Johnny Rainbow’s, sick of vodka
Craves samosas (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)
Johnny Rainbow’s out of options
Ain’t that funny? (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)

And though he really needs a rest
There’s not much help for Johnny
He’s just doing his gay little best

Johnny Rainbow’s clueless friends are
Rushing closer (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)
And little Nellie’s at home
Cursing Johnny (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)

Pa, pa-pa-pa, pa-pa-pa
Pa, pa-pa-pa, pa-pa-pa
We know you’re trying (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)
Pa, pa-pa-pa, pa-pa-pa
Pa, pa-pa-pa, pa-pa-pa
We know you’re trying (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)

Though every bridge may be in flames
Sometimes repairing
Damage is the only way that things can change

Johnny Rainbow’s back from exile
There’s samosas! (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)
But little Nellie just says
"You’re safe, Johnny" (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)

Pa, pa-pa-pa, pa-pa-pa
Pa, pa-pa-pa, pa-pa-pa
We know you’re trying (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)
Pa, pa-pa-pa, pa-pa-pa
Pa, pa-pa-pa, pa-pa-pa
We know you’re trying (la-la-la, la-la, la-la-la, la-la)
La-la-la, la-la, ooh

The fat girl with the pink spider hairstyle returned shortly before dawn, toting a largish painting in a gold frame. Andrej peered at it curiously, but he could only see the brown paper backing. He offered her a polite bow, with hands clasped in sincere relief. “Ah, Miss D’Iver, I was so worried for…”

“Well, stop it,” she replied, striding past.

“Um,” he offered, quickly. “I don’t want to bother. If you have the bowls and spoons…”

“We’ll put them back in the kitchen when we have a minute,” she said.

“Is there anything…?”

“None of your business.” She was only waiting for the elevator doors to open.

“Uh,” he said. “Are you home to stay? For tonight?”

“This is not my home,” she said flatly.

“How was, um, the goulash?”

She beamed with white teeth that seemed rather sharp to him. “Oh. Fab.”

He smiled too.

She ducked into the elevator, saluted him, and began marching in place before the doors even shut.

◆◇◆

She knocked on the door and spoke softly, “It’s me.”

After a brief pause, Milo opened it, scowling, and holding Hyacinth back with a hand.

Maggie attempted a smile. “Look what I found.” She flipped the painting around. Two oil-painted mallards were soaring across an autumn sky.

Hyacinth smirked. “Oh, that’s brilliant.”

Mordecai’s head popped up over her shoulder. “What?” He blinked and goggled. “Did… Did you buy Erik a duck painting?”

Maggie rolled back her eyes. “Pssht. No.” She shoved past them, leveraging them aside with the edge of the painting like a locomotive with a cow-catcher. “Who’s gonna sell me a duck painting at three AM? I stole it.” She smiled. “Erik doesn’t want some random-ass duck painting. This is the genuine article!”

Milo signed at her, still scowling, J-O-H-N WHERE [ASK]?

She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know. The room’s clean, all their stuff is gone, the cage is gone, the cat’s gone, and John is too.

Now Milo smirked. He signed, DEAD, with a flourish. «that guy is so dead.»

◆◇◆

John smacked face-first into the glass door and staggered a step backwards. He pushed onward, realized after a panicked moment that the door wanted him to pull, and staggered out onto the sidewalk. He turned the corner and found himself in a dingy alley with a chain link fence blocking off the end. There was a black hatchback with a scarred license plate nestled against the side of the building. The hatch gaped like a shocked mouth.

He recoiled from it with a gasp. Were they still…?

Something crunched beneath his foot.

He stumbled, rolled his ankle, and went down on one knee.

A broken pair of sunglasses with smoked aviator lenses lay crumpled on the ground. He collected them numbly. “David…?”

He wasn’t there. Whatever they wanted to do with him, they were already doing it. Somewhere in there. But they wouldn’t hurt him. They couldn’t hurt him, and they’d never do anything to hurt Erik. If that woman would only give them the bag, they’d be just fine.

And if she opened it herself and found what was inside, he and all his friends and his little sister were gonna die. And a lot more people. So many more people. Even more than he’d already killed for sure.

