The first indication that things were not going to be quite right today was the newspaper. Instead of lying nicely perpendicular to the house on the porch in front of the door, it was sticking up from a pile of busted orange crates in the yard like a candle on a cake.

Hyacinth collected it with an irritated sigh, but she didn’t peg it as anything particularly unusual, or even remember it until Bethany showed up at the kitchen door with a worried frown at about eleven o’clock. “Miss Hyacinth? Seth went back to bed in the middle of school and we can’t get him up.”

Oh, crap, he’s dead, thought Hyacinth. Her expression twisted in dismay. How am I going to tell all the kids? She glanced instinctively to either side of her, but there was noplace to delegate this responsibility. She was the nearest doctor and she didn’t cost any money. And everyone knew that, of course.

“Is he still breathing, Bethany?” she asked.

The pink girl shrugged with all the equanimity a five-year-old minority growing up in a slum could muster. “He was when I left, but I dunno now.”

Hyacinth snatched up her doctor bag and barrelled out of the door without even bothering about a coat. It was a good thing she already had shoes on, or she wouldn’t have bothered about those either.

The cold weather and piled snow vaguely registered, not as discomfort but as factors she needed to consider: Exposure? Hypothermia? Starvation? That last one didn’t seem very likely. Yule was the season for people to donate items, money and time — a combination of genuine bonhomie and guilt — and even if the neighbourhood had somehow neglected to feed Seth individually, the soup kitchens were well-stocked.

Malnutrition? That one was possible. Fresh fruits and vegetables and meat didn’t factor much into diet in Strawberryfield. Man could not live on non-perishables alone.

Drugs? Also possible, and entirely more likely. She didn’t like to think that about him, and she’d never known him to be irresponsible or dangerous, but a heroin addiction wasn’t something that healed like a sprain. Magic season was hardest for him, but Yule couldn’t be very easy to cope with either. Especially when your whole family was dead.

Suicide? Oh, gods, she really didn’t like to think that about him. He wouldn’t do that in the middle of school, would he?

Would he let it get that bad without coming to me for help?

Emotions that Milo had so recently scraped raw woke up and smarted like a needle in her chest. A small soft voice deep inside of her wanted to know what was wrong with her that everyone always wanted to leave. She kicked it in the shins. Goddammit, if you’re not going to be helpful, you shut up!

I should’ve gone looking for him when I found the paper like that…

Hey! You shut up too!

She redirected her thoughts like a train switching tracks, backing up slightly to begin again. Hypothermia… If I need to get him warm, I can take him to the dry cleaner’s. It’s closest. The kids will help me if he can’t walk. Steven won’t kick us out. Maria will be there… Hot drinks… Blankets…

It seemed reasonably warm under the bridge in Cinders Alley. Seth could do magic and under normal circumstances he tried to keep things nice for the kids. Whatever was wrong with him, he’d still managed to put together a serviceable temperature control. (Hyacinth mentally crossed out the dry cleaner’s and redirected again — does Seth have a hotplate? Tea?) There were also some butterflies. Blue ones. That one over there was wearing a Santa hat.

Okay, that is a thing that appears to be happening, Hyacinth thought, working her way past the broken desks. On the chalkboard, the lesson in progress included a graph, a triangle, and some notes on the cosine. 

Hyacinth’s thought-train arrived at the it is definitely drugs station and laid on the brakes in a hiss of steam.

Behind the chalkboard was a pile of blankets and pillows with two black shoes sticking out of it and a ring of five children peering down at it. They appeared marginally concerned. One of them, a little girl with brown curls, was poking the blanket pile with a stick. “He’s totally dead,” she opined.

“Shut up, Natalie, he is not!” said a dark-haired boy whom Hyacinth instantly liked. He smacked the curly-haired girl on the back of the head with a hand. “There’s still weird butterflies!”

“Oh, yeah? If he’s not dead, why’d he let you hit me?”

“If he’s dead, they hafta call the coroner,” another boy said pensively. “There’s gonna be an inquest, in case we murdered him.”

“We should throw him into the canal, so the cops don’t know it was us,” a blonde girl with braids said.

The boy nodded. “You gotta slit open their belly so they don’t float,” he said.

