catching up with him. I’m so tired, a basic human need which they minimized and never allowed him. They were in charge of when he was tired.

It’s not whining, Nicole. He’d said that once, and he wasn’t sure if it was near the beginning when he was a little less numb, or near the end when he was so damn tired himself. He’s not doing it for the attention, he really is tired.

I know, she said weakly. She smiled, a pale smile, and she shook her head. But I know I can get him to keep going when he’s just saying he’s tired. So it doesn’t really matter how tired he is. I don’t have to stop and let him sleep until he starts asking me to let him die.

Please be careful with him, Nicky.

I am when I can be, Morph.

He had been dismayed when Nicky dragged him out of the laundry room with the news that Seth had thrown himself down a flight of stairs, but he could not say he was surprised.

She was crying, hysterical. Seth had smiled at her, that was all he could get out of her for the longest time. He had smiled at her. The man couldn’t have messed her up more effectively if he’d been trying.

According to Nicky, Seth tugged her hand, so she’d turned and looked back. He smiled and said something including the words “mon amour,” which Nicky had eventually translated for her nominal boss as a neutral, “See you later,” but in such a way that she knew “later” meant “after you’re dead too.” Then, before she could react, he went sideways down the stairs.

He’d banged himself up badly, broken a wrist and wrenched his shoulder and blacked one of his eyes, but he hadn’t snapped his neck or cracked his head open and now she didn’t know what to do. “There are a lot of stairs, Mordecai! I can’t watch him all the time!” She’d had them put him in a padded room with the straitjacket on.

Mordecai thought that was overreacting, especially with the broken wrist.

“He smiled at me!” she snapped. “I don’t know if he honestly wanted to kill himself or if he just wanted to hurt himself badly enough that I’d stop hurting him and love him again! I can’t do this anymore, Mordecai, I can’t do it!”

But she had to do it, and when he reminded her of that, she told him to go in there and fix it, then. Fix it!

He couldn’t fix it. He didn’t know how to fix things. But he came up with something really clever to make Seth safe around stairs and sharp objects and whatever else Nicky might be worried about. He hit the radio just right and made it work.

Seth had been smiling in the padded room with the straitjacket on too. Mordecai had read it not as I’m so proud of myself! or What a good idea I had! or even Hey, I’m a normal person who doesn’t need to be in a straitjacket! but only a desperate need for everything to be okay now and no one to be mad.

Mordecai frowned at him.

Seth continued desperately smiling and said, “I guess I had a little accident.”

And that was all Mordecai allowed him. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “I don’t have time for more of your idiotic attention-seeking behaviour. I don’t have time to tiptoe around your feelings and I don’t have time to clean up after you!” Here he undid the jacket in the back, because that damn thing hurt. Seth could probably get it the rest of the way, even with the broken wrist. “Take that stupid thing off!”

He didn’t, though. He moved his hand to his shoulder like he was going to go after the laces in the back and he froze that way because Mordecai was talking.

“You know why Nicky did that, don’t you? You scared the hell out of her! She was crying when she told me about you. She doesn’t think she can do this anymore. She doesn’t think she can take care of you.

“We are trying to keep the entire city together in the middle of a goddamn siege! And I thought you were at least halfway on board with that, but then you pull a… a… a grotesque stunt like this because apparently we are not giving you, a twenty-eight-year-old man in perfect physical condition whom we would all lay down our lives to protect, enough consideration!

“Well I am sorry, Mr. Desdoux! People are dying for real out there, and Nicky and I have to cope with that every day! I do not have time to stand here and put bandages on your wounded soul.

“So let me tell you something: if you can’t handle this anymore, if you really do want to die, if you don’t care about Nicky or me or any of your friends, you walk off right now and do it. I support your decision! Just have the decency to position yourself in no-man’s-land and take a bullet to the head so I don’t have to deal with your goddamn useless corpse.”

Having stamped CANCEL all over Seth’s extremely justified pain and need, with a few gut punches for good measure, he walked out and shut the door behind him.

There. If you kill yourself, you will be all alone forever like that and no one will love you.