He couldn’t get up. He couldn’t move. He didn’t know which way to turn. He had nowhere to go.

I shouldn’t have done that.

They need it.

I can’t go back and get it.

I ruined everything and all I can do is wait and see how many people I love are going to pay for my mistakes.

He sat down on the cold, damp ground, and dropped his head into his hands.

Mom…

No. His mom wouldn’t put up with this. His mom wouldn’t put up with one iota of this. He couldn’t even imagine it to comfort himself. If he started talking he wouldn’t even get past “I’m gay” let alone “…and I accidentally started a molly terrorist organization, and Jenny’s in it, and I’m sorry. I just wanna come home…”

Jen…

He didn’t know where she was. He couldn’t do anything for her, if she even wanted anything from him. He couldn’t apologize.

He could just lie down here in the alley and go to sleep. Maybe the snow would get him before the police did.

No.

He sat forward and put a hand on the icy cobbles to steady himself. He couldn’t let the police get him, not the police or the snow. He was so tired, but that just wasn’t an option.

Mashed Potatoes was back at the Vesely, playing with the mice, unless she’d gotten bored or run out. She didn’t much care for eating the mice. She’d be begging for dinner soon. He’d left her all by herself and there wasn’t anyone coming to open the can for her.

Billie and Matvey will show up eventually.

Will they? If I’m not there to answer the paper or the phone? Will they come back for the cat or cut their losses because they don’t know what happened to me and it might be dangerous? She can’t get out and feed herself…

What if they get hurt trying to figure out what happened to me?

He crawled back to his feet, favouring his sore ankle.

He’d go back, feed the cat, and when Billie and Matvey showed up, he’d explain what happened himself.

He kept to the side of the old narrow street, walking in the general direction of the hotel. There was no point in detouring to get a bus or a taxi, he had no money for either. If he just kept going, he’d get there eventually. Open the can, check the water bowl, collapse in the bed or a chair, whichever was nearest, and wait quietly for whatever came next.

Somehow, the possibility that Billie and Matvey might kill him for what he’d done just wasn’t as terrifying as falling asleep in the snow or having Erik’s family blow his head off. It didn’t make any sense, but he didn’t have any energy for making sense. Maybe he’d just rather his friends kill him. It was their right.

A toy-shaped black compact screeched to a halt beside him. The front passenger door popped open, flung in his direction by a man with dark brown hair and a short beard who was still reaching across the empty bucket seat with his seatbelt unbuckled.

“Get in,” said the man.

“Uh?” John said, blinking.

The back door popped open on the same side. Billie leaned out, her cherry red hair resplendent against the overcast pallor of late afternoon. “Get in, you fucking idiot! Get in!”

Matvey cautiously peeked over her shoulder, his purple complexion mostly hidden by dark glasses, an upturned coat, and a broad-brimmed hat.  “Please?” he added hopefully.

John gave a little gasp and slid into the bucket seat, slamming the door behind him. “Don’t let anyone see…”

“What happened?” said the man with the beard. “Are you okay?”

Billie slammed her own door and Matvey said, “Where is Erik?”

John had pulled off his sunglasses to stare at the bearded man. His brown hair was in an asymmetrical undercut which badly needed maintenance before it could be called fashionable. It looked like he’d done it in a mirror with a set of electric clippers.

The blonde dye-job had grown out, and he hadn’t put it back in. It had been almost a year since Kirov.

He’d stopped shaving too.

“You look like a lumberjack,” John said faintly.

Rob smiled at him, still quite fetching, even with the unkempt hair and beard. “But a sexy one, right?” He clicked his seatbelt back into the buckle.

Billie snatched John by the shoulder and leaned in, eclipsing Rob entirely. “What happened? Are we safe here? Sort your fucking mind out!”

“Wow,” said a blue plastic box with a mesh door in the front.

“Shh,” Matvey warned, poking a finger through the mesh. “Be a good little girl.” But he was looking right at Billie, not the cat in the box.

“We need to know…”

“Safe,” John said, nodding. But he began to shake his head, almost as soon as he’d said the word. “Not safe, not safe, I’m so sorry…”

“Rob,” said Billie.

