Chapter Three
As I Lay Me Down
So all of their cards were on the table.
Mick probably shouldn’t have asked—instantly regretted asking, actually. Eleanor seemed fine with it, but Eleanor usually seemed fine about things, only to tell Mick in private after the fact that she certainly wasn’t fine with whatever happened. Granted, he had never known her to lie to him, and the way she looked at him with that mixture of shock and hurt in that singular beat where she wasn’t apparently fine with what he’d said seemed so real. But just as quickly as it happened, the shock faded, and she was back to her casual self, and that was that. She even left the mall laughing and joking about the little shopkeeper who tried to pawn what was clearly costume jewelry off on Mick, and Mick, meanwhile . . .
He played it off casually. He reacted to Eleanor’s teasing appropriately, reacted to her chatter appropriately, danced with her step for step both inside the Rabbit and out. But in the back of his mind, he wondered. And as the day wore on, the spaces between their conversations grew, and there would be these moments when Eleanor would stare out the window wistfully, where the break in conversation was as cold and gray as the world outside the Rabbit.
Why couldn’t it be simple? Straightforward? Easy to navigate? She should be angry at him for wasting her day or asking about her future or committing some other faux pas he couldn’t think of right then. She should be telling him to drop her off at the strip mall. She should be naming all the friends who were likewise stuck forever in that tiny hole of a town but were most certainly not spending all their days working. Yet she didn’t. She followed him, happily, carrying drinks and side dishes, to at least twelve more deliveries, and with each drop-off, their conversations grew shorter and the spaces between them longer, and Mick drove on, feeling those moments crawl under his skin.
It just didn’t seem like the right time when Etienne offered. That was what she said.
Did he buy that? Could he buy that? That she, Eleanor de Lepaute, would just give up an opportunity . . . because it wasn’t the right time? On the one hand, Eleanor wouldn’t lie to him, especially about something that had nothing to do with him in the first place. They shared with each other things they would never even tell their own families, so why would she hide something now?
On the other . . . well, he was hiding something, wasn’t he? A big something, for years. So logic said that if he was hiding something, nothing was stopping her from doing the same, right?
No. That was him. He was the quiet one; that’s what everyone said about them. And frankly, yes, Mick couldn’t argue that they were wrong about that. Eleanor, on the other hand, was vibrant and honest and sincere with everything she did. That was something he admired about her. She felt first, experienced first, and thought about consequences later.
But still. Mick knew a load of bull when he saw one. And frankly, Eleanor wasn’t the sort of person to just throw away something she wanted.
So if the timing of Etienne’s offer wasn’t it . . . then what kept Eleanor from leaving Southwind?
He considered asking. But then the thought of Eleanor’s face when he asked about Etienne’s offer the first time around wormed its way into his head. That look of betrayal and hurt, and he was the one that put that on her face. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t hurt her for a second time that day.
So he didn’t. He stewed on those gaps in conversation and the gnawing questions in his head through the afternoon and right on into evening.
By quarter to nine, the Red Rooster had only seen five occupied tables throughout the dinner rush, and at Bill’s insistence, Eleanor would be the sixth. Mick watched her warily as he dusted and polished tables that, honestly, were already clean. Eleanor stared at the empty dining room over her Caesar salad, as if contemplating the nature of the Martins’ fate. And the thing was, with a mall that big and that busy, it was only a matter of time before the Red Rooster wouldn’t be the only business on the long march to obsolescence, and Mick knew this. Southwind was too small, too old, too half-dead for someone like Eleanor.
She needed to go to Eldaven. Whatever her actual reason was, whether it was the wrong time as she said or something else, she couldn’t stay here.
But . . . this was her life and her decision. Wasn’t it?
“You know,” Bill said quietly behind him, nearly giving Mick a heart attack in the process, “you should join her.”
This again. Mick shot a hard glare at Bill, hoping it was sufficiently withering. “For the last time, I can’t go to Eldaven,” Mick replied, keeping his voice to a harsh whisper. He wanted to make it clear he would strangle the next person to tell him what to do with his life, but he didn’t want Eleanor to hear. The usual, really.
“Actually,” Bill began.
Marcie emerged from the nearby kitchen, holding a plate of chicken alfredo. “He means for dinner. It’s either take a break or wear our tables down to their legs with how much you’re carrying on.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “But if we’re going to be talking about Eldaven . . .”