It wasn’t at all logical, but it didn’t need to be. Taggart did logic. Mordecai did emotions. He found Nicole. He said, “I’ve either fixed it or I’ve destroyed him. Give him about twenty minutes to think about it, then go in and let him apologize to you…”

“Apologize?”

“…and use your own judgment. Whether it works or not, if Diane ever finds out about it, she will take me apart and never put me back together again, so you do not tell her or tell anyone about this unless you want that to happen, do I make myself clear?”

“What if he tells her?”

“He won’t.”

He hadn’t. He’d been too ashamed. He told everyone he fell and he was really sorry. Diane might’ve been a little suspicious, but it did not occur to her to take Mordecai apart looking for an answer, even though he was doing his damnedest to avoid her.

He didn’t have to avoid her for long. A few weeks later, the Grey Wall came down and the chocolate ran out and he got stuck in the hotel with Alba dying. But as far as he knew Seth had remained safe around stairs, so it seemed like everything worked out okay.

You know, if you didn’t count the entire rest of Seth’s life.

And Alba being dead.

Was that why? he wondered. He wondered that a lot. Did you leave her there to die because I was there, and I hurt you? Would you have come saved her if I wandered off to die and left her? Was it all because of me?

“I don’t want you to talk to me,” said the muffled pile on the floor. “Why do you have to be in here and talk to me? I know it’s my fault, but you don’t have to talk to me…”

“I…” Mordecai was getting mad again, and he couldn’t do that. Not now. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here. I know… I know I am a hazard to you, Seth. It is so easy for me to forget you’re a person and start treating you like a machine. I don’t want to do that.”

He did, but he didn’t too.

“But I know where all your buttons are,” he said, “and I am not a safe person to trust with that information. I use it. I am trying, I am trying very hard not to. But… But I want very badly to get out of here and I can’t promise you. It is so hard not to fall back into the way things used to be. It’s like… It’s like a path with a groove in it.”

“It’s hard for me too,” Seth said weakly. He drew out another tissue and wiped his eyes and his mouth. He did not look up. He slumped and gazed at the floor. “It wasn’t okay. I know… I know I showed up and I volunteered for it but… I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t volunteer for that. It wasn’t okay. None of it was okay. Not even when it seemed like it was. And… And… And I wasn’t strong enough.”

Eight years, Mordecai thought. Eight years since the siege ended. He knows he shouldn’t blame himself but he can’t quite stop.

I don’t want him to stop blaming himself for some of it, he thought also, but from a darker part of him.

“Are you apologizing to me?” he said. It just slipped out.

“No,” Seth said. “I can’t. Not for that. It’s too big.”

“Yes,” Mordecai said. “Seth, don’t make me talk to you, be quiet.”

Yeah, it’s all your fault again. Good job, Morph, you son of a bitch.

He cringed, but he didn’t open his mouth and try to mitigate it. He’d just make it worse.

But Seth knew there was someone in the room being mad at him and he couldn’t leave that alone in the same way he couldn’t stop blaming himself for all the abuse. “I didn’t want to be here,” he said softly. “I’m only here because… because of that stupid thing I did, and what you said. I’m too ashamed of myself to go. I can’t. I still can’t.”

Hey, Mordecai. I’ll throw myself down some stairs again if you say it’s okay. How about that? I’ll do anything if you’ll just stop being mad! Let’s have some Dylan. Please love me.

I’m going to be sick, thought Mordecai. Not a cold or even double pneumonia. Vomit. He was doing that already, it only looked like remembering things from the outside.

He spoke carefully, “I don’t want…” This. That. Any of this! “…that to happen. If that really is the only reason you’re still around… That doesn’t make it a good thing that I did, but I’m glad I did it.”

“Glad?” Seth said. He took his hand down from his head and looked up. Anger and pain were battling in his expression. “You… left… me!”

Oh, gods, he sounded like Erik trying to get the words out.

“I… made you so mad you… left me!” Now he was picking up speed. He didn’t need to find these words, he’d been over them in his head, over and over them. “You don’t leave a suicidal person alone! You don’t do that! That isn’t safe! You know that! You didn’t… You didn’t feel stupid and awful about it like I did? It was a decision? You were ‘glad’?”

