Andraeon was asleep when Jones finally came to bed, but he woke when the mattress dipped down under Jones’s weight, and rolled over to look at him. Jones had only sat down on the edge of the bed and was looking towards the window, where a sliver of moon occasionally peeked through the clouds drifting across the sky. In the dim light from the moon and the streetlamp outside, he looked tired and worn, as though he’d aged ten years since Kaede and Emily had appeared in the backyard. Silently Andraeon moved to sit behind him, looping his arms loosely around Jones and resting his chin on Jones’s shoulder. Jones reached up to lay a hand on Andraeon’s arm and they sat in silence for long ticking minutes.
“How’s Emily?” Andraeon asked finally.
“Real,” Jones said, and gave a slightly bitter laugh. “And scared. She doesn’t trust me.”
“She will.” Andraeon nuzzled the side of his neck, breathing in the scent of shampoo and aftershave. “Just give her a bit of time.”
“I know. It’s just... frustrating. It hurts. I’m her father, I should have tried harder to protect her. To find her, instead of getting drunk all the time.” He traced the edge of the cuff around Andraeon’s wrist. “And I still want to just go get too drunk to see.”
“Don’t,” Andraeon said fiercely. “You do that and you don’t deserve to have Emily back.”
He felt Jones take a deep breath, muscles tensing under his arms, and let the breath out slowly. “Thanks Drae. You really know how to kick me when I’m down.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not indulging you. You fucked up and you know it, and now you’ve got to make it right. You’ve got the chance to make it right.”
Jones twisted to look at him, eyebrows drawn in a little. “Are we talking about Emily now, or you?”
“I...” Andraeon shrugged. “It’s nothing. Come get some sleep.” He started to pull away but Jones grabbed his wrist, just above the cuff, and turned to face him fully.
“Look, if you’re going to keep taking potshots at me, I want to know why.”
“I’m not taking potshots at you.”
“Bullshit. I did something to piss you off, okay, but don’t you ever try to use my daughter against me again.” Even in the darkness of the room Andraeon could see an anger so deep it almost bled over into rage in Jones’s eyes and twisting the corner of his mouth down. He drew back, suddenly afraid, and swallowed against the lump in his throat.
“I’m sorry.” He took an uncertain breath. “That was unfair. I don’t even really know why I’m angry. Not that I’m trying to make an excuse,” he added hurriedly when Jones raised an eyebrow. “Please don’t start drinking again. Just come sleep.”
Jones gave him a long hard look then the anger faded out of his eyes—or was shoved down and hidden, Andraeon thought—and he nodded. Releasing Andraeon’s wrist, he got up and stripped off his clothes, then climbed into bed as Andraeon shifted over. He settled onto his back and let Andraeon take his usual spot at his side, but his expression had turned distant. With a sigh Andraeon left him to his thoughts and closed his eyes to sleep.
Early morning sunlight coming in through the window woke him the next morning and he stretched luxuriously under it. When he opened his eyes he expected to be alone in the bed but Jones was still there, curled up on his side and still fast asleep. Andraeon kissed his bare shoulder then carefully got out of bed and left the spare room to see if anyone else was up yet. The house was quiet and he could see that the door to Kaede’s room was shut, but the door to the spare room Emily had been given stood open. He glanced inside and saw the bed had been made with almost military precision, the edges so straight he thought he could have used them as a ruler. Unsure why that unsettled him so much, he went quietly down the stairs to see if Emily had gone down to the bottom floor.
He found her in the kitchen, standing on a chair to take a box of cereal out of the cupboard. She was wearing some old clothes Kaede had found that had belonged to Shiki as a child, but they were still so big that she’d had to roll up the bottoms of the pants and the shirt’s sleeves kept sliding down over her hands. She hugged the cereal box to her narrow chest and started to shove the sleeve back up again, then spotted him and froze like a deer in the headlights.
“Easy,” he said, holding his hands out palm-up. “Want some help?”
“No.” Clutching the box she scrambled down and put the chair between them. “I just got hungry.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure Kaede won’t mind you getting your own breakfast. Mind if I join you?”
“I guess,” she said after a suspicious moment, moving sideways to the table in a few quick steps. “You sit there.” She pointed to the chair at the opposite end of the table to the one she’d set a bowl in front of.
Andraeon obediently took the seat she’d indicated, watching her dump cereal into her bowl with quick flicks of her wrist, then splash milk on top of it. Her frown of concentration was an identical copy of Jones’s in miniature and he found himself smiling a little. She wordlessly pushed the cereal box down the table towards him and shoved her sleeves up again, then dug in, eating the cereal so quickly he wasn’t entirely sure she was actually chewing it.