He nodded to her, racked the gearshift out of park, and pulled into traffic. “I’ll get us out of here, but I’m going to need a destination eventually…”

“Where is Erik?” Matvey asked softly.

“With his family,” John said.

Rob braked hard in the middle of an intersection and Billie said, “What?”

Matvey breathed a sigh and only nodded.

“They’re here in Cyre,” John said. He shook his head and backed over his own words, as Rob drove apologetically away from the sound of irritated car horns, “They’ve been here, I don’t know how long, looking for us — for him. But I knew they were here, I knew before this, and I let them take Erik. I hid them from you because I wanted them to take Erik home…”

“The boy must go home,” Matvey said, still nodding.

“You can’t do that!” Billie cried. “Oh, my gods, John! This isn’t…”

Matvey clapped his gloved hand over her mouth. “The boy must go home,” he told her, firmly. He turned towards John, “And they will get him there safely?”

“Yes,” John said. “Yes. They have everything. Passports… David and I…”

“David was in on this?”

Matvey pushed his hand over her mouth again. “Stop. Just stop. This is not the time.”

“Let her,” John said, trembling. He pressed both hands over his eyes. “Oh, gods, I deserve it. I ruined everything. I don’t know what’s going to happen but it can’t be fixed, it can’t ever be fixed, because I… I…”

“Rob!”

“Yow-wow!” the cat complained.

He’d taken a sudden ninety-degree turn into a narrow alley beside a doughnut shop with a faded board sign. He shifted the car back into park, set the hand brake and unbuckled his seatbelt again. 

“Rob…”

“It’s fine.” He scooted nearer and pushed the hat off John’s head to smooth back his hair. “Hey. Hey. It’s okay.”

“Uh-uh.” John was shaking like a building in danger of catastrophic collapse, but not crying, not even tears. His eyes were wide and dry and staring right past them into some future too horrible to describe or even contemplate.

“Billie, go grab us something to drink,” Rob said, holding him.

“What?”

“It’s a doughnut shop! I saw “doughnuts” in plain Anglais. They must at least have coffee! Go get us something to drink!”

She rolled her eyes and slid out of the car, slamming the door behind her.

John shuddered at the sound and let go a faint little moan.

“Stop. It’s okay. Just breathe.”

“I’m going to get you all killed!”

“No. We are not going to let anyone kill us. That’s not going to happen. We’re okay…”

John twisted away from him and latched on to the car door, his fingers hooked around the little metal catch that would spill him back into the street. “No…”

“Don’t…”

Both Rob and Matvey pulled him away and turned him back around.

“Please don’t,” Rob said. “I understand… We understand. Billie does too — she’s not mad at you, she’s scared. We knew something was wrong. We’ve known for a long time, and we’ve been so scared… I’ve been scared,” he allowed. He gave a sheepish laugh which did little to mask his evident pain. “We thought you were going to kill yourself. I… I saw you heading for the train station and I thought we’d find what was left of you on the tracks, okay?” He laughed again, sickly. “I’m just glad to see you. Whatever mess you’ve made trying to handle this all on your own, we’ll help clean it. It’s going to be…”

John pushed him back. “You were at the train station?”

Rob blinked. He shook his head. “Hon…” He slipped a hand inside John’s coat.

John pulled away again, but Rob had already found the seam of the inside pocket. He leaned closer and groped all the way to the bottom — “There it is.” When he sat back, he had a small salad fork in his hand. There were beige flecks of lint clinging to its tines. “Esmerelda said you’ve got to keep the circle closed. Remember? Back in San Rosille?”

“Oh, gods.” John collected the fork, shaking his head. “No. It was the passports. I always kept my coat with us because I put the passports in there. I forgot…” He rattled his head. “You’ve been tracking me with that?”

“Not well,” Rob said.

“Enough to notice you are going places you don’t go,” Matvey added with a smile. He dipped a hand in his own coat pocket and held up the dinner fork, the spoon and the knife, fanned like a set of cards. “Much easier when we call her back and give her these.”

John winced. “You can’t keep doing that, you need to rest…” Nonsensically, he pulled the timer out of his shirt. His hand was on the dial to wind it back before he realized. He let go, and folded both shaking hands in his lap.