“Seth, it wasn’t just me, Nicky…”

“Nicky put me in a straitjacket and a rubber room so I couldn’t hurt myself! You told me to go kill myself and you left me! Why would you do that if I didn’t make you?”

“Seth, I…” Mordecai looked down, twining his fingers together like a guilty little kid. “I hurt you so you’d be safe without the straitjacket and the rubber room. I needed to make it hurt so much you’d never do that again. I wasn’t mad…” He looked up. “Nicky and I didn’t get mad at you half the time, we… We were just hitting you so you’d work right.”

“Nicky…?” Seth said, wide-eyed. Old, well-worn thoughts returned again, unbidden. Their flawed, fragile structure was crumbling. Nicky really loved me, she didn’t just take care of me because they said she had to. She was my best friend, and she always forgave me, no matter how much I screwed up…

What do they say? When a blind man suddenly sees? “The scales fell away from his eyes?” What do they say when that hurts so much you want to tear them out again?

“Did you do that to Alba?” he demanded, so high his voice broke. He stood and approached the stairs with hardly a thought for his potentially deadly cold germs. (And that thought was, So?) “Salaud! Were you to her what Nicky was to me? Did you hit that sweet little girl so she’d ‘work right’?”

“Don’t you fucking talk about her!” Mordecai cried, shooting to his feet. And the silence spells on the doors in the house still held. “You haven’t any right!”

“She was kind to me!” Seth said. “And she never asked me to call anyone so I know she meant it! It wasn’t her fault about killing people all the time, that was… that was people like you and Nicky saying she had to! She was a genuinely good person in a fucked up situation and I loved her!”

“Then why did you let her die?”

That hung there in the air between them like a word balloon in a comic book, or a dead body that had fallen from a rafter in a horror movie. They both stared at it.

“You can hit me all you like but I’m not going to ‘work,’” Seth said coldly. “If I ever find out you hurt her, I really will ‘hit’ you…” He fisted both hands, but he didn’t mean hitting and both of them knew it. “And I’ll take Erik away so you can’t hit him.”

“Who’s going to watch him when you go up to Candlewood Park to sell sex so you can buy drugs?” Mordecai said. The blow landed, he knew it, he felt it in the deepest part of him, but it made no difference at all.

“That’s all you know how to do, isn’t it?” Seth said. “Work people like machines. You’ve never had a human relationship in your life. Tu ne peux pas! All you do is read manuals and press buttons. And if you should happen to get real love or devotion out of someone, you eat it like a bag of chips and feed a few more quarters in to see what else you can get.”

Mordecai drew a long, slow breath, as if trying to sip oxygen into a collapsed lung around a broken rib. Also, somebody really needed to take care of this sucking chest wound. It was too bad about Hyacinth and the choc-ices. “Do you think I don’t know that?” he said. “And do you think it doesn’t hurt?”

“I don’t know what I think about you.”

Mordecai turned and took a few paces away. He wanted to hit Seth some more, a lot more, but that wouldn’t stop Seth from hurting him. If he wanted to make that stop he needed to cough up more than a bag of chips.

“I did not hurt her,” he said. “She didn’t need that like you… And I don’t mean to say you needed it, but… she wasn’t like an ox that has to be driven to pull. Not to pull. It was never your job to pull. To… To half-kill itself in the harness so you can lift something no one can be expected to lift. I had to tackle her and hold her down to stop her from doing things like that. She was like one of those sled dogs that’ll take off without you and run halfway across Prokovia if you’re not careful. She needed someone to feed her and care for her and put her to bed. And sometimes she needed someone safe to yell at, or for her to hit. I know…”

He shook his head. I know you used Nicky like that sometimes too. But that was more hitting and that would get him nowhere. There were no points to score and nothing to be won, not even peace. He just wanted it to be over, like the siege.

“…I know it was hard to do what you did, what she did. You just dealt with it differently. I didn’t have to be a monster with her and I was and am incredibly grateful for that. I could’ve been… even worse than this if I didn’t have her.”

“I don’t know how I can believe anything you say,” Seth said.

“No. But do you?”

