First Blood

"Pack light," Orion said, already moving, pulling books off shelves and shoving them into a canvas bag like the house itself was being folded down into something portable. "Don’t carry anything  you can't run with, anything you can't afford to lose."

"I don’t have anything to pack." I picked just that damn book when I ran. I didn’t even remember to pick my phone, not like it would have been of use in a magical town. "Everything I own was left behind."

Orion's hands stilled for just a second on the spine of a book he clearly didn't want to leave behind.

"Then you’re already ahead of the rest of us," he said and went back to packing.

Cillian was by the broken window, running his hand along the frame, murmuring something under his breath that made the glass edges glow faintly and then knit themselves shut, whole again, like the last twenty minutes had never happened.

"You can do that?" I asked. "Fix things? With whatever that was?" I was genuinely curious to know how he did that.

"Family thing." He didn’t look up. "Comes with the other family thing."

"Is there a list somewhere? Of family things? Because I feel like I should be taking notes."

That got the ghost of a smile out of him, quick and tired. "If there's a list, I haven't seen it. Orion might have a copy. He keeps records on everyone."

"I keep records on people who matter," Orion said, from across the room, not looking up. "Don’t let it go to your head."

"Do you have a record on me yet?" I asked him. "Or am I too new to qualify?" I asked jokingly.

"You’ve had a file since before you could talk," Orion said, and something in his tone made it hard to tell if he was joking, which I was learning was very much his specialty. "Don’t look at me like that. It’s not as sinister as it sounds. Well, most of it."

"That’s an incredible amount of qualifying words for one sentence."

"I contain multitudes."

I found myself smiling despite everything. Despite the ash-and-blood smell still clinging to my clothes, despite the fact that I was apparently supposed to be packing for a life I hadn't agreed to yet. Maybe because there was something almost normal about the bickering, something I could hold onto with both hands while the rest of the night refused to make sense.

"What can I do?" I asked, because standing still felt worse than being useless out loud. "Tell me something to do, I need to do something. I feel useless"

Orion considered me for a moment, weighing something.

"Can you carry things without setting them on fire?"

"I have literally no idea."

He handed me a small wooden box, cool and unassuming, and I held it like it might bite with my eyes closed. I cracked one eye open when I felt nothing happening.

“Hey, I didn’t light it up”, I grinned at him. Somewhere in my chest, something that had been wound tight since the book first went cold in my hands eased, just slightly.

"Good," he said. "Put that by the door”, I did as I was instructed and came back to him. “Now, give me your hand. Palm up."

"Why?"

"Because you’re about to spend an unknown number of hours around people you can accidentally set on fire if you get startled, and I would like that number of accidents to be zero." He took my hand when I offered it, turned it palm-up between both of his, and his voice dropped into something quieter, steadier, a teacher’s voice.

 "Close your eyes. Find the warmth. Not the panic, the warmth underneath that. It’s been there your whole life. You just didn’t know the word for it."

"That’s very poetic for one in the morning." I rolled my eyes at him but he wasn’t having it.

"I’ve had a great deal of practice being poetic at inconvenient hours. Close your eyes, Aurora."

I closed my eyes. For one impossible second I felt it. It was small, banked, patient and curled somewhere behind my sternum like a cat that had been sleeping for twenty-five years, and when I breathed out slowly the way he told me to, I swore I felt it breathe with me, unhurried, almost curious.

"There," Orion said softly. "That’s the first thing. Everything else can wait until you’re not exhausted and grieving in a stranger’s living room."

"Is that a professional assessment?"

"It’s a kind one. Take it."

Cillian had finished with the window and came to stand near us, watching the exchange with an expression I was starting to recognize as the one he wore when he was fighting the urge to say something and losing.

"You’re good at this," he said to Orion. "The teaching. You never did that for me."

"You never needed it. You came out of the womb insufferably competent." Orion didn’t look up from repacking the bag at his feet. "Some of us have to work for our gifts. You just have to remember not to bite anyone at dinner parties."

"That happened one time." Cillian grumbled.

"It happened memorably." Orion jabbed back at him

I laughed before I could stop myself, making both of them look at me with matching startled look at the sound that I felt my face go warm.

"Sorry," I said, trying to get my face to not betray me. "It’s just that you two really do bicker like an old married couple. I mean that as a compliment if you’ll take it." I gave them a sheepish smile.

"We’ll take it as one," Orion said at the exact moment Cillian said, "Please don’t encourage him," and the overlap made me laugh again, real and unguarded, the first laugh all night that hadn’t cost me anything to produce.

It was at that moment that the house went silent. And when I say silent, I mean the specific and total absence of every small night sound that had been humming under everything since we'd arrived. No wind. No settling house. Even the fire in the hearth seemed to hold its breath.

Cillian went rigid first, his head coming up like something had physically touched him.

"Orion." One word, flat, urgent.

"I feel it." Orion dropped my hand and set down the bag he’d been packing, and every trace of dry humor drained out of his face at once, replaced by something focused and old and afraid. "That’s not a scout."

"Then what….."

"Get behind me," Cillian said, already moving toward the door, and this time I didn’t argue at all.

We arranged ourselves without discussing it. Cillian was nearest to the door, Orion beside him with both hands already lit blue at the knuckles and me pushed back toward the far wall where the wooden box sat waiting, useless, by a door none of us were using to leave.

"Whatever comes through that door," Orion said lowly, not looking away from it, "let us handle the first move. Please."

"That’s not a request I love."

"It’s the only one thing required of you right now, Aurora." Cillian said and I nodded my head even though he couldn’t see me.

"How bad," I asked, quiet, "on a scale of the scout to something we should be genuinely afraid of?"

"Worse than the scout." Orion’s eyes hadn’t left the door. "I don’t know how much worse yet. That’s rather the problem with this particular kind of silence, it doesn’t come with a warning label."

"That is very comforting to know. You sure know how to make a girl feel safe." I said sarcastically

"I try." He replied flatly and turned his full attention to the door.

The doorknob turned, slow, unhurried, like whoever stood on the other side had all the time in the world and knew it.

And I held my breath, awaiting what comes next.