Chapter 215: A Borrowed Day

Chapter 215: Chapter 215: A Borrowed Day

Erik waited until the last of the light had gone before he said it.

"We go inside."

Kai lifted his head from the parapet. "Now? I thought we were going to sit up here and freeze with dignity."

"We’re no use to Alex like this. And we’re no use to anyone if something finds us on this roof." Erik looked at the other two. Killian was propped against the water tank with his eyes shut, and the skin under them had gone the color of a bruise. "Time runs fast in there. A few minutes out here is a day in there. We can rest properly and be back before anyone below knows we left."

"The skiff," Killian said, without opening his eyes.

"Right."

Kai crawled to the edge and dragged the skiff’s rope up hand over hand, wincing at every pull. They hauled it onto the roof between them. Erik laid his good palm against the plating and reached for the thin silver thread that had tied him to Penelope’s space since the day he signed his name in blood.

The skiff vanished. There was no flash, only a clean absence where it had been.

Hrimnir pressed against Erik’s leg. "All of us," Erik murmured, and the roof, the water tank and the cold tar went out like a candle.

Warm air hit him first, then the smell of cut grass and wet earth.

The fields stretched away under a gentle gold light that belonged to no sun, and the spring bubbled where it always did, a bright ribbon curling through the green. Erik’s knees nearly gave. He was breathing a different air, and his body knew it before he did.

Penelope had felt them come through. She was already running.

She crossed the field at a dead sprint, red hair streaming, and stopped three feet from him with her hands raised as though she didn’t know where to put them. Her eyes went over him in one fast sweep. His arm. His gray face. The torn sleeve on Kai. Killian, who had folded onto the grass and was trying very hard to look like a man resting by choice.

"What happened?" she said. "You said dusk. It’s been four minutes. I felt you come in at the gate and I thought—"

"We’re fine."

"You are not fine." She caught his right wrist, and he flinched. "Your arm is shaking."

"Backlash."

"Erik."

"Lightning. Too much, too fast." He gave a tired half-smile. "I’ll tell you everything. Can I sit first?"

She steered him to the spring’s edge and shoved him down on the grass without ceremony. Behind her the others had begun to arrive, drawn from the houses and the practice field. Persephone first, silver hair wild, then Ben at a jog. Victor and Dahlia followed, Silver a step behind them, and Aunt Mary came through the orchard with her sleeves already rolled.

It took twenty minutes to tell, and nobody interrupted.

Erik gave it flat and in order: the dock, the plating, the mist. The three speedboats. Ten people, three of them with powers. The giant who’d hit him hard enough to leave his arm numb. The woman who’d tried to drown the skiff. Killian’s air trick, the armor he’d stripped off the giant, the water he’d turned to syrup. The way the whole gang had broken and run once it stopped being easy.

"And the leader," Silver said. He had listened with his hands folded and his eyes on the middle distance. "Their man shouted that the boss would hear of it."

"Yes."

"Did he sound afraid of this boss, or proud of him?"

Erik thought. "Both. Mostly afraid, I think."

"Then the boss is the sort who punishes failure." Silver’s expression didn’t change. "Which means he will hear about it, and he will want to know who beat his people. Do not assume a retaliation. Assume a question. He will send someone to answer it."

"We were lucky," Erik said.

"You were. I’m glad you know it." Silver’s voice was dry, and underneath it was something that took the edge off. "Luck of that kind is a loan, and you spend it only when you have no other choice. Next time, I’d rather it wasn’t the three of you alone."

"There won’t be a next time like that. We go straight for Alex, and we stay off the open channels."

"Hm." Silver turned his gaze on Killian. "And you. What did it cost?"

Killian opened his eyes. "I’m sorry?"

"The air. The armor. The water. I’d like the figures."

"Nosebleed, vomiting, a headache I’d call medieval." Killian’s voice was thick. "I could feel when the edges went. After the water, I couldn’t hold the shape of the hull and talk at the same time. If a fourth thing had come, I don’t think I’d have stood up."

"Good," Silver said.

"Good?" Penelope said sharply.

"Good that he knows." Silver inclined his head. "A man who tells me his limit is one I can use. A man who hides it is one I bury."

Killian let out a breath that was half a laugh. "Thank you. I think."

"And the thing in the bank?" Victor asked. He’d gone quiet during the story, and now his voice was careful. "You said it hunted by sound."

"Like the dead do, only bigger. And it got into a building through a window." Erik shook his head. "It wasn’t looking for us. It followed the noise."

"Then those things aren’t staying in the deep water," Dahlia said. "They’re moving into the buildings."

"That’s what I think."

Nobody said what it meant for the 21st floor. They all heard it.

"That’s enough," Penelope said. "Drink."