“All right, that’s enough! My gods!” Hyacinth shoved them away and snatched the stick out of Natalie’s hand. “Will you give me two seconds to see how he is before you slit him open and throw him in the canal? I thought you liked Seth!”

The blonde girl with braids shrugged, “If he’s dead, what’s to like?”

“Cornflakes, you are mental,” Bethany said, somewhat breathlessly. Hyacinth hadn’t been willing to slow down for her.

“Bethany, be nice to Cornflakes,” the blanket pile said faintly. “…Sarah. Sarah, be nice to Cornflakes… Bethany.”

“See? I told you!” said the dark-haired boy.

Hyacinth investigated the blankets at the opposite end from the shoes and found a blue hand. For most others, that would have been a very bad thing. For Seth, Hyacinth just checked that it was reasonably warm and then continued rooting around until she located a blue head. Pulling the blankets down further, she found two clinking glass bottles in the nest beside him. Dark brown and lozenge-shaped, that meant medicine and not liquor.

Cold Comfort, the labels proclaimed, in smooth white printing on a sun-faded background. 35% Alcohol By Volume was in smaller letters at the bottom, almost illegible.

Well, maybe it didn’t mean medicine and not liquor.

“Jonathan, please don’t hit,” Seth muttered, eyes closed.

“Seth, did you drink both of these?” Hyacinth demanded, scrutinizing the labels for any indication of paracetamol. It didn’t look like she was going to have to make him a new liver, but there was plenty of codeine in there for him to nod off on. Oh, and some cannabis and a little heroin too.

Sure. Let’s put together a nice little sampler of every recreational drug known to mankind, throw in some aspirin for the fever and market it as cold medicine. Since I started taking patent medicines, I have not had one cold that I remember clearly!

“It’s expired,” Seth said. “I was in the trash can. Behind the drugstore. I have to deliver the… deliver… things.” He snuggled down and attempted to attain blankets again. There seemed to not be blankets. Also, he thought he recalled someone poking him with a stick, but he didn’t mind that as much. People tended to do that when he was asleep in Candlewood Park. As long as they weren’t telling him to move along, he was A-OK!

“Seth, do you actually have a cold, or is this a convoluted cry for help?” Hyacinth realized this was a stupid thing to be asking about halfway through saying it and she just laid her hand on his forehead to check.

“My throat doesn’t hurt anymore, I’m okay for school,” Seth said. Still without opening his eyes or moving otherwise, he lifted one hand and signed OK! with it, firmly. “I’m just a little bit sleepy, thank you.”

He was still feverish, despite the large dose of aspirin (which was expired, so the gods only knew how much he’d had of anything, it wasn’t enough to be shutting down any major systems, that was all), and there was some dehydration and congestion going on in there too. It could be viral or bacterial, but she thought probably a cold — plus a lot of drugs.

Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to leave him here alone to attempt any further self-treatment or have the children throw him in the canal. “Seth, can you walk or do I need to send someone after a stretcher?”

He blinked open his eyes and finally assigned an identity to the annoying voice that wouldn’t go away. “Hyacinth? Is it a storm?”

“No, but I’m still taking you home with me. I just don’t have Ann to help me with you. Can you walk?”

“What about the school?”

“You tried to teach trigonometry to Bethany, you are done with school.”

“The cosine of an angle is the length of the adjacent side of a right triangle over the hypotenuse of the right triangle — that’s the longest side,” Bethany said.

Seth sat up and smiled at her. “That’s very good, my dear.”

“SOHCAHTOA!” Bethany said brightly.

“Abracadabra,” Hyacinth muttered. “You are a phenomenal teacher, Seth. How are you at getting up and moving?”

“Oh, I’m usually not too bad at it,” he replied mildly. She offered him a hand and he stood. He was swaying subtly but he did not appear in immediate danger of falling over. He smiled. “I think I’m all right for school, Hyacinth, honestly. I had a lovely nap.”

“School is closed,” Hyacinth informed the children — to a reaction of aww. “You will continue your lovely nap at my house where I can keep an eye on you.”

“I’m staying as long as it’s still warm,” Cornflakes said behind them, as Hyacinth guided Seth out of the alley by the arm.

