Page 88 of Grimoire Girls Expulsion

"Don't." I give him the grin. He doesn't give it back. "I can't read it anyway, Ren. That's the whole problem. Before the gates I'd have known which step."

"Then stay up on the steps tomorrow, by the lamp with Callum. Don't come in the water."

"That was already the plan. You and Atlas get the water. Callum and I get the lamp and the worrying."

"Felix."

"I'll stay on the steps." I mostly mean it. "Don't tell Ev. Not tonight."

He's quiet for a while. Through the kitchen window behind us I can hear Atlas complaining about the dishes and Brittany telling him to use the lemon soap.

"Not tonight," Ren says finally. "She needs her hands steady tomorrow. If she knows, she'll spend the whole time listening for you instead of following the threads." He lets go of my wrist. "But after, you tell her, whatever happens down there. I'm not carrying it for you forever."

"Deal."

We drink the tea. It's terrible, peppermint and something that tastes like lawn clippings.

"Since we're being honest out here," I say. "I'd take her for myself if I could."

Ren doesn't say anything. He doesn't let go of my wrist, either.

"If the house let one guy walk off with the whole pot, I'd scoop it up and run, and I wouldn't feel bad about it until somewhere past the state line." I turn the mug around in my hands. "Every time she knocks on your door at night, I lie there and hate you a little. Only a little, and only until breakfast."

"I know," Ren says. "Your heart does it when she's on the stairs." He's quiet for a moment. "Mine does it when she comes out here and sits with you on this step."

That surprises me so much I laugh out loud. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Then she sits on the end of my mattress and tells me what Brittany said about the dishes, and I stop minding." He finally looks at me. "She wouldn't let you run with the pot anyway. She'd make you turn the car around and come back for the rest of us."

"And the spider."

"And Herbert," he agrees.

Then Ren says, to the garden instead of to me, "Can I tell you something I haven't told her?"

"That's about all I'm good for lately."

"If we get it wrong tomorrow." He holds his mug in both hands. "If the Well goes, and the lines go with it, and none of us can do anything ever again. I think I'd be all right." He stops, and when he goes on, his voice is very quiet. "I think I might be better. Sometimes I think I'd like to find out what quiet sounds like." He looks down at the mug. "I told Ev I wonder about it. I didn't tell her how often."

I look at him. He means it. Ren doesn't say things he doesn't mean; he barely says the things he does.

"I wouldn't," I tell him. "Be all right."

"I know."

"I've had it since I was fourteen. Even when I hated it, it was the thing I was. And now it comes in sideways and I can't even—" I pick up the deck and put it down again. "If it all goes out, I'm a guy in a blazer who's pretty good at cards. That's it. That's the whole guy."

Ren takes my wrist again. He isn't listening this time, just holding on.

"Then I'll be all right for both of us," he says. "Until you figure out who the rest of the guy is."

He goes up to bed after that. I stay out on the step until my tea goes cold.

Later, when the house has gone quiet, I'm sitting on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets, dealing cards face up onto the tile.

The woodstove has burned down to a red glow behind the grate, and the tile has gone cold enough that I can feel it through my jeans. The whole kitchen smells of old coffee, woodsmoke, and the lemon soap Brittany makes everyone use on the mugs. The others are asleep upstairs—or maybe pretending to be, which doesn't fool anyone in this house, since everyone can feel everyone anyway.

I deal another card. It's the Tower, from the tarot half of the deck, with little people falling out of the windows. Then the four of clubs, then one of mine, black card stock with my cramped white ink on it, a shape I drew back in the spring and still don't understand.