Rob slipped the string over his head and stowed the timer in the cupholder. “You’re all done with that. You’re done and we’re going to go home. It’s past time…”

“I can’t,” John said. “Mom… My mom…”

Rob drew back with a sour frown. “Oh? Are you still so far in the closet you’re coughing up mothballs?”

“Robbie,” Matvey said.

“Are you still picking rock salt out of your cute butt?” John shot back. He gasped and covered his mouth with a hand.

“Daddy and Daddy,” Matvey said, leaning in between them. “Please don’t fight.”

“He missed,” Rob said.

“No, he didn’t,” Matvey said. He laughed. “But he said he was sorry.”

“I’m going to get him killed,” John said. He curled up in the bucket seat, drawing his knees to his chest. “I’m going to get them all killed. I… That little girl with the stuffie. And Jenny. Mom…”

“No.” Rob put hands on his shoulders, holding him again. “No, no…”

“I gave Erik everything!” John cried. “Erik’s family has everything! I copied things and… and I stole them and… and… If that front-desk woman sees it or someone else does, they’ll know everything we’re doing… They’ll know we know what Prokovia’s doing. They’ll find us! I wanted Erik to know, I wanted his family to know. I thought they’d find somebody to help us, but that doesn’t mean they will… I don’t even know why they’d want to — they know what I did! If they, if they…”

Rob shuddered, John felt him, but he didn’t let go. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I… I… No, that… We-we’ll be okay…”

“Who are these people?” Matvey said. Rob caught his eye and scowled with disapproval. Matvey only shooed a hand at him.

“They’re the most wonderful people ever,” John sobbed. “They’re brilliant. They’re my best friends. And if they ever see me again they’re going to kill me. They won’t forgive me. They’ve forgiven me too much already.”

“Well,” Matvey began.

Billie yanked open the driver’s door, making all three of them shriek. “Here. That old lady upsold me on half a dozen doughnuts and these weird sandwiches, and I’ve got…” She shook her head, regarding their pale expressions, and John’s tears. “What’s going on?”

She had a white plastic bag slung over her arm, with visible bottled waters in it. Rob took one and opened it for John. “Here, hon.”

“Mm-mm…”

“Yeah. Come on.” There were napkins in the bag too. Rob handed the whole mass of them to John, and left them in his lap when he wouldn’t take them.

“We have,” Matvey said. “Uh. Uh. Complication.”

“What?” Billie opened the back door and dropped onto the bench seat beside him.

“Uh…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rob said. “They’re good people. They’re smart people. Johnny trusts them, and Erik loves them. Nothing is complicated. We’re all good people and it’s going to be fine.”

“Maybe we can go,” Matvey said, “ah… Maybe we go see them and help them get home?” He sat forward hopefully. “Keep them safe? Say ‘thank you’?”

“We don’t say ‘thank you’ for what we did!” John said. He curled up in a ball, rocking, with his face hidden against his knees. “I can’t… I can’t… It’s an obscenity! I can’t…”

“We don’t have to!” Rob said quickly, and too brightly. He nodded at John. “They have their passports, they have everything they need. They got here, and they can get home. We… We’ll check on them. Someone they don’t know — there are lots of us now! We’ll give them a little time, and we’ll check on them, and we’ll make sure Erik’s okay. I’m sure he will be!”

“I gave them a smart paper,” John said.

“What?” Billie said. Matvey audibly swatted her shoulder.

“They…” John sniffled and wiped his face with a napkin. “They can call if they need help. If they don’t hate us and they need help…” He couldn’t lift his head to look at them.

“If they really need the help, they won’t hate us,” Rob said. He gave John the bottle of water, keeping one hand on it to steady it while he drank. “Better?”

John nodded, then he shook his head. He curled up again, hands over his ears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

“Do you want a doughnut?” Billie said. Matvey shook his head at her. “Hell, I don’t know,” she said. She stole a piece of bacon from one of the sandwiches and poked it through the carrier door, for the cat.

“I don’t want this!” John shrieked. “I don’t want any of this! I don’t want what I’ve done, I don’t want where I am, I don’t want who I am… I wasn’t made for these things… I don’t belong here!”