“Aw, there go the butterflies,” Bethany said.

◈◈◈

“Oh, I forgot about those. Do you like them?” Seth asked her, indicating the butterflies, which seemed to be more of a personal rather than an area effect and were following them down the street. He waved a hand and they dissolved in swirling blue smoke. “My mom taught me. The kids always got a kick out of them. I used to put equations on them, like flashcards. I tried to do the alphabet for the little ones here, but it’s just too many.”

Hyacinth stared at him, while negotiating the snowy cobbles through peripheral vision alone. His voice was a little flat, that was all. He wasn’t even slurring. He was coherent. His eyes were half-closed, and his pupils were like pinpricks.

He taught school like that. He just dispelled some magic. I wonder if he could drive a car?

Not that she would’ve let him try.

“Hyacinth, aren’t you cold?”

“…I suppose I am, now that you mention it,” she allowed. “But the house isn’t far. We’ll just walk faster.”

Seth stopped walking altogether and removed his coat. He was wearing two T-shirts and his arms were bare. “My dear, you should have this. I’m not feeling anything at the moment.”

Hyacinth folded her arms over her chest to prevent an application of chivalry. “Seth, put the coat back on. You are high and you’re sick. My body is shivering and reacting like normal. I can make it a block and a half. I’m not sure about you.”

He put the coat over her shoulders and tied the sleeves in a loose knot around her neck. “I’m sorry it isn’t much.”

Hyacinth regarded the knot. Wow, look at that. Fine motor skills. “All right, damn it, if you insist on being stupid, move fast.” She put an arm around him and increased her pace. He was able to follow with no apparent difficulty, despite the snow.

“The Yule lights are nice,” he said. There were some Yule lights up on the houses and storefronts, but it was early afternoon and they weren’t on. “I get halos on things sometimes.” He waved the palm of his hand in front of his face. “It’s sort of pretty. I think I should’ve read the directions, but it was early and I couldn’t see.”

The printing was white on a lavenderish background which might’ve been black or dark blue before they’d been left out in the sun to go bad. It was something about a cold, though. That was in nice big letters.

“You know,” she said acidly, “most cold medicine doesn’t say ‘go ahead and take two bottles if it’s expired.’”

He laughed. “Yes. I should’ve thought of that. I suppose I’m used to having Nicky to mind me.”

Hyacinth’s mouth dropped open and she pointed at him, “You learned how to maintain like that during the siege, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you mean.”

“‘Maintain.’ David and Barnaby used to say it like that, so I suppose it’s like a generational thing. It means, ‘to continue to act perfectly normal even though there are halos on things and the Yule lights appear to be on.’”

“Oh.” Seth nodded. “That is a good word for it, yes. ‘Maintain.’ I thought of it more like ‘trying not to be useless when people are shooting at us,’ but that’s a lot more succinct.” He looked around. “They’re not on, are they? That’s interesting. I’m not going to die, am I?”

“No, but it was a near thing. It’s a lot harder to overdose on aspirin and codeine than paracetamol. If you had a different fever-reducer in there, I’d be dragging you home for emergency surgery.”

“I wouldn’t like to put you out, Hyacinth.”

“You would prefer to be curled up under a bridge with some kids poking you with a stick and waiting for you to die?”

He smiled. “Oh, is that what they were doing? That’s sort of charming. I guess children are the same all over.”

“That blonde girl wanted to throw you in the canal.” Hyacinth desperately hoped that sort of behaviour was specific to Strawberryfield, at least at that age.

He frowned. “Hyacinth, you mustn’t make fun of Sarah. She’s had a hard life.”

“Yeah, I suppose that explains some of it.”

“She writes exquisite poetry. Flawless iambic pentameter… She didn’t even know what it was. Instinctive! Hyacinth, I… I think I should say, I can’t remember how we got here or where we are going.” He didn’t like to, but it was possible — since this was Hyacinth — that he was sick somehow and she needed to know.

“I’ll give you a heads-up when we get there.” They had just turned the corner onto Violena, it wasn’t much farther.

“What about the school?”

“It’s just going to have to take care of itself for a little while. Are you cold?”

