Soup burst into the kitchen via the back door — the kid with the red bow tie and chequered cap, not the meal you eat with a spoon. It was magic season but it wasn’t that weird. Yet.

Mordecai was useless right now and Soup discounted him. He was looking for non-coloured people who were free to run outside. Calliope was new and he wasn’t sure about her, but Barnaby might do. At least Barnaby would know where to get Hyacinth. “Mr. Graham…”

“Soup!” said Mordecai, cooking. “What would you like to eat? How about chocolate chip cookies?”

“I can’t right now, Mr. Eidel,” Soup said.

Mordecai actually put down the spoon and stopped cooking. His expression melted into dismay. “Oh my gods. What? What’s happening? Is this real life?”

“You guys, I’ve got Seth, but I can’t get him the rest of the way here,” Soup said. “I had to leave him. I need someone who can help me pick him up. Where’s Miss Hyacinth, Mr. Graham?”

“I doubt Miss Hyacinth would be much help carrying a largish schoolteacher even under ordinary circumstances, Mr. Rinaldi,” Barnaby said. He dusted his suit jacket, which Maria Toussaint had rendered cleaner than it had been in decades, and sipped his hot-chocolate-flavoured tea.

“No, but she always…”

“Cin’s glued to the wall right now,” Calliope said. “I’ll ask Ann and Glorie…” She stood and left.

“What?” Soup said — rather like Mordecai when confronted with a Soup who didn’t want anything to eat. But he did not ask if it was real life. It was a magic storm.

“I can’t turn around and go to another shelter now, and I don’t want to deal with her,” Cerise said. The hedge clippers were on the table. She also sipped tea. Hers was tea-flavoured. “I just want Annie and Calliope. And I’ll teach that cute little girl who plays jump rope how to sauté, she’s old enough.”

“I know how to sauté!” Mordecai declared. He lifted the frying pan, which contained what appeared to be potatoes, but the gods only knew.

“I highly doubt it, Mordecai,” Cerise said. “And you’re too old to learn.”

Mordecai regarded the sizzling potatoes. “Well, it appears to produce food, whatever it is…”

The baby gate gently boosted Calliope and Ann over itself. Sanaam, the General and Maggie remained on the other side of it, wary of the lack of space in the kitchen (and the General was also wary of the gate).

Ann was already holding two folded fire blankets taken from cots. “Dear, can he walk at all?”

“I wouldn’t put money on it,” Soup said.

“Oh, just give me a moment to think…” Ann considered her choices of available helpers.

Maggie was too small, and she couldn’t do magic just now.

Sam could probably carry Seth all by himself.

No, she thought. Too loud and scary. And humiliating.

The General…

No, too mean.

Barnaby…

Too mean AND too loud and scary!

Calliope…

Well, Calliope was Calliope, but she took direction well and Seth liked her. She drew him a butterfly.

“Calliope, come with me,” Ann said. “Sam, you hold down the fort. I don’t know how long we’ll be and the Dove Cot ladies aren’t even here yet.”

Sanaam saluted her.

“I must assume there will be one or two items for me to hold as well,” the General said dryly.

Ann, Calliope and Soup departed swiftly through the back door.

◈◈◈

It was starting to sprinkle, and Ann regretted not grabbing her raincoat. She could have loaned it to Seth or Calliope. The sky above was swirled lavender and white like a fancy ice cream, with occasional purple flashes in the bellies of distant clouds. The quality of the sunlight was unreal, at once garish and washed out. Everything looked like an old tinted photo. It smelled of wet pavement. The air was sticky.

There was a low rumble of thunder and Ann winced. “We really must get him inside. I don’t know what would happen if he were hit… Is it far, Soup?”

“It’s just by the bus stop but I left him on the street and I’m scared the cops’ll get him,” Soup said.

He was walking several strides ahead but he still couldn’t make out Eddows Lane past the outdoor seating of Hassan’s Kebabs, or a tall blue guy lying in the gutter.

He paused and looked back with a pained expression, but only for a moment. “He’s not on drugs, it’s just the storm.” He shook his head, but he didn’t pause or look back. “I don’t give a shit if he is on drugs. If the cops get him, they won’t help him. Why is Miss Hyacinth glued to the wall?”

“It’s, er, a relationship issue,” Ann said. “Cerise is a bit… Storms hit everyone differently. She’s less… I don’t want to say ‘reasonable,’ that’s not nice… She’s more sensitive when it storms. I think she’d be fine if she could put her feet up and eat chocolates and read a novel, but she has to go to a shelter and be with people and that’s hard for her. She’s really trying to be nice! She could’ve gone after Cin with those hedge clippers if she really wanted to hurt her.”