“I,” Rob said. “I know…”

“I want to go home! I want to go home and I don’t even have one anymore! They didn’t even want me there when I did have one, not me. I spent my whole life hiding and I can’t do it anymore, I can’t do it, I’m falling a-fucking-part and I can’t do it… I-I-I’m a fucking liability and if you had any sense you’d call the cops and-and let them gun me down right in the middle of the fucking street! I…”

He’d hooked his fingers around the little silver catch on the door again. This time, all three of them grabbed him and pressed him back into the seat, holding him there like a six point safety harness.

“Are you fucking crazy? Don’t…”

“John… Johnny… I know. I know how it feels…”

“Nikto etogo ne khochet!” Matvey shook his head. “Nobody wants this. Johnny? Nobody wants it. They… They don’t ask you if you want it. They don’t let you say ‘no,’ or ‘wait.’ It… It just happens to you. You go through door and it closes behind you before you even know it’s there, and… and things are lost that you never get back. I screwed up too. I screwed up real bad, Johnny, and I look back and lie to myself that I should’ve known, and I should’ve done better… I want to do it again right now but that won’t fix it. Not for you or me or anyone… So then I think I just want it to stop, I-I want to do something so it stops for me, but that won’t fix it, either, and you…”

“I can’t do it anymore! I only know how to make it worse! I only make everything worse!”

“That isn’t true,” Billie said weakly. “You’ve helped so…”

“I ruin everything and I just want to stop!”

Rob picked up John’s head with both hands, either trying to make him look or just listen. “Hey. Hey. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. No. None of it. We’re all done here and we’ll deal with everything else later, if we have to. We’ll just go home…”

“I can’t!”

“We’ll go see Jen!” Billie broke in. “John? We’ll go see Jenny and she can…”

“Is she here?” John cried.

All three of them said, “No!” with various inflections and frequencies.

“She is safe,” Matvey added.

“She has a cat,” Rob said.

“She has a shit-ton of cats,” Billie added, with a grin.

“…We can go see Jenny anytime,” Rob went on. “It’s safe there. It’s very safe. Five miles of terrifying dirt road or a ‘port, and Greg won’t help anyone who’s mean to animals. People are animals too. Jen is safe and we’ll be safe too…”

Matvey sorted through his coat pockets. He came out with the billfold full of cat pictures, but he leaned towards Billie and tried to ask a question in a low voice, “We are taking Potato. We cannot ‘port back. Are you sure…?”

She pushed a hand over his mouth and leaned in between the front seats to address John: “Is there any doubt in your mind that if we go offer to help Erik’s family right after they found out we stole their kid and…” She caught herself with a hand over her mouth. “And if they think we hurt him…”

“You said we weren’t hurting,” Matvey began.

She put up her hand but did not cover his mouth this time. “I don’t think they’re going to be fair about it. I wouldn’t, if I were them. John, do you think these ‘wonderful people’ are gonna be fair, or are they gonna tell us to cram it and fuck off forever?”

“I-I dunno,” John said, shivering. “They might kill us. Milo and Maggie know lots of magic and they have real bad tempers. And Mordecai tried to kill me once already. Should we let them kill us? I don’t know why I don’t want them to. I shouldn’t mind who…”

Billie sat back. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mattie, get us out of here.”

Matvey leafed quickly through the photos. “Uh… Time? Time difference. What is…?”

“I don’t think it matters.” Billie flipped to the afternoon receptionist for him. “But it’s Buster’s turn.”

He smiled at her — “Save me a doughnut, yeah?” — clasped his hands, and bowed his head.

They left the empty car in the alley for the doughnut shop lady to find, with the keys still in the ignition, a mechanical timer on a string in the cupholder, two cheap sets of sunglasses and two spy-like broad-brimmed hats on the floor, and a mangled piece of bacon on the back seat.

◆◇◆

John gasped and fell forward. Rob caught him. “We’re okay…”

Billie did fall; she tripped over the file box where they’d stuffed all the papers and sat down on the one with all the clothes. But she didn’t squash the doughnuts! So she set them on the cat carrier.

Greg-in-Matvey wandered off happily to address Buster, who appeared thrilled, as usual, to see him.