“I’m not sure.” He was sort of numb. He couldn’t feel himself talking. His arms were bare and he instinctively folded them up to prevent her from seeing anything she might find disturbing. No. It’s all right. Just a scratch. Je vas bien, Nicky. Let’s go! A-OK!

“Here, put this coat on.” She pulled it around him.

“Won’t you be cold?”

“I have sleeves, Seth.” He let her put him in the coat. He wasn’t certain enough at the moment to put up any kind of protest. I can’t feel anything, he thought vaguely, maybe it’s not cold, I don’t know…

He seemed a little more oriented by the time she got him to the house, at least he was back to smiling and making conversation, and she was relieved to note he had started shivering like a normal person. He complimented her on the decorations.

She wondered if he was seeing rather better decorations than they actually had. Could we get Milo to put halos on everything? I know the General won’t do it…

There were further decorations in the front room, and Erik, Mordecai, Lucy and Calliope were enjoying them while picnicking around the big chairs with soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. There was a terracotta brazier burning, which had been subtly altered to avoid suffocating everyone in the house, but it didn’t make much of a dent in the temperature. Mordecai had on his greatcoat, Calliope was wearing her green sweater, and Lucy was double-wrapped in blankets with a tiny knit cap that said “Yule;Baby” on it.

(The cap had started out saying “Yule Baby” like a normal article of clothing, and Ann thought it would make a lovely gift, but she wasn’t sure about the appropriateness for a two-month-old who had been born closer to Mischief Night, so Milo cut out some appliqués. Calliope adored it. Lucy seemed indifferent.)

Erik was also behatted, thanks to Calliope; it had pink and green variegated stripes, a tassel at the end and a lopsided construction with a hole in it for his metal eye. She gave it to him on Midwinter, but only because that was as fast as she could finish it after she found out about the “ow, the cold makes my socket hurt” problem. For a present, inside of it she tucked a drawing of Pin-Min not-dead.

More presents were currently gathering under the tree, which was of a reasonable size this time, in preparation for Twelfth Night.

Seth smiled and pointed at Mordecai. “Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man. ‘Dylan is a poet, ’cos he’s certainly not a singer.’”

Mordecai damn near spat out his grilled cheese sandwich. “Is he high?” He recognized the eyes and the expression, even the cadence of the voice, but he hadn’t seen Seth like that in ages.

Hyacinth put up a hand to ward him away as she bundled Seth towards the kitchen. (The kitchen was always warmer, a lower ceiling and a smaller area.) “Yes, but he’s also sick, so you’re going to want to stay the hell away from him. I’m going to quarantine him in the basement if I can get things halfway warm down there. Calliope, do not ask the General for help, if she sees him like this, she’s going to try to throw him out. Are Ann or Milo around?”

Milo had been working on a “safety heater” in the basement for the past couple weeks. No fire, no fumes, no problems! Well, continual problems, but maybe he’d pulled something together by now. Calliope was relying on heating charms in her room, which only covered a small area and needed to be applied every few hours.

“No, not yet!” Mordecai called after her.

“Goddammit,” Hyacinth muttered. She deposited Seth in a chair and her doctor bag on the kitchen table. “Stay,” she told him.

He smiled at her. “Only for a little while, Hyacinth. I really think I’d better get back to school…”

“Why would Glorie throw out a sick person?” Calliope said, frowning.

“I don’t know about a sick person,” Mordecai said, “but she would absolutely throw out a drug addict. So, please, keep your voice down, and don’t argue about it.”

He set down his soup and sandwich and went after his violin in the bedroom. He was going to have to make himself scarce around here for the next couple of days, even if that meant being out in the cold. He did not want to pick up whatever Seth had. “Erik do you want to…?”

“I’ll get Auntie Enora,” Erik said gravely. He was already at the top of the basement stairs.

Mordecai dropped the violin case and snatched him, “Oh, no, you will not!”

“He’s… sick!” Erik said.

“Hyacinth, how sick is he?” cried Mordecai.

Hyacinth blew past him and also went into the bedroom. Mordecai had a lot of blankets and he wasn’t using them now. It was closer than the hall wardrobe.