Mick turned his warning scowl onto his sister. “Could we not talk about this in front of the customers?”
Both Bill and Marcie made a show of looking around the dining room. Mick sighed heavily, took the plate from Marcie, and shoved his way into the kitchen. As he settled down against a counter, Marcie pushed through the door and strode to Mick’s side, placing a glass of water by his elbow.
“I’m an adult, you know,” he said. “I’m fully capable of making my own informed decisions, and it’s getting real tiring that everyone, including Eleanor, is acting like I can’t.”
Marcie leaned her back against the counter. “Did you find out why she turned down Etienne’s offer?”
Mick shifted uncomfortably, bowing his head over his plate and filling his mouth with pasta.
“It’s because of you, isn’t it?”
“For the record,” he said through a half-full mouth, “even if that’s what she said, I didn’t make her stay. But no, that’s not what she said.”
“Oh really?” Marcie turned her head to him, slowly and smoothly. “Then what did she say?”
“She said it wasn’t the right time.”
“Uh huh.” Marcie folded her arms and pressed her tongue against her lower lip for a second. “Did you buy that?”
Mick exhaled. “I really don’t know what to think,” Mick said, a little softer this time. “I don’t think it was just that. She would have said something more than that if the timing was just off. But it can’t be me either. She knows better than that. Besides, we’d figure out a way to keep in touch if she left.”
“Of course,” Marcie said. Then, after a pause, she added, “Bill and I have been talking it over. We’re giving more of your hours to Matthew and Charlotte.”
Mick shot up, nearly choking on pasta as he whirled on Marcie. “What?” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “You’re not serious.”
Marcie narrowed her eyes and stared down her brother. “I’m dead serious.”
“And who’s going to make deliveries?”
“Charlotte. She’s got a faster car than that beat-up tin can you refuse to replace.”
“She forgets orders!”
“She’ll have to come up with mnemonic devices.”
“And Matthew . . . ?”
“Will take over your wearing-down-our-tables duties. The discipline will do him good. We’ll make a respectable member of society out of him yet.”
Mick opened and closed his mouth helplessly, like a fish on land. Somewhere outside of that kitchen, a phone rang twice. Marcie glanced towards the door, sighed, and put an arm around Mick.
“Listen. We haven’t told you this nearly enough times, but we appreciate what you did to support the Red Rooster. Genuinely,” she said. “But the truth is, regardless of whether or not you’re here, the Red Rooster is still going to keep going.”
Mick opened his mouth again, but Marcie held up a hand to stop him.
“Bill and I will figure it out,” she said firmly. “This restaurant has been in our family for far too many years for us to give up without a fight, not to mention we’d be dishonoring Dad’s memory if we did lie down and let it go. But that’s our concern, not yours. You know what is your concern, though?”
Marcie nodded to the door, and Mick had a sinking feeling about what was coming next. He begged her, mentally, to say literally anything other than what he knew she was about to say.
“Making that girl happy enough to follow her dreams.”
And yet, she said exactly what he knew she was about to say.
“Marcie,” Mick said, suddenly exhausted beyond all reason, “Eleanor is an adult fully capable of making her own informed decisions too.”
“No one said she wasn’t,” Marcie said, “but nothing wrong with convincing her to really consider her options. Besides—”she patted his shoulders“—if the two of you are gonna make it a habit to mope around the restaurant all autumn, I might just lose it.”
Mick’s face fell at that last comment . . . and, for that matter, the wide-eyed stare Marcie gave him. See, Mick was a smart man. He knew better than to anger a woman who knew where the sharp knives were.
“All right. Fine,” he said. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Atta boy,” she replied with another pat on his shoulders.
And then, like an angel coming to save him, Bill swung into the kitchen, holding an order aloft.
“Suit up, Mick,” he said. “You’re making a delivery in ten. Eleanor’s already outside. Marcie? One large Hawaiian pizza, extra pineapple.”
Mick reached up for the form. “Where to this time?”
“Huntress Woods Mall, Bard Records,” Bill replied while holding the paper just out of Mick’s reach. “Must be hungry over there.”
Mick gave him an odd look but moved to the wall to gather delivery bags nonetheless—bags Bill immediately scooped into one arm.
“Listen,” he said. “How about I bring these out to you? Go warm up your . . . car, as you call it.”