The small group of children who had been playing with him up until that point seemed a bit more disappointed. A tiny green girl with pale patches on her face and hands covered her ears and began to cry.

Billie brought her head up with a snarl, in search of adult supervision, or some reason there wasn’t any. “Kolya!”

“Kolya?” Rob echoed, with disbelief.

“I’m sorry!” The blue man picked up the green girl and held her against his shoulder. “Shh, shh… They just love the kitties…”

“There are other kitties for them to love! This one’s going to have random strangers bothering him until six PM!”

“What are you doing here?” Rob said.

“Um, waiting?” the blue man replied with a shrug. He offered a sheepish smile. “I’m used to it.”

“How did you…”

“He’s fine now,” Billie said. “Get over it.” She wheeled on Kolya, speaking through her teeth so as not to upset the girl any more, “If you want to play with the kids, do it in another room and let somebody else sit with the teleport lion! Did nobody explain this to you? What if we had wounded, or…”

As she was laying into Kolya, Buster wandered past her. At just above knee height, he was a bit small for a lion and a bit large for a housecat, but due to circumstances beyond his control, he had landed firmly on the housecat side of things. He was also a vegetarian, with occasional exceptions for eggs and cheese. He offered Mashed Potatoes a brief sniff, and nosed open the box of doughnuts on top of her carrier.

“Oh, no, poor little lion-baby!” Greg cried. He walked Matvey away from the cute baby people. “Do you want a treat?”

Billie diverted from Kolya and the kids to warn him, “Greg, Mattie wanted one of those!”

“Ohhh, but we just love sugar so much!” Greg squealed. Matvey flipped up the lid. “What about just one?”

“Doughnuts?” the little green girl said. Kolya carried her over, and most of the others followed curiously. One boy, dark blue with olive-toned patches and streaks of brown in his hair, backed away from the group and pressed against the wall.

Billie sighed. “I have chocolate milk, too, hang on…”

“You can all have any treats you like!” Greg exclaimed. “I have plenty for… Oh, no.” He noted the boy against the wall. “Um.”

“Shit,” Billie said.

“So sorry, little one,” Greg said. He made Matvey sketch an awkward bow. “Please don’t be scared. The stress is so bad for you. I look the same, but I’m not… Oh, gods, this would be so much easier if you had better widdle nosies.” He smiled weakly. “What if I just go?”

Rob goggled at Greg and Matvey. “Go?” There were two cats and a bunch of children to pet and Greg had fifteen whole minutes!

John regarded the boy, wincing. He looked to be about eleven years old. “Oh, gods…” He’d seen the photo. Matvey was missing two boys. They’d looked about ten and twelve, but that had been over a year ago…

“Your papa is still here, sweetie, I just need to get out of the way…”

Billie growled. “Oh, Greg, you idiot…”

“Ready? Just like magic!” He held up three of Matvey’s fingers and counted down, “Three-two-one!” Matvey gave a gasp and covered his mouth with a hand. “Mne ochen’ zhal’…”

The boy clapped both hands over his ears with a cry, “I don’t like that!”

“I’m sorry,” Matvey said quickly. “I don’t mean… I won’t hurt you, Osip…”

“That’s not my name,” the boy said coldly. “You’re not my dad!” He opened the door and ran out.

Matvey wobbled and sat down on the floor, head in hands.

Kolya quietly motioned two of the children nearer, the girl was yellow and the boy was also blue, but more Kolya’s shade. The boy was older, but barely old enough for school. They had no cracks or patches at all. “Isaak? Liza? Idite…” He caught himself, with a glance towards the little green girl. “Come… Come have chocolate milk…” He hugged them both, one in each arm. “Papa loves you so much.” It was lower than a whisper, but loud in the stunned silence.

“Paul?” The voice was distant, female, and getting nearer. “Are you alright? Hey…” The sound of rapid footsteps brought a girl with gorgeous blue-black hair, a waist bag, and a teddy bear hoodie to the door. “Who is it? What’s…” She staggered to a shocked halt before even breaching the doorway. “Johnny?”

John looked at Jenny. Jenny looked at John.

She smirked and planted a hand on her hip and he didn’t do anything.

“Well, can I at least get a ‘happy belated birthday’?” she said.