“It sounds like she’s got her period,” Calliope said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Ann said. “I suppose I should’ve made Cin talk to her, but I didn’t think they’d ever see each other again…”

“I don’t see him,” Soup said, and he took off at a run.

“Oh, gods, I hope he didn’t get on the bus,” Ann muttered.

She didn’t want to say anything, but Seth had been known to… to make bad choices for himself instead of asking for help when he should. Which might include taking the bus to the shelter on Pine, or to Candlewood Park. But that wasn’t Soup’s fault for leaving him so near the stop. A twelve-year-old boy couldn’t be expected to carry an adult man who didn’t want to move.

Ann picked up her skirts and began to jog. “Dear, we’ll find him! Don’t worry!” First she would go to the drugstore and call the police, and perhaps send Soup down to Pine Street, with money for a phone so he could call her from there. She didn’t like to send Calliope to Candlewood Park, but…

There was a shoe in the gutter. Soup picked it up. Ann noted the style with familiarity and thought Milo ought to switch pairs with him again, due to the wear and tear.

If they could find him.

“They wouldn’t drag him off to jail without one shoe, would they?” Soup said. His expression was midway between anguished and murderous. “It’s hard to find ones that fit!”

“We’ll save it for him,” Ann said. She tucked it under her arm.

“Is that one of Milo’s shoes?” Calliope called. “I got the other one!” She was across the street, at the mouth of the alley between Hassan’s and the cheque cashing place. She held up the object, its laces dangled. “I got a guy puking in this trash can right here too!” She turned and waved the shoe. “Hey, Seth. I can never keep track of mine either.”

There was a rattle of upended metal and the sound of one very disturbed cat.

◈◈◈

“Careful, Maggie. Don’t cut her hair,” Sanaam said. He was doing his best around Hyacinth’s feet with a pair of splayed scissors. Maggie had a razor blade, for extra precision around the soft bits. She was standing on a chair, which the General was holding for extra stability. Ted and Steven had been persuaded to postpone the card game and were standing beneath Hyacinth, holding each other’s hands to approximate a net — just in case cutting the paper caused Hyacinth to fall off the wall under her own weight.

Maggie brought her neat razor cut up to her father’s ragged slice and scratched them firmly together, just under Hyacinth’s right arm. “I think that’s about as good as we’re going to get it, Dad.”

Hyacinth attempted a squirm, and Sanaam pressed her firmly back against the wall. “No-no. Let us peel you. I don’t know if you can catch yourself and we don’t need any more injuries. I’ll see if I can get your arm…”

A large black woman — not black like Sanaam, black like a taxi — with a bright mauveine dress and broad flowered hat kicked open the front door and spread her gloved hands. “Guess what!” said Elizabeth from the Dove Cot.

“You have a camera and you’re about to make bank on some funny postcards,” said Hyacinth, still stuck.

“No!” Elizabeth said. “I have Adrian! Ade, come here!”

A reluctant-looking young man with an umbrella was shoved from behind by an eager looking red woman in loud clothing not dissimilar from Elizabeth’s. Adrian, if that was who he was, appeared pale, dark-haired, and not coloured in any way. “Miss Betty, I really don’t…”

“Adrian works with us!” Elizabeth declared. She unfolded an official-looking piece of paper with a stamp at the bottom.

“He’s a boy!” the red woman added, pointing. “Eighteen years old and legal! He has five whole shares!”

“Miss Tania, I was going to have lunch,” said Adrian.

“You will have lunch here!” Tania told him. “You’re an object lesson!”

Elizabeth patted him. “We’re proud of you, Ade.”

“I’m sort of amazed I own stocks now, but I’m not this proud,” said Adrian.

“Hush.” Elizabeth snapped open another piece of paper, this one unstamped. “Now where is that dear man who teaches the school? We shall deal with him this instant!”

“I am a notary!” Tania said. She brandished a stamp. “Also an ordained minister of the Temple of Leslie Bowman, patron goddess of municipal work!”

“It’s rude to marry people during a magic storm, Tania,” Elizabeth said. “They have no judgment.” She stamped her foot, “But if Mr. Zusman refuses to behave reasonably in fair weather, we’re just going to have to corner him!”

“No you will not!” said Hyacinth, bellowing to be discerned over the large black man who was trying to peel her off the wall. “Tania and Elizabeth, come closer so I can yell at you! I’m stuck,” she added petulantly. “Where’s Violette?”