“Bill—”
“He means go talk to Miss de Lepaute for once in your life,” Marcie sighed, one hand on a nearby cleaver.
Mick took one look at the cleaver and shot out the door with not another word of protest.
---
It didn’t take long to find Eleanor after that. She was where Bill said she’d be: leaning against the Rabbit, eyes locked on the Red Rooster’s sign, like a sailor watching a lighthouse. Mick approached, bouncing his keys in one of his palms in thought.
So he’d have more free time. On paper, that might satisfy Eleanor. Maybe the more often they hung out, the closer he’d get to coming up with a way to convince her to leave and follow her dreams. Maybe she would finally realize there was nothing in Southwind that could offer her what Eldaven and the Archives could. Maybe she would finally get bored.
But then again, he knew Eleanor. He knew she had already made her mind up to stay, for whatever actual reason she had. And he knew he was equally likely to accidentally convince her she was right in turning Etienne down as he was to get her to rethink her decision.
So stalemate again.
But maybe he wouldn’t have to convince her—or at least, not tonight. Maybe someday, but not tonight.
Tonight, at least, was for enjoying one last delivery and the cool autumn air. Together.
Without a word, he unlocked and opened the Rabbit’s trunk. Inside, just as it had been for months, sat his violin in its case. He motioned to it for the benefit of a curious Eleanor. She glanced down, then back up, eyebrows raised.
“So yeah,” he said. “Still here.”
She reached down, undid the latches, pushed back the lid. And there his violin sat in the stark, sulfuric glow of the yellow lights overhead.
“Isn’t it bad to keep it in your trunk?” she asked.
He picked it up, resting the body on his shoulder. “During winter, sure, but I’ll move it before it really gets cold.” His fingers twisted the pegs, tightening the strings one by one. He didn’t have to hear it to know where to stop. He could tell simply by feeling the tension beneath his fingertips. “Anyway, it’s taken a lot more abuse over the years than a little frost, believe me.”
He touched the bow to the strings and let it glide across, and a scale of notes drifted smoothly into the night air. They itched his ear, and he cocked his head at the sound of them. Slightly out of tune, but he wasn’t going to be all-out performing anyway. Just enough, just long enough to show Eleanor he was fine.
In truth, he didn’t need the tape Eleanor had found. He knew the notes by now, from weeks of playing alone by the side of the road in the gaps while Eleanor was at university and while he was . . .
. . . here. Where he should have been.
Oh, sure, it was a new song, yes, but he’d played it when he felt low and alone. Which was every day, from September to May, then about once a week since she returned.
In other words, he knew this song by heart. He knew every note Sophie B. Hawkins hit, just as well as she did. And he sent them drifting into the October night like petals in the wind.
As I lay me down to sleep . . .
Beside him, Eleanor tipped her head back and grinned at the sky. He wondered if she would ask about the violin, the song, the scholarship he let go four years past.
But she didn’t. She watched the sky, black clouds on black, rolling lazily across the haze beyond the lights of the Red Rooster. Mick desperately searched for something to say to her, but for all his love of poetry, nothing came to mind.
This I pray, that you will hold me dear.
But then again, he had time. Days of stolen hours. Weeks of them.
What would he do when she left?
Though I’m far away, I’ll whisper your name into the sky . . .
What would he do when the Red Rooster closed? It wasn’t the first time he thought about that, but this time . . .
And I would wake up happy.
His fingers gripped the neck of his violin as a rush of pain struck his heart.
No. Eleanor had to leave. That was more important than . . .
I wonder why.
“Mick?”
He realized, too late, that Eleanor was watching him. Worried. He forced a smile and put his violin back in its case.
“Just a little something I’m working on,” he said, easing from short truth to long lie. “Charlotte’s talking about marriage, and you know we don’t do Wagner. She’ll do this, though.”
Eleanor nodded but maintained that skeptical look. “Listen, Mick, I’m sorry about earlier today.”
The mall? Or the tape? Mick couldn’t tell, but he didn’t say as much. He didn’t want to sound like he was accusing her, when really, he wasn’t sure anyone was really at fault. The whole day had been . . . weird, in a word. He was looking forward to the end of it. Faster it was done, faster they could start over.
He closed the Rabbit’s trunk. “Don’t worry about it. Sorry about . . . you know.” The mall.