“It’s a cold, I think,” she said. “But he drank two bottles of medicine he found in a trash can trying to feel better enough to deliver the papers and teach school… And he wasn’t doing too bad a job of it, if I may say so,” she confided to Mordecai, blankets in tow. “I don’t think the kids would’ve noticed if he didn’t lie down for a nap. Seth, get away from the stove, I don’t need any help to make tea!”

Mordecai knelt down and held Erik by both shoulders to speak to him, “Dear one, we do not run off and call a god the first instant someone we love is sick, or hurt, or seems like they need something. People can take care of a lot of things all by themselves, and they don’t cost like the gods do. You know that. I know you want to fix everything, but if you call Auntie Enora, we’ll have to drop everything and fix you. Hyacinth can take care of a cold.”

“Called Violet about Lucy,” Erik muttered, looking away.

“Violet is little and that was an excuse so you could practice. Auntie Enora is huge, and we don’t need her.”

“Could call someone to fix the basement,” Erik said, but now he was only grasping at straws, and he wasn’t very serious about it.

Mordecai ruffled his hair. “Or we can wait for Milo to get home and let him do it. He works for canned pasta.”

“And coffee.”

“And coffee. I’m going to get out of here so I don’t catch Seth’s cold and have you trying to call Auntie Enora for me. Do you want to come with?”

Erik glanced longingly into the kitchen. He wanted very badly to help Seth, if not with a god then just somehow, or even just check on him. But if he did that he might catch Seth’s cold, and Uncle Mordecai could get it that way. He couldn’t go back and forth like a plague rat; he had to pick someone and stick with it.

He took his uncle’s hand with a sigh. “Yeah,” he said.

Calliope wandered into the kitchen and offered Hyacinth further help with the tea that she didn’t need.

◈◈◈

Hyacinth did require some assistance with getting Seth into the basement. If it was not a storm (and he kept asking for confirmation of this) the way his logic was currently functioning seemed to suggest he ought to be allowed to go back to school.

That was not happening. He was very unhappy about it, and increasingly certain there was a storm that he had forgotten about somehow, or maybe they just didn’t want to tell him. He also occasionally asked if he was supposed to call anyone, just in case.

Hyacinth finally abandoned him on the cot next to Calliope and went after the chalkboard in the kitchen.

He tried to teach Calliope some trigonometry. She appeared… approximately old enough for that, from what he could tell. “Do you need paper and pencil, my dear?”

“Nah, it’s okay. I’ve got lots. Do you want some?”

“Oh, thank you. You can put it in the box with the brick…” He stood. “No… It’s still the basement.” He shivered and sat down. Calliope arranged the blankets around him again. “I… I… I would like it to stop being the basement now, please.”

“I think Glorie might be able to move it up a floor, but I’m not supposed to tell her about you because you look like you’re on drugs. Is there something about it you don’t like?”

“The part where it hurts,” he said. “Oh, gods, and Erik…” He stood up again and looked for Erik.

Calliope pulled him back down. “Erik went out with Em so you wouldn’t kill him being sick.”

“I wouldn’t really kill anyone, Calliope,” Seth said miserably. “Sometimes I just say things when it hurts. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, Seth. I think we all feel that way sometimes.”

Hyacinth came down with the chalkboard tucked under one arm. She pulled it out and held it within six inches of Seth’s nose. Given his features, that left it about eight inches away altogether. “Okay, can you read this?” She wrote big, and very carefully, given that he seemed to be having some difficulty focusing.

“Did you take that from the school, Hyacinth?” he asked.

“No, this one is mine.” Although, she supposed somebody might’ve stolen it from the school at some point to pay her with. She wasn’t sure. “Can you read it?”

It was very easy to read. She seemed to have done it in fey lights so he could see it in the dark. “It says there’s no storm and I’m in the basement because I have a cold and I can’t go home until I’m better. You idiot.” He blinked. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t mean… Am I the idiot? Me? That’s not nice…” He was scolding the chalkboard. He seemed to have forgotten she was there.

“Okay, I probably shouldn’t have written that last part,” Hyacinth said. She turned the board around and erased the last line with her sleeve. After a moment’s thought, she drew a smiley face in its place. “Now, do you understand this?”