“Married a client and cashed out her shares last December,” Elizabeth sighed. “She’s living the dream in an apartment uptown.”

“That bitch,” Tania put in.

“All right,” said Hyacinth. She frowned at them both. “Seth isn’t here, and when he gets here, you will not be backing him into a corner and making him sign papers to become a prostitute!”

“Oh, I thought they looked a bit gauche,” Kitty said. “That’s all right. It’s so they don’t get hit by cars at night, isn’t it?”

“I have never had occasion to wonder,” Mrs. Taube said.

“You look quite smart, Mr. Adrian,” Kitty said. She approved of the cut of his jacket.

Adrian, who had been within twelve inches of sneaking out the door and away from the crazy coloured people, turned and looked defeated. “I’m not working, I’m having lunch.”

“You are living proof that men can be sex workers too!” Tania said. She dragged him by the umbrella. “Now come into the kitchen and we’ll wait for that stupid stubborn schoolteacher!”

“If Seth wanted to be adopted into a life of prostitution he would’ve mentioned it to you already!” snapped Hyacinth. “He has to live under the bridge or else people walk off with pieces of the school! He works nights! He can’t just…” Her hand and forearm, with wallpaper attached, had just come free in a cloud of plaster and bopped Sanaam on the nose. “Oh, hey.” She flexed her fingers. They made a crinkly noise.

“No,” Cerise said. She leaned out of the kitchen, despite Erik’s best attempt to prevent her with the gate, waved a hand and stuck Hyacinth to the wall again, somewhat higher.

Hyacinth snarled and vibrated but could do little else. “Listen here, you goddamned irrational female! I am trying to keep an exploitation movie from breaking out in my kitchen! I do not have time to tiptoe around your feelings!”

“You’ve had since January,” Cerise said. She returned to the kitchen with a sniff.

“Hyacinth, we won’t let them exploit the schoolteacher,” Sanaam said reasonably. “I don’t think anything a coloured person signs during a storm is legally binding anyway.”

“The legal language around Steiner vs. DuPont is murky and it is still being appealed!” Tania said. “And he’ll never prove he signed it during a storm!”

“The time, date and city is provided on that stamp of yours, Miss O’Hara,” Sanaam said. “That is easily squared up with the weather report. You wouldn’t like to falsify records in front of multiple witnesses now, would you? That would endanger your certification. Not to mention your standing with Leslie Bowman.”

“Oh, well, that doesn’t stop us from talking about it,” said Tania with a wave. “He can sign it later.” She smiled.

Sanaam frowned at her. “I think, between the three of us, my family and I can prevent you from badgering a sick man into a career he clearly does not want,” he said. “Also, there is a short-tempered sick child in the basement who has wrested control of the magical baby-proofing and he may hurt you.”

“If you want a magic fight you shall have one!” Elizabeth said. She held up both hands and an inky black flame appeared in each. The edges seemed to boil. “What that man is doing is not safe! He can have a home and a bed and we’ve plenty of room for a school!”

“A house is not a home,” Mrs. Taube said dryly, and almost inaudibly.

The General sighed and folded her hands. “What a sad waste of an opportunity.” She doubted Miss O’Hara and Miss Ramsey would have any desire to spar with her in fair weather, on equal footing. This matter would either be solved by diplomacy, subterfuge, or a tactical retreat.

“Miss Betty, I don’t think it matters if you have room for a school,” Maggie said. “The kids with parents wouldn’t be able to come anymore. It’s just, you know, what happens in the rest of the place.”

“A legal incorporated business happens there!” Elizabeth said. “Is it better for the children to be run over by a train?”

“It’s not actually on the tracks, Miss Betty,” Maggie said.

“It’s as near!” cried Tania.

Barnaby leaned out of the kitchen, regarded the invisible baby gate, and decided not to annoy it. “Miss Ramsey. Miss O’Hara. I think, if I catch you bothering a man in magical heroin withdrawal at any point today, I am going to remember it. And sometime, in the near future, I shall pull myself together, walk the distance to your house, and arrange it for you. Do note that your current surroundings are just about the best Hyacinth can manage with me living here, and you have never even seen my room.”

“We will call the police!” Elizabeth said.

“Response times are abysmal for this neighbourhood and I can do a great deal of property damage in very little time when I am motivated,” Barnaby said. “You do not wish to make an enemy of me, ladies. I do not have even this level of self-control ordinarily.”

Elizabeth wilted, and the flames in her hands went out. “You seem to be saying this would not be a one-time thing, Mr. Graham.”