“It’s your birthday?” he cried. Both legs buckled and he collapsed with a thud that must have been painful.

She clicked her tongue, irritated, but she was already rushing forward to collect him. Rob got there first and she elbowed him aside. “No, it is not my birthday,” she said. “That’s what ‘belated’ means!”

He was crying and hyperventilating at the same time. Each breath sounded like a strangled tea kettle.

At this point, Rob decided the most helpful thing he could do was shove Billie and snarl, “How could you let it get this bad? Why didn’t you HELP him?”

“He hid this from us!” she snapped.

And Jenny drew her brother against her in a hug. “It’s okay. I just missed you. I’m being a shit because I missed you, but I don’t care.” He was shaking too hard. He wasn’t even trying to hug her back. “Hey.” She drew back a little and tried to get a look at him. “Hey. What happened? What’s goin’ on?”

He drew back from her, straining away, but he didn’t pull hard enough to slip out of the hug. “I… I…” He shook his head.

“It’s okay…”

“I don’t deserve to live!”

That got Rob and Matvey going, but Rob decided he wanted to shake Billie. Matvey brushed off Kolya and made it a bit closer before Jenny stopped him: “No. He’s mine. I’ll deal with him.” She turned with a black and murderous frown. “I’ll deal with whatever you did to him later. Get out of here, and take the damn lion with you.”

“Tell him we are okay,” Matvey said. “When he will listen. Robbie and Billie will be okay, and Mashed Potatoes, and… and Paul and I will be okay. Okay?”

Jenny softened. “Okay. Whatever it is, I’ll let him know you’re okay.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Billie muttered in passing. She collected the lion and the cat.

“It’s nothing,” Rob said firmly, more to John than Jenny, but he didn’t try to get nearer. He followed after Billie.

“It’s everything,” Matvey sighed, defeated. “O, moi bogi, it’s everything.” He wandered into the hall. The little green girl dashed after him and took his hand. He smiled down at her. Then they turned a corner and were gone.

Kolya shooed the rest of the children out and shut the door.

Jenny waved a hand at the ceiling, the lamplight dimmed and gained a more comfortable, yellowish tone. “Hey, Johnny? Can you tell me three things that are in the room right now?”

He stared at her.

“It’s a game,” she said softly. “C’mon, we used to play games all the time. It’s I-Spy for traumatized people.” Sometimes that got a laugh, but not this time. “Tell me three things in the room. Hey. I’ll get us started, okay? We got a file box right here.” She nudged it with her foot. “Your turn, what else?”

“Chair,” he whispered, almost inaudibly.

“What colour is it?”

“Green.”

“Okay. We got a green chair. Gimme one more.”

“Bookshelf.”

“Books on it?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Read me a title.”

“Music Vox and Miramar: When Silent Pictures Could Sing.”

“Cool. Have one of these.” She ripped open a packet of fruit snacks and handed one over. “Go on. I got plenty more.”

He chewed slowly. He was shaking a little less.

“What flavour is it?”

He shut his eyes and shook his head.

“Figure it out. Come on. It’s not one of those weird banana ones that doesn’t taste anything like a fucking banana, is it?”

“Don’t swear at people, Jen.”

She grinned at him. “You’re not the boss of me. What fucking flavour is it?”

“It’s grape.”

“Now that I think of it, those don’t taste anything like a fucking grape either,” she said, smiling. “You want another one?”

“Uh-uh.”

There was a white plastic bag on the floor with visible bottled-water outlines in it. Upon examination, there were also two mini-cartons of chocolate milk. She took one of the waters and opened it. “Then have this.”

He drank a single swallow, followed shortly by the rest of the bottle, held in two trembling hands the whole time, like a toddler with a sippy cup. “I’m sorry.”

“Is it something I can forgive you for?”

He shook his head. “I…”

“Uh-uh.” She hugged him again. “You don’t have to explain it. You can be sorry. We got a lot of sorry people here. I love you anyway.”

He clung to her and started to cry. “You shouldn’t.”

“You’re not the boss of me,” she said, muffled.

“Is it over…? Is it really over?”