She was already holding out a ceramic cup. Spring water, bright and slightly luminous, beaded on the rim. She’d filled three of them. She pushed the first into Erik’s good hand and the second into Kai’s, and the third she brought to Killian herself, kneeling in the grass in front of him with a glare like iron.

"All of it. Don’t sip."

"Penny," Killian said, "I’m all right—"

"If you say I’m fine one more time, I’ll feed you this through a funnel."

He drank. It took him three swallows, and some of the gray eased out of his face while she watched. Erik drained his own and felt it spread behind his breastbone, warm and clean. The pins-and-needles in his arm ran down toward his fingertips and slowly, reluctantly, faded.

"It’ll mend the body," Penelope said, hovering over both of them. "It doesn’t refill what you spent. You still need to sleep. A lot. Two days of it, at least."

"Two days is two minutes out there," Killian said.

"Then you’ll sleep two days." She pressed two fingers under his jaw, then thumbed his eyelid back and studied his pupil as though she had trained for it. "Does your head still hurt?"

"Less."

"Be specific."

"A hammer instead of a drill."

"That’s an improvement." She let go, and then, to his obvious surprise, did not step back. She pushed his hair off his forehead and kept her hand there a moment. "You pushed yourself too far."

"I know."

"You can’t just do that to me."

His expression softened, the way it did when she wasn’t looking at him straight. "I’ll try not to."

"Try harder." She turned to Erik, and her face did the same thing it had when she was ten and he’d come home with a split lip. "You. Arm."

"It’s better."

"Arm."

He held it out. She turned it over in both hands and pressed along the muscle, feeling for heat and for tremor. "You’re scarred a little here. It’ll fade, but not completely. That’s from the current, not the giant."

"Noted."

"Don’t note it. Don’t do it again."

"I’ll do my best."

"That is not the same thing, and you know it." She held his wrist a beat longer than she needed to. Then, quietly, so only he could hear: "I stood at the top of the stairs until Mary made me go in."

Erik covered her hand with his. "I saw you."

On the far side of the spring, Ben had planted himself in front of Kai with his arms crossed.

"Hands," he said.

"They’re fine."

"Hands, Kai."

Kai held them out with the air of a man surrendering a weapon. Ben unwound the cloth, and his face went flat. The blisters were worse than they’d looked in the bank, the skin raw and shiny underneath.

"You’re an idiot."

"I’m aware."

"She was drowning you in a wall of water, and you stood there and fed it fire."

"It was working."

"It was cooking you."

"A little."

"A lot." Ben shoved a cup of spring water into his chest. "Drink that. All of it. If you pass out in here, I’m leaving you in the field."

"You wouldn’t."

"I’d put a blanket on you first. Then I’d leave you."

"That’s the nicest threat I’ve ever received."

"Drink."

Persephone had dropped onto the grass beside them with her chin on her fist, watching with open enjoyment. "So the big, scary fire-user," she said, "got beaten by a puddle."

"It was not a puddle."

"A very threatening puddle, then." Her mouth quirked. "I’d have frozen her."

"You don’t have ice."

"I’d have found some." She leaned over and prodded the edge of a blister, and Kai yelped. "Oh, that’s nasty. Does it hurt?"

"Yes, it hurts, why would you—"

"Just checking you were still alive." She smiled, bright and unrepentant. "You look better angry. Keep it up."

Kai opened his mouth, shut it, and went slightly pink. Ben looked from one to the other and rolled his eyes so hard it was audible.

"I’m right here," he said.

"We know," Persephone said sweetly.

Kai drank his water. Within a minute the red ran out of his palms like paint thinning, and the blisters went flat and pale. He turned his hands over and stared.

"Better?" Ben asked.

"Better." Kai flexed his fingers. "Okay. Thanks, man."

"Don’t thank me. Next time duck."

"I don’t duck."

"I know you don’t," Ben said. "That’s the whole problem."

They slept in the cottage near the orchard, the one Aunt Mary had picked for the guest room. She had put three beds in it, pulled the curtains against the golden light, and shooed everyone out. Killian was asleep before his head touched the pillow. Kai followed a minute later, hands curled loosely on his chest. Hrimnir had claimed the floor between them, a gray rug that breathed.

Erik lingered in the doorway.

Penelope was sitting on the porch step with her knees drawn up, watching the spring catch the strange light. She didn’t look around when he sat down next to her.

"Two days," she said.

"Two days."

"And then you go back."

"Yes."

"I wish I could make you stay."

"I know." He bumped her shoulder with his. "But I’ve got to find him, Penny. Something’s wrong. I can feel it."

She was quiet for a while. "Come back," she said finally.

"I promised."

"Say it again."

"I’ll come back."

She nodded and rested her head against his arm, and the two of them sat there while the light never changed and the water ran on. Out in the world, the dusk would be settling over a flat black sea, and a dark roof, and a skiff that was no longer there.

In here, for a little while, it was only a borrowed day.