“You’re jealous,” she said after she’d emptied half the bowl, making him jump.
“I’m what?”
“Jealous. Of me.” She blew a lock of curly hair out of her face and looked at him, her blue-grey eyes too old for her child’s face.
“I’m not jealous of you, Emily.”
“You are.” She slapped her spoon down on the table, flicking drops of milk into the air. “You think now I’m here, Daddy won’t want you anymore.”
“That’s not true,” he said, but even he could hear how hollow it rang.
“It is true, I can see it. Up here.” She tapped her forehead. “And I can see you too. You glow.”
He stared at her for a moment, thinking of Shiki showing him his own skin speckled with pinpoints of light. “What else can you see?” he asked carefully.
“Nothing.” She balled her hands up into fists and pressed them against her eyes. “Go away.”
“Emily—”
“Go away,” she screamed at him, and suddenly the chair was gone from below him and he sprawled out across damp dirt somewhere dark and musty.
Panting for breath, he sat up and looked around, eyes wide in an attempt to take advantage of what little light filtered into the enclosed space. The walls were also made of dirt and he sensed that he was underground somewhere, in a cellar possibly—or a grave. That thought made him get to his feet in a panic, jerking upright so fast he looked like a puppet on strings. His head bumped the ceiling and a shower of dirt slid down his bare back.
He put one hand on the wall and held the other out in front of him, taking careful shuffling steps to see how big the area around him was. He counted off twenty paces one way until he hit another wall, then fifty along that wall until he hit a third. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom by then and he spotted a tiny line of light filtering in from the ceiling. When he got over there he found a heavy wooden door set in the hard-packed ceiling, but as hard as he tried to push it up, it wouldn’t budge.
He still kept trying, until his shoulders ached and his arms were trembling with the effort. Eventually he was forced to give up and he dropped down to sit on the dirt, breathing hard and close to tears out of sheer frustration. He took a deep breath and rubbed at his face, not caring if it left streaks of dirt on his skin, then closed his eyes and tried to relax. He’d moved himself from one place to another at Edgemount and he could do the same now.
“Picture it,” he told himself. “The bedroom at Kaede’s house.”
In the red-tinged darkness behind his eyelids the room started to take shape, emerging in jerky bits and pieces. First he saw the general space of the room, then the window, still with the sun shining through it and laying a bright path across the bed. He pictured the blankets in disarray, because of course Jones would have heard Emily scream and gone bolting down to the kitchen. He put a dresser beside the bed with a little cat-shaped alarm clock on it and a lamp with a pink shade. The rest of the room popped into place then and he realized his eyes were open and he was looking at the real thing.
His knees sagged for a moment in relief, then he locked them and headed out of the room. At the top of the stairs he heard voices, too low to pick out exact words, but he recognized the deeper voice as Jones’s and the slightly higher one as Kaede’s. He made his way down the stairs and heard Jones say his name before his foot hit a creaky step and cut off their conversation. Kaede came out first, relief and then concern chasing across her face as she saw him. She gestured him to come into the living room, where Jones sat on the couch with Emily asleep in his lap. He gave Andraeon a look of mixed relief and annoyance.
“What the hell happened?” he asked. “Kaede had to sedate Emily just to calm her down.”
“I don’t know. We were just sitting at the table and she started talking about how I was jealous, then she told me to go away and sent me somewhere.”
Jones gave him a sceptical look, the annoyance sinking deeper into his expression. “How can she send you anywhere, Andraeon?”
“I don’t know, okay? One minute I was sitting in a chair, the next I was sitting on my ass in a cellar somewhere. Why would I make this up, Jones? What do you think I did, went out into the backyard so I could cover myself in dirt?”
“No,” Jones said after a moment, looking so tired suddenly that Andraeon felt his own anger disappear. “I just don’t know how.”
“She was with Aloria for a number of years,” Kaede said with some hesitation. “And some of it may be from you, like that woman Lea and her son.”
“I can’t do anything. What would I have managed to pass to her?”
“I don’t know. With your permission I can look into it further.”
Jones’s eyes flicked towards Andraeon. “All right,” he said after a moment. “Find out what you can.” Cradling Emily in his arms, he got to his feet. “I’m going to put her back to bed. Come up with me, Drae. We need to talk.”
He started up the stairs and after a moment—and a quick nervous glance at Kaede—Andraeon followed.
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