“Yes.” …But apparently I’m easy to fool, he thought.

“I don’t hurt Erik,” Mordecai said. “Not on purpose. Not like you, not like everyone else. I know how he works, I can’t help that, but I use that to stop him being hurt.” He kicked the lowest step of the stairs, “I don’t want to get stuck in basements and get sick and scare the hell out of him, that just happens!”

Seth rediscovered Erik’s involvement in Mordecai’s health like a set of keys he’d lost down the couch cushions — Oh, my gods. How did I forget I have a snowmobile?

He backed off, too, and sat down on the cot. “You want to use me to get out,” he said. That was also on the key ring, next to the snowmobile and being too worthless to do anything by himself.

“Yes, but it’s pointless,” Mordecai said. “If I don’t get this cold and scare him I’m going to get another cold and scare him and I’ve probably got this one already. I just want to do something so I feel better about myself.”

“I’d let you,” Seth said. It was not so much an offer as another warning.

Mordecai put up his hands. “I know that too. But I no longer exist in a vacuum. Erik would find out about it. And Hyacinth would find out about it, and she’d damn well kill me and make a money clip out of my lungs.” He smiled weakly. “I have people to keep me honest these days.”

“Me too,” Seth said. He considered that. Yes, I am reasonably sure the children like me. I think…?

“You know, we used to have Diane,” Mordecai said. “We both got around her. I don’t know how the hell that was physically — or mentally — possible.”

“She liked you,” Seth said. “And I liked you. I wasn’t going to run tell my Auntie All-Powerful PM every time someone hurt my feelings. I mean, I got used to not doing that back when she was a legal secretary. She could always do the brain thing.”

“Why is it I have no trouble picturing you protecting your childhood bullies from your superpowered aunt?” Mordecai said. He just had to correct himself and put Seth in a preparatory school with uniforms and pretentious little hats instead of a dingy alley in short pants with patches on them. He breathed a laugh and shook his head. “It offends people how nice you are. You know it’s not just me, right?”

“You remember when they put us both up on the table in the dining hall and said we were going to have a competition for Best Nose?” Seth said. He couldn’t help smiling, though it was a self-conscious one.

Mordecai lifted a finger, “Now I am convinced that was mainly to get at me. They liked you. You were an excuse so they could insult me for forty-five minutes.”

“Brian asked me if I could smell time,” Seth demurred. “‘No-no, not the seasoning, the concept.’”

“Kurt, it was Kurt,” said Mordecai, grinning. “He had that sense of humour. And what did you say?”

“‘Not over you.’”

“Ha!” The red man clapped his hands. “That fixed ‘em, didn’t it? Nobody wanted to follow that.”

“It wasn’t that funny,” Seth said. He rubbed the back of his neck with a hand and examined the ceiling.

“It was because you said it. They knew I was vicious. If I’d said it, they would’ve thrown plates at me. You being insulting is like a shaved bear in a dress at the circus.”

“Awkward,” Seth said.

“Well, that too.”

Not unlike being trapped in the basement and having to go over all this and remember it.

“Mordecai, I…” His voice cracked again but he had to get this out, “I don’t want to be friends with you, or whatever the hell it was, and I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want you to hurt me, but I am too damn tired to crawl out of the groove in the path, and if we keep talking, it’s going to be one of those things. Everything hurts, and I just want to sleep.”

“Seth, you don’t have to ask me to let you.”

“I do. That’s just how it is.”

“If that’s how it is, then should I give up and look after you?” Mordecai said.

“No.” Seth fell back in the cot and drew the blanket over his head. “I don’t want that. Just, please, do the toaster again if it pops up. It’s only good for about an hour and I keep waking up cold.”

“Well, that’s no good.” It was on the floor near the stairs and he picked it up and examined it. The metal was cold and the lever was down — at the moment. “When Milo gets home I’ll see what he can do about it.”

“Please don’t.” There was a stifled sob from beneath the blanket. “He’ll do some other thing that hurts me. I’m scared of him.”

“You’ve got kids with knives and I’ve got Milo, I guess.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Please, can I have that glass of water?”