“No, it’s fine.” She finally tore her eyes away from him and tucked a lock of her raven hair behind her ear.
And the air turned colder and more awkward. Just where the hell was Bill? Mick glanced over his shoulder at the still-closed door to the restaurant and cleared his throat.
“You know, Marcie and Bill are increasing Matthew and Charlotte’s hours,” he said.
Eleanor lit up, then immediately looked horrified by her own reaction. The copper of her face darkened deep reddish brown with a blush, and she looked away again. “Oh? So . . . so that means they’re cutting yours.”
“Yeah, but it’s fine,” Mick replied, gazing through the Rabbit’s back window as if the pile of jackets in his backseat was the most interesting thing in the universe. “So if you wanted to go to the movies this weekend. Maybe see Mallrats like you were talking about . . .”
Once more, her attention was on him. “Yes . . . ?”
Now, his brain screamed. Make your move, but be smooth about it. You’re just friends, even if you had been spending all summer being pathetically lonely. You’re just friends. She needs to have a good time to take her mind off things. That’s all.
“Maybe, I don’t know . . .” Mick rubbed the back of his neck. “. . . you and I could . . .”
“Here we are! Here we are!” Bill burst out of the Red Rooster, holding a bag aloft in one hand and an order slip in the other. “One large Hawaiian pizza, extra pineapple, for Bard Records at Huntress Woods Mall, to be delivered ASAP.” He handed the pizza and slip to Mick, then flicked his eyes to Eleanor and then back to his brother. “Am I interrupting anything important?”
Mick made a mental note to murder Bill before the night was out.
---
By the time the Rabbit puttered up the drive for Huntress Woods Mall, the parking lot it found at the end was nearly empty. Mick navigated his trusty Rabbit beneath sodium-yellow lights, squinting out at an acre of damp pavement dotted with the occasional car. As they passed one particularly forlorn sedan, Mick glanced at Eleanor.
“Emptier than I thought it’d be,” he muttered.
“You didn’t think it’d be open late, did you?” she asked. “It’s Tuesday. It closed at nine. Everyone you see here is probably an employee.”
Mick’s eyes flit to his watch and then back onto the lot. Half past nine. Half an hour after close. Was that enough time for people to filter out, find their cars, and book it out of there? Did people leave well before nine, or did they linger right up to the point where that giant of a mall cop chased them out? Mick didn’t exactly know how malls worked, but he remembered, vaguely, how busy restaurants worked. Back in the day, back when the Red Rooster was far more popular than it was right then, his dad would have to shove people out the door if he wanted to close, and oftentimes, that was at least fifteen minutes after the restaurant’s posted hours.
But that was just a restaurant . . . right?
Mick kept the looming building in the corner of his eye as he slid the Rabbit into a parking spot. Something about this place was too quiet, too dead. He didn’t like it. Not at all. Without looking, he popped open the glove box and rummaged past the tape collection to two thin items buried underneath. Pulling both free, he handed one to Eleanor and slid the other into his pocket.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“A knife,” he replied. “You know how to use that, right?”
She didn’t say anything. Mick slipped the pocket knife out of her palm and held it up to her, thumb on the latch.
“This releases the blade,” he told her evenly. And so it did, with a click. “Hold it like this. Make sure your grip’s tight when you jam it into someone.”
“What?”
“Lock the doors after I get out, and don’t open them for anyone,” he continued, handing the folded knife back to her. “If someone else comes back here, use the spare in the glove box and floor it back to the Red Rooster, but use that if they somehow manage to get in first. Understand?”
“Are you serious?”
“Eleanor. Just promise me you’ll stay here, okay?” Mick cast his eyes back to the mall. “There’s something about this place I don’t like. It’s way too quiet out here.”
He looked back to Eleanor, who opened her free hand, palm to him, and shrugged. She was looking at him like he had three heads.
“I promise you won’t have to worry about me,” she said. “Besides, you’ll be back in a few minutes, right? Just a drop-off?”
For a beat, Mick studied her, wondering whether or not he should say anything. He’d been on dangerous deliveries before. Sure, Southwind was significantly safer than Eldaven, and the most dangerous things he’d ever encountered on a run were that creepy shack down in Ravenswood Hollow and that bear up near Tin Creek, but times were changing. Things were getting rougher.
And there was something weird about this mall.