He buffed his nails on his lapel. “I highly doubt it, Miss Ramsey.”

“We’ll talk to him tomorrow, Elizabeth,” Tania said. “We can talk to him tomorrow. We know where he lives.”

The General decided that blatant threats were a kind of diplomacy, so she had been correct in her original assumption.

Hyacinth sincerely hoped both Elizabeth and Tania would be a little more reasonable about this tomorrow. They were probably just excited about Adrian. He seemed new.

“Adrian, come into the kitchen and grab some lunch to-go,” Barnaby said. “Just step carefully. Mr. Sadiq was not exaggerating when he mentioned the short-tempered child operating the baby-proofing.”

Adrian stepped suspiciously. The baby gate opened his umbrella and turned it inside out, which Barnaby thought was remarkably restrained of Erik. Then Mordecai claimed the young man and began loading him up with food.

The yellow woman who had busied herself cleaning the front room grabbed Barnaby by the shoulder before he could also return to lunch. Or possibly breakfast, since he’d never stopped having it. “Yes, Miss… Miss Haber, was it?”

“Hauser.” She grinned. “Do you like arranging things, too, Mr. Graham?”

“Yes. Rather,” he allowed.

“Which room is yours?”

Barnaby made a strangled noise. His eyes darted around the front room. It had been neatened. She had even thrown some things away! “Er… 204, my dear girl.”

The yellow woman squealed and darted up the stairs.

“Barnaby,” said Hyacinth, aside, “did you just point a crazed superorganizer at my storage room?”

“It doesn’t have anyone living in it, how much damage could she do?” he replied.

Kitty eagerly yanked open the door to Room 204 and looked inside. She screamed.

“Well, we’re about to find out now, aren’t we?” said Hyacinth.

◈◈◈

Calliope sat down on the greasy cobbles and put both arms around the barefoot blue gentleman. He didn’t even have socks. “It’s okay, Seth. We got your shoes,” she said.

He issued a low whine like a wounded thing and turned his face to the wall. “Please go. Please just go. I’m not here. I’m nothing.”

“Seth, no,” Ann said softly. She crouched down and put her shoe on the ground beside Calliope. “It’s all right. We’ll get you to Hyacinth.”

He put up a hand and warded her away, shaking his head. He wouldn’t look at her. Couldn’t. “I can’t. I’m going to scare Erik but I can’t… I can’t! Please…” He curled up and shut his eyes. “He’ll help me. He’ll hurt me. I can’t remember they’re dead.”

Calliope looked up at Ann and shook her head.

“Dear…” Ann put a careful hand on his shoulder. His threadbare sport coat was damp and cold. “Do you mean when Erik tries to help you sleep?”

“It’s not sleep, it’s memory,” he said. “But I can’t remember. I drown. No matter what I do I drown… Please, Ann.” He looked up, then away. “Tell him you couldn’t find me. Just let me be here. I can’t do it. I can’t go through magic season like that again, it’s like being an open wound! This is only a little pain. I’m used to it. Erik is so much worse…” He began to sob. “Please don’t ever, ever tell him I said that! I’m sorry I said that! Oh, gods, I know someone’s going to tell him I said that…”

“Sweetheart.” She shook her head. “I can’t leave you here to get hurt. It’s not safe. Hyacinth’s house is safe. You need to be there so we can take care of you.”

“Please, no!”

Ann spoke aside, “My gods, Soup, how did you get him this far?”

“I told him if Miss Hyacinth ever found out I left him like this she’d never feed me again,” the blond boy said, wincing. “Miss Rose, I don’t like him this way.”

“I don’t, either, but I’m glad you understand sometimes we need to lie to sick people and leverage their emotions because I’m about to use you to do it again. Seth,” she said. “Soup is here and you are upsetting him. If we leave you in this nasty old alleyway, he’ll have to take care of you all by himself and that is not fair to him. It’s not safe here for either of you.”

“Seth?” Soup said. “I don’t like this. It’s scary.”

Ann supposed that was true, but she also knew he ordinarily wouldn’t have said it. She nodded to him. You’d make a good medic, Soup. Like Cin.

“Please let’s just go, okay?” said the boy. “I’m not going to leave you here. I ran all the way to Hyacinth’s house to get help. You scared the hell out of me. I thought the cops got you.”

Seth gave a gasp and straightened. He turned in Calliope’s arms. He was trying to smile. He brushed her away and sat up. “I’m all right. This isn’t real… not real hurt. It’s just something I remember. It’s only for a little while. I’ll be all right. Tomorrow. I’ll be all right.”