“Do you want ice?” There was ice in the cold box in the basement floor. Also, a bottle of milk and a pound of butter and some carrots, if he wanted those.

“No… Yes.”

“It’s okay.”

“No.” Nevertheless, he allowed Mordecai to sit next to him on the cot and give him ice water and tissues.

“It’s not going to happen again and I’m not going to let it go back to the way it was,” Mordecai said.

Seth laughed sickly. “That’s the lie I need to hear right now, isn’t it?”

“…Yes.”

“Please stop hurting me.”

“I’m sorry. It’s all I know how to do.”

“I’m so tired…”

Hyacinth thudded down four rapid steps, still wearing her coat, and peered over the railing. “Seth!”

Mordecai leapt to his feet as if she’d caught him holding a pillow over the man’s face.

“Mordecai…?”

“Hyacinth, I’m trapped in the basement!” he cried.

She considered that with cold hands twisting on the banister. “Is the basement on fire?” she said.

“What?”

“Hang on,” she said. She padded up the stairs again and vanished through the doorway. He heard her on the sweeping staircase and the floor above, opening doors and talking.

“Did she at least remember about the popsicles au chocolat, because this hardly seems worth it,” Seth said weakly.

“Shush,” said Mordecai.

Hyacinth came down a moment later at a more leisurely pace, “So, you didn’t figure out how to send up smoke signals or anything, did you?”

“What in every god’s name are you on about, you insane…” He groped for a word. “…yak?” It was the woolly collar on the coat.

“Some comedian ran into the ice cream parlour and told me my house was on fire,” said Hyacinth. “He had the address. But I guess everyone knows where I live. What are you doing in the basement?”

“Trying to get out of it!” Mordecai shrieked. “I’ve been yelling but nobody hears! I don’t know what Milo did to the stairs, but I am pretty sure it has a mind and it hates me. Can you please get the General to come down here and kill it?”

“Why didn’t you break the window and climb out?”

He wasn’t going to bother explaining it. He just picked up the hammer and threw it again.

Hyacinth smiled. “Aw, that kid thinks of everything. He’s so smart.”

“He didn’t think of what was going to happen to us if the house burned down!” said Mordecai. “Please get the General on the stairs. What if you ran into somebody who picks up random information like Erik or Barnaby and we’re just not on fire yet?”

“You know, he was green,” said Hyacinth, frowning. “Okay, but I don’t want to see you cuddling with Seth again when I come back. I know you like taking care of people, but we are trying not to get you sick, remember?”

“The thought had never crossed my enfeebled mind!” Mordecai screamed after her.

◈◈◈

When Milo got home at noon, everyone was in the front room. Lucy was in her bassinet, Barnaby was examining the books in the bookshelf, and Calliope was sitting in one of the nice chairs with Erik in her lap, wrapped in a blanket. He had both hands over his face and was speaking in a creaky voice like someone rocking a door on its hinges, “Don’t… like… them… down… there… Don’t… like… them… down… there…” while Calliope rocked with him and kept telling him it was gonna be okay.

Hyacinth and Maggie and the General were all standing by the basement stairs, which were lit up with multicoloured light bars, many of them red and green like Yule lights.

“You know, what we really require is a copy of The New Justine,” Barnaby said.

As Milo was still absorbing this, open-mouthed, the General approached him, frowning, and he staggered back onto the porch.

What did I do? I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Do I have to move away?

“First, Mr. Rose,” she said, just a bit hoarsely, “I would like to shake your hand.” She offered hers.

He touched it blankly, and she did all the grasping and shaking.

“Two hours on an intent line and unsuccessful is unprecedented, although I must say I am not in peak physical condition at the moment. However, you must never leave such magic around the house again. If there were a fire or some unforeseen reason for evacuation…”

Milo’s mouth gaped open like he was screaming and he clapped both hands over it. Oh, my gods, Seth can’t get out of the basement if there’s a fire! I put silence spells on all the doors!

He tore past her and removed the magic on the basement stairs, and then ran up to his room, so Ann could tell everyone he was so sorry!

The General frowned again and regarded the total lack of light bars with her arms folded across her chest. “I don’t suppose any of you happened to catch how he did that?”