“Yes.” He dropped his head and began to sob. Calliope wrapped both arms around him.

“Oh, Seth, now what?” said Hyacinth.

“I don’t like it.”

“It is pretty basementy in the basement, Cin,” Calliope said. “Especially if he’s been hurt down here. And he is super high right now.”

“Look, I know,” said Hyacinth. “But I don’t want him around Mordecai and I don’t want the General to see him like this. There is a logistical problem here. I can’t hide him in the pantry, there’s no door.”

“What about my room?”

Hyacinth considered that with a pained expression. She was thinking about the baby furniture with the cow skulls and the dead horse. Not to mention the lobster painting. “…Calliope, I don’t know if your room is the best place for a high person either.”

Calliope shrugged. “Em doesn’t seem to mind it. Seth, do you like flowers okay?”

Flowers? thought Hyacinth. Are there flowers in there? That seemed suspiciously normal…

Seth sniffled and looked up at her. “Flowers are good. I know how to do butterflies with quadratic equations.”

“That’s cool. You’ll hafta show me that sometime.”

◈◈◈

Lucy’s bassinet — including Lucy, painted cow skulls and soup-can mobile — was removed to the kitchen, where it was also serviceably warm. “It’s not the end of the world if she picks up a cold, but let’s see if we can’t keep her away from it anyway,” Hyacinth said.

Seth was introduced to Calliope’s room like a hand-raised baby bird being released into its natural habitat — except it would take some kind of mentalist to assume Calliope’s room made a natural habitat for anything but a herd of Calliopes. What with the floating paper lanterns and the clothing glued to the wall and the decorated scorch marks, let alone the canvases.

The one with the polyresin lobster still held a place of prominence, but some of her more recent efforts had been rotated into display. Consumerism Emerging from a Can of Spaghetti to Shame Mankind was hung on the wall near the bay window, out of the line of fire for potential bricks.

The window itself was currently displaying a flaming skull which she had drawn on a piece of paper and asked Hyacinth to reproduce for her in lead and glass shards.

She had also assembled a table-sized Yule tree from discarded porcelain doll parts, mainly the arms. You know, for the season.

“Oh, my gods, when did you make that thing?” said Hyacinth, not without horror, but not with much surprise.

“Last night. Couldn’t sleep,” Calliope said mildly. Seth was still standing in the doorway between them and staring and had yet to express an opinion on the room.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep with that thing looking at me either!” said Hyacinth.

“I guess I could scoop out the eyes… You think Milo would like that better?”

“You are forbidden from getting that thing anywhere near Milo. Or Erik. Or me!” She was tempted to put it in the pantry for Mordecai to find, but Milo might go in there looking for pasta first.

“Is this real?” Seth said finally.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Calliope said. “The flowers are just paper.” She pointed. Hyacinth noted the flowers, resting in glass bottles and affixed to a variety of surfaces. They sort of blended in. “And the lobster’s fake. I wanted a real one, but I couldn’t get the pieces back together.”

“It’s magnifique,” Seth said, entering the found-object fairyland with reverent steps. He touched one of the paper lanterns, a purple one. It bobbled lightly in the air.

Calliope snickered at him. He had one of those disappearing-reappearing Southern accents, but not like Chris. Seth sounded like old money. “It’s a pretty good lobster,” she agreed. “It’s display-grade. You can hardly tell.”

Hyacinth approached and stood in front of the dismembered doll monstrosity. “Can you stand being in here for a few hours, or would you rather go back to the basement?”

“I want to live here,” Seth said dreamily.

“I will settle for you sleeping here,” Hyacinth said.

“That sounds nice… In the bed?”

Hyacinth glanced at Calliope. Calliope was already leading Seth in the direction of the bed. Hyacinth decided to stay right where she was and cast about for something to hide the doll parts in her eventual absence. She guessed she might take off her dress…

Calliope was helping Seth take off his shoes. “Hey. These look an awful lot like Milo’s shoes,” she said.

Hyacinth stepped out of her shoes, removed her bloomers and covered the nightmare fodder. Seth didn’t seem to notice. Calliope said, “Yeah, I guess that’s pretty festive too.”