“You will not be all right tomorrow because you’re in an alley behind a bunch of trash cans right now and if the police find you they are not gonna believe you when you tell them you’re not on real drugs,” Soup said. “We’re either both going to Hyacinth’s house or I’m staying here, and I don’t like it here.”

Seth shuddered. “Soup, I’m so sorry you know these things about me.”

“What?” Soup said, which Ann thought might have put a bit of a dent in the scared-little-kid act. “Don’t be dumb. If I didn’t know about it, I couldn’t help you. I don’t want you dying in an alley with no one to help you.”

“Please don’t worry about me like that, I’m not going to die!”

“Then let us take you to Hyacinth,” Soup said. “I don’t even care about Erik. If he tries to hurt you, I’ll slug him.”

“Don’t,” Seth said. “That isn’t fair. He isn’t trying to hurt me. He’s trying to help me and I know he’s always afraid I won’t let him.”

“I just want to know you’re safe,” Soup said. “Let Ann and Calliope help you.”

“You’re a good boy and I hate this so much,” Seth said. He wiped both eyes with his hands, but it didn’t do much to stop the tears. He yawned, winced, covered it, and then took down his hand. “I don’t know if I can get up, Ann.”

Ann smiled at him and offered her hand. “Just let us help you.”

◈◈◈

“Mr. Graham!” Kitty declared, clutching one of many dusty cardboard boxes full of random items and occasional mouse nests. “Hoarding behaviour is a disorder of the mind!”

He very gently tweezed a spider from her hair and set it on the floor. Hyacinth didn’t approve of killing things. “You’re not wrong, Miss Haber, no.”

“You need an intervention!” she said.

“That is also not wrong, but if you are going to continue cleaning, you need a kerchief of some kind,” he said. “For your hair and to cover your nose and mouth. I shall raid Mr. and Miss Rose’s dresser and return.”

“Barnaby, don’t encourage her!” Hyacinth cried. She was still glued to the wall and Sanaam was trying to have a serious conversation with Cerise in the kitchen. “Room 204 doesn’t have a person, but there are things living in it!”

Kitty leaned over the railing, although she couldn’t quite make out Hyacinth on the wall beneath her, and shrieked in that general direction, “That is why you need an intervention!”

“Kitty!” said Hyacinth. “I am an ex-medic practising without a license and I am trying very hard not to piss off Auntie Enora! Do you understand? Auntie Enora is a god, she is a healer, and she does not like people who kill things!”

Kitty pressed both dusty hands to her face. “You do medicine in this house? With these… these plague vectors?”

“We do magic to keep them out of places they shouldn’t go and I… I shoo them.”

“What do they need shoes for?!”

“Oh, my gods,” Hyacinth muttered. “General D’Iver, can I put you on this? Barnaby isn’t helping.”

The General set Lucy down in the improvised crèche which was the dining room, and moved into Hyacinth’s view to address her, “It is my considered opinion that the mice and bugs in this house should die, Hyacinth. I kill them myself whenever possible, and I have been feeding some of them to my daughter when she transforms. If Mr. Graham cannot find any kerchiefs, I will cut Miss Hauser a piece out of one of my dresses to assist her.”

“Maggie…”

There was a knock on the front door, with a metered politeness that was all out of proportion with the situation inside.

“It’s open!” Maggie hollered. She was minding the babies, she didn’t have to answer doors.

“I told you, hon,” said a muffled male voice. A green teenager with short wavy hair opened the door. He had a black strap with a flowered design slung across his chest, attached to an evident guitar neck hovering over his shoulder like a good angel. “Hey! Where’s the party?” he said.

“Tom,” said a nervous female voice behind him.

He turned with a smile. “I keep telling you, Hyacinth is not running a regulation shelter. That’s why I wanted to get on the bus. I’m not nuts, hon.”

“You’re not normal either,” said the voice. A girl with dark eyes, dark brown skin, a flowered dress and matching headscarf stepped through the door. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He…”

“Oh my gods,” she said.

There was a hole in the roof, for starters. It had been patched over with corrugated metal. There was a woman glued to the wall with her arms out and her hair fanned out behind her head like a gunshot wound. A little pink girl was drawing with crayons on the wall beside her, outlining the hem of her dress with a scribbled rainbow design.

There was a little red boy in a sailor suit flying a loop-de-loop three feet off the floor, flapping his arms and giggling madly. Two men and two women were playing cards at a table that they had also decided to make hover for whatever reason — and one of the women had a horned melon in a birdcage hanging off the back of her chair.