No, she thought. Of course it’s not over. If it had a throat I’d strangle it and if it had a heart I’d tear it out with my bare hands and make it be over, but I can’t. Tomorrow it’s going to be some other awful thing I don’t even know yet. But right now it’s my goddamn big brother, so all this other shit’s going on the back burner.

“You’re safe,” she told him, like she told all of them. “You don’t ever have to go back and go through that again. We’re doing a new thing and I’ll be here to help you.”

“Jen…” He pushed back from her. “You are so smart and so good and I don’t want this for you…”

“I’m not fond of it for you either,” she said with a frown.

He shook his head. “I just want you to be okay.” He sobbed and swiped his sleeve across his face. “Okay? I don’t have room for anything else right now. I’m sorry I’m like this and I don’t know how to fix it, but please just be okay.”

She put on a smile for him. “I’m doin’ alright.” She took both his hands and squeezed. “I’m doin’ lots better. You’re here.”

“I love you, Jen.”

“I love you, too, big brother. Here. Have another fucking fruit snack, I already opened the fucking bag. Would you like a fucking bubble wrap?”

◆◇◆

Milo’s smug expression faded back into his default look of mild concern. He signed: I/ME WANT [PAST] KILL [GO] DISAPPOINTEDX3 «aw, i wanted to kill him.»

“It didn’t look like anyone got killed,” Maggie told him. She shook her head. “But if they did, right now I’m just glad you didn’t do it so I don’t hafta clean it up.”

She turned to the others with a sigh. “Okay. For the time being, John and the Rainbows are out of it. If the cops caught them — or if they didn’t — I bet we’ll hear it on the news. Until then, we’re on our own. We have a duck painting, evidence of a genocide in progress, fake papers for everyone who needs ‘em, one lovable sex maniac with a head full of dodgy code, the documentation for the dodgy code, and a suitcase that holds literally everything. Our first objective is just getting out of this fucked up country. So what’s our next play?”

“The sex maniac is still napping,” Hyacinth said. “Do we have time to sleep, or are we just gonna drink some more coffee and wing it?”

“I’ll sleep when we’re home,” Mordecai said softly.

“No,” said Hyacinth. “We need your brain. You’re the smart one.”

“Excuse me?” said the General.

Milo signed: HEY.

Hyacinth indicated Mordecai with pointed fingers. “We don’t need any music or cooking, so he’s the smart one! If the rest of you are sleep-deprived, you’re still useful!”

Nobody had any objection to that. Not even Mordecai.

“We require train tickets,” the General said. “With at least one private room. The ticket office should open by eight AM, and then we will have some idea of how much time we have to work with, and how convoluted our travel plans will need to be…”

“I suppose I should go ditch that stolen car before it gets light out,” Hyacinth said.

“The car’s still there?” cried Mordecai.

“Did you see me leave to take care of it?”

“I haven’t been here the whole time!”

“Hey, can I just check on him?” Maggie said. “Before we do anything else?” She lifted the painting. “I’d like him to have it. But if I wake him, am I going to have to break his arm to keep him from doing anything stupid?”

Mordecai shook his head. He nudged open the door between the rooms. “He might be all right, by now.” He managed a weak smile. “But I don’t know. If he’s not, we’re right here.”

She nodded, squeezing past him with the ducks. She left the door open.

Thus, she heard it when, while fixing the lights so Erik’s ducks wouldn’t be a weird colour, a key scraped in the lock of the other room.

Hyacinth yelped. “Hey! Occupied!”

“They cannot hear us,” the General said, more reasonably. She stood. “Mr. Eidel…”

She didn’t need to say it. Mordecai dashed through the connecting door, to hide, and Maggie strode past him…

…Just in time to see the sliding bolt rotated and drawn back from the other side of the door. Presumably it was a magnet or some other mechanical device, there was no magic to be had in the room.

The spy burst through the hotel room door, gun first. “Stop right where you are! This entire building is surrounded by an anti-magic field! We have agents on every rooftop! Surrender now or you will never escape with your lives!”

Maggie urgently processed the sight of the night clerk, the gun, the shiny shoes, and the grey uniform. She clasped a hand to her mouth to stop the sound…

Oh, gods, but she just couldn’t hold it.

She sputtered a brief raspberry, pointed a finger at him, and began to laugh.