Upstairs, an open door seemed to have vomited multiple boxes onto the floor, and a yellow woman was sorting through them and organizing everything into impossible stacks of objects that should not have been stackable.

There was food everywhere, most of it airborne.

A pink man in green overalls and a yellow shirt peeked out of the kitchen. He was apparently in the midst of applying makeup, but he had only shadowed one eye thus far, giving him the look of an abuse victim. “Oh, it’s just that boy,” the man said, rather coquettishly. “What’s-his-name.”

He was wearing red high heels.

The dark-eyed girl stared. Most of the shelters she had seen, and then only in passing, were like the day room in the long-term care ward at the hospital. A lot of hurt people at various levels of coherency who were doing their best to focus on battered board games and puzzles, or just keep to themselves. Because if you did something that seemed to require attention, the person who came over to give it to you would not be kind, and they would do whatever was necessary to shut you up.

She didn’t think it was fair that Tommy had to go be shut up in one of those places just because it was raining. Even if it was special rain. He wasn’t really crazy.

She had been mystified when he suddenly said he wanted to go back to the shelter in Strawberryfield, because he preferred it. Strawberryfield was a slum. Everything in SoHo — barring the odd restaurant — was better!

And she had been certain something was seriously wrong with him when he invited her to come along if she was worried, they wouldn’t mind her there.

“Tommy, those places are charity joints!” she said. “It’s like Our Merciful Lord. Nobody pays them for the upkeep so they don’t like extra people eating the food and using the beds. I don’t look like I need a shelter!”

“Nah. Hyacinth won’t care,” he said. He grabbed his guitar and walked off, so of course she had to follow him and get on the bus.

Tommy was staring, too, so maybe something really was wrong with the place.

“Cerise?” he said. “Were you beat up by a gang of butch chicks?”

The man in the kitchen doorway with one shadowed eye huffed a sigh. “Oh, I forgot everything but the shoes, that’s all it is. This is my day job. I’m a sort of a drag performer.” He (He?) smiled. “I’ve stolen some of Annie’s makeup but of course she doesn’t have anything in my shade.”

“Let me down, you madwoman!” snarled the lady on the wall.

“No,” said the pink… whoever it was.

“Parece amazing!” shrieked an accented voice behind her. “Calliope do this ago? Yo ve le pipe cleaners y le glitter! Que grande-grande es!”

The girl in the flowered dress sighed. “Now that guy is definitely nuts, Tom.”

“It’s a storm, babe, we’re all nuts,” Tommy said. He put his arm around her waist and planted a kiss on her cheek.

Maria hopped out of her chair with a grin. “Who is that out there?”

“Please somebody go out and get him before a decoy hits him in the head!” Hyacinth added.

“Il y a un pato!” said the voice outside, followed by crazed laughter. “Wow!”

The girl in the flowered dress accepted Hyacinth’s invitation to rescue the total nut bar from the bus.

“He sounds like somebody threw an Iliodarian dictionary in a food processor,” Maggie said.

“I get a word here and there,” said Hyacinth.

“Is that your girlfriend, Tommy?” said the white woman with the melon in the birdcage.

Tommy smiled at her. “Yeah, Mrs. Taube. Her name’s Penny.”

“How old is she?”

“Nineteen. She’s got a job as a cleaner in SoHo.”

Bianca raised her voice, “Excuse me, Miss Hauser? How old are you?”

“I’m nineteen and a half!” said the yellow woman, somewhat muffled by an orange paisley kerchief.

“Come down here and date Tommy,” Mrs. Taube said.

Tommy’s expression twisted. “No thank you, Mrs. Taube,” he said tightly.

“Suit yourself, but it’s not going to last,” she said.

Tommy took a single step towards her, but the pending argument on race relations was interrupted by Penny returning with the man from the bus.

“Que génial!” he said, beaming. He was not wearing his glasses, but to be fair, they didn’t have glass in them and he didn’t need them. “We can to glue people to the walls? That’s great!”

“We can’t glue people to the walls, Chris!” Hyacinth said. “This is an abusive relationship I’m having!”

“You started it,” Cerise said coldly.

“Chris, did you find that accent in the trash and decide to keep it or what?” Maggie said.

“What accent?” Chris said, blinking.

Maria clasped both his hands. “Discúlpeme. ¿De dónde es usted?”

“¿Cómo? Yo es de San Rosille.”

“No. Originally,” Maria said.

“Oh. Coquillaville, but je es très petit, ago-ago.” He pointed his thumb over his left shoulder.

Maria laughed and embraced him. “No wonder you’re incomprensible!” She turned and smiled at everyone. “It’s on the border!”

“Ohh,” said multiple voices. A few of them got it, and few of them nodded like they got it even though they didn’t, and a couple didn’t care.

Penny leaned closer to Tommy and spoke in his ear, “Are they more worried about why that guy sounds funny than us living together or that… whoever that is in the heels?”

He smiled at her. “It’s Hyacinth’s house.” He lowered his voice, “Maybe don’t tell the one with the birdcage we’re living together, she’s old.”

“Fils de pute,” Chris said, gazing upwards. “Mira tu le art supplies!”

Calliope had considerately put together a box of them, and Bethany had used a few, but that wasn’t where he was looking.

He ran up the stairs.

◈◈◈

Calliope had tied Seth’s shoes for him, over his protest. “Hey, I’m pretty sure you know how, but you got enough going on right now. This is like Milo bringing me cookies when I’m painting.”

They managed to get him up, but he had ruined his coat and pants. And Calliope had ruined her pants. And Ann’s red rubber boots had grease on them and kept slipping. Look, it was a bad day for clothing all around.

The rain had thickened to a glittery purplish drizzle. Soup gave Calliope his hat to keep the wet off of her face, but she wore it turned around backwards so it seemed like she didn’t quite get the point. Seth had two fire blankets over his head and looked like a budget nun.

The blue man intermittently came up with reasons to go to the shelter on Pine instead, or just not the basement, but he kept walking with them. Soup stayed nearby to look drippy and worried as needed. Getting past the bus stop was hardest, then Seth gave up.

“You can be in my room if you want, Seth,” Calliope said. “What, Ann?” Ann kept shaking her head and making big eyes and it was super annoying. “He likes my room!”

“I do,” Seth said. He made a weak smile. “Thank you, Calliope.”

“It’s… It’s nice of you, dear,” Ann said. Well, she thought. Maybe it will be quiet when we get home. Yes. Cerise will have let Cin off the wall and the babies will be sleeping and it will be… quiet. Yes.

Ann, where is it that you’re imagining we live?

I don’t know… What about a farm?

…Chickens are scary.

What.

They are basically dinosaurs, Ann. Look at their feet. I don’t want them in our farmhouse. What’s a safe animal? Can cotton balls be an animal?

Milo…

But the house with the puzzle-piece paint job and the boiling trash halo was coming into view. Occasional snatches of music were audible over the rain. It wasn’t even quiet from half a block away.

Seth stopped walking and said, “Oh.”

“We’ll go in through the chicken, dear,” Ann said softly. “Kitchen, dear!” she corrected herself, and Seth winced at the noise. “I’m dreadfully sorry.”

Seth didn’t move, even when she pulled him a bit. “Is Mordecai in the kitchen?” he said.

“I suppose he is,” Ann said.

“I’d rather not.”

Ann adjusted the blankets and tugged them tighter. “Then we’ll be quick. They won’t hit you… unless a broken one falls. You hold your ears and I’ll hold the blankets.”

Calliope ran ahead and kicked over the plywood board that served them as a gate. She waved Soup’s hat in the air. “Back off, you doodads!”

Everything was still blinking and beeping and quacking, with occasional chirps and shrieks as individuals knocked into each other. There were a lot of painted smiles and bobbly pipe cleaner arms and googly eyes involved. In context with the rain, the dark sky, and the hurt man, it was more like a nightmare craft store than a fun art project.

Soup ducked ahead of them and opened the door. He gave a cry and it swung closed again. He staggered backwards and almost fell off the porch. “You guys…”

Ann waved a hand, barely visible through the chaos. “Oh, whatever it is we’ll deal with it, darling. It’s just a storm.”

“I don’t think this is just a storm,” Soup said.

◈◈◈

Obviously, there was a yellow woman and a blue man floating in the atrium space at second-storey height. They were centrally located, they were being very loud and passionate, and they were both lit up with magic — entirely, in the case of the woman, with the yellow flames making a fireball around her, whereas the man just had two flaming blue hands wrapped around a largish object.

The woman was attempting to dislodge this object with further magic, which her condition rendered as a continuous stream of yellow light. The man was being nudged slowly backwards as if by a blast from a fire hose, but he refused to relinquish whatever that was in his arms.

There were multiple objects and boxes stuck to the walls, a few towering constructions outside of Room 204, and one of the upholstered chairs had been glued to the ceiling and covered in papers — not for the first time.

Hyacinth was still on the wall downstairs, now with a loose lamp shade stuck near her and a partial rainbow halo of crayon which seemed to have been abandoned rather suddenly. The entire dining room had been walled off with a semi-transparent shield of undulating orange and yellow. Ted and Maria were visible behind it, as well as Lucy, so that was probably where Bethany had taken her crayons. A stained cardboard box impacted the improvised shield spell and burst open, spraying a clattering load of worn-out tin cutlery.

The blue man had a fabric noose wrapped around his lower leg, seemingly constructed out of a torn fire blanket and the wooden pole that was used for pulling down the attic stairs. The General was hanging onto this pole with both hands, while Sanaam hung onto her ankles and leaned backwards at a forty-five-degree angle to keep her from being pulled up any higher. Maggie was standing nearby, looking midway between terrified and embarrassed as her mother attempted to instruct her in nonlethal methods of restraint and deescalation techniques.

It was rather difficult to hear her. There was a lot of screaming going on, and some crying, but that might’ve been Pablo or Lucy.

Near the kitchen, something of a sideshow was occurring: a green boy with wavy hair was holding up a birdcage with a spiky piece of fruit in it, and shouting that if everyone didn’t stop being racist right now and live in peace and fucking harmony he was going to shoot this motherfucking melon dead right here, or words to the effect. Elizabeth appeared to be on his side, whereas Tania and Cerise were flanking the elderly Mrs. Taube, and demanding that he put down the crazy woman’s fruit cage and be reasonable, and anyway mixed relationships never last. Mrs. Taube appeared stoic and not overly concerned with the health of her melon; Jessica could take care of herself.

“It is an immutable fact of civilian life that we cannot kill people merely because they are being disruptive!” the General bellowed. “Thus conflict resolution and deescalation are important skills which you will require if peace breaks out, Magnificent! Mr. Treves!” she cried. “Mr. Treves!”

“Cast it away!” shrieked Kitty Hauser.

“He is the best-best thing I see already and I take him home later and I love him and I hang Yule lights on him!” said Christoph Treves.

“You said that about the dead rat!”

“He seem très-très amusant!”

“STOP MAKING UP WORDS!”

“Mr. Treves!” the General hollered, while simultaneously yanking backward on the noose as if sheeting in a sail.

He glanced down at her. “¿Cómo?”

“We love and appreciate you for who you are, Mr. Treves,” the General said reasonably.

“Bájate, s’il vous plaît,” Sanaam attempted.

“Huh?” Chris said.

Barnaby peeped out from an impossible stack of random objects near Room 204 and offered a box. “What if we alphabetize these magazines, Miss Haber?”

“I’m never going to get it organized if you people have to touch every object before I destroy it!” she said. “You have no sense of true value! And that man needs intensive psychoanalysis for his multiple issues!”

“Tu es un cultural philistine!” Chris snarled. “Pick you up un livre d’art history!”

Ann had finally discerned what he was holding. It was Calliope’s Yule tree, the one she’d made out of doll parts. Apparently they had just put it in Room 204 instead of something more rational, like covering it in cement and throwing it into the harbour.

“No, Soup. I’d say this is about usual,” Ann said. She sighed and put a hand to her cheek. “I miss our imaginary cotton ball farm, I really do. We can just picture them frolicking in the fields, wild and free. They are perfectly silent and composed. In the spring we shall plant feathers and grow pillows…”

At least, Calliope was pretty sure that was it. She nudged past Seth and looked up. She thought she recognized that accent. “Oh shoot, we got Chris,” she said. “I gotta get Em to make me a chocolate bar…” She wandered inside, leaving Ann, Soup and Seth on the porch.

“Mars!” Chris said. He shoved the yellow woman’s magic back with a blue, umbrella-shaped shield of some kind. The yellow magic impacted with a crackling sound, and where the colours met they created a dangerous-looking purplish halo. Chris didn’t seem to notice. He held up the doll tree with a grin. “Mira tu ce cosa génial! They has vacant ojos y grabby hands like bons petits consumers!”

“Oh, I forgot all about that little guy,” Calliope said. “You want him?”

“Bien sûr!”

“Just nod, hon, okay?”

“Please call me a taxi,” Seth said.

“I’m sorry, dear, we don’t have a phone.” Ann hugged him, but very gently. She knew he was in pain. “It will be all right. I promise you. Maybe Calliope’s room…”

“Ann,” he said, “I know you’re trying to be a good friend. I’m here now and we both know I’m stuck. But if you don’t stop lying to me to get me to do what you want, I’m going to vomit on your shoes.”

“I’m sorry, dear.”

“I might do that anyway,” he said softly. But he let her help him inside.