But . . . he knew her. If he told her there was something weird about the mall, she would be investigating the second he turned his back. So better just to reassure her this was going to be quick.
Mick relaxed, letting his shoulders drop. He nodded, then popped open the driver’s side door and slid into the night air.
Standard procedure. Pizza out of the trunk. Follow the directions on the slip. Simple and easy. At the very least, Mick knew standard delivery procedures well enough to devote all his attention to the world around him. Boxy building. Employee Entrance C straight ahead. Nothing between him and the door. No one in the parking lot behind him. No shadows lurking in the bushes on either side of the entrance. No movement in the darkness.
All clear. He took a deep breath of bitter cold air and stepped forward, one long stride after the other. What were the directions the customer gave him? Knock three times on the door; a worker will be on the other side. He didn’t like that. A worker could be anyone. Anyone could have made that call. The weight of the knife in his pocket was a reassurance, but . . . everything about this job set off alarm bells in his head. Sooner he got this done, the better.
Just as soon as he’d stepped up to the door, he heard it: the harsh rasp of something in the distance. Voices. Not from inside but to his left. His heart leapt in his chest, slamming against his ribs as soon as he realized he wasn’t alone. Was it the customer or someone else? He couldn’t tell.
Shouldering the pizza, he wormed his free hand into his pocket for his knife. He turned his back to the wall and kept close to it as he skirted the building, inching closer and closer to the source of the voices until he reached one of the outer corners of the mall. Slowly, carefully, he stretched his neck out and peered around the building.
A group of figures stood at one of the mall entrances. The tallest among them was easy to recognize: the mall cop, still as imposing as ever. Kaedra stood beside her, hands on her hips, a serious look on that heart-shaped face.
The others Mick couldn’t make out—because all ten of them were wrapped up in floor-length black cloaks. Three of them were the sources of the voices: a humming, droning . . . something. Mick furrowed his eyebrows and strained his ears to hear, but he couldn’t make out their words. One thing was for certain: as weird as this was, this . . .
. . . probably had nothing to do with him. Weird, yes. What the fuck levels of weird, honestly. But none of his business. The knife slipped out of his fingers and back into his pocket, and he let out a slow, quiet breath.
And one of the cloaks lifted their face and looked directly at him.
He yanked his head back into the shadows and pressed his back against the wall while his heart went right back to jackhammering into his bones. They saw him. They saw him, and whatever the fuck they were doing was definitely going to be his problem. And—
And no. That was just a coincidence. They couldn’t have seen him. That was too quick, and he was careful. Right?
Right?
The chanting had stopped. A thick beam of light from a security officer’s military grade flashlight lanced through the darkness in his general direction. Ophina’s voice barked out a “who’s there,” and Mick could feel the lump in his throat turn to stone. He shut his eyes tight, soundlessly mumbling prayers to every god he could think of as he crept, silent step after silent step, back towards the employee entrance. The Rabbit was only a quick sprint from the door. If he tossed the pizza into the bushes and made a break for it, maybe he could—
“You weren’t at the door.”
Mick let out an undignified scream, then fumbled to steady the pizza box, then realized what he had done and threw a frantic glance over his shoulder at the corner of the building, in that order. No light. No voices. Or at least, none other than the one right in front of him. His brain juggled that information with the shock of the newcomer for a bit as he finally looked down at the source of this new voice.
The short shopkeeper from the magic kiosk stared up at him. They blinked dark, overly magnified eyes, as if it was perfectly normal to stand in a mall parking lot just around the corner from cultists, and Mick was the weird one. They poked a gloved finger at the box.
“No matter,” they said. “I’ll take this off your hands.”
“Ah . . . It-it . . .” Mick wanted to say it wasn’t for them, but that seemed to be crashing hard into what the fuck is going on, leaving him unable to speak either thought out loud.
“It’s not for me. I know,” they said, as if they could read his mind. “Or, rather, it is for me, but Alistair doesn’t mind Hawaiian either. How much do I owe you?”
Mick tried to choke down a dry swallow and rein in his racing thoughts, until his customer service persona finally, mercifully took over. “One-one hundred krone, plus tip.”
The shopkeeper clicked their tongue and produced a tiny wallet the shape and color of a calico cat’s head from the folds of their cloak. “Raised your prices again, I see.”
Mick’s mouth fell open; the slight against his family had sobered him up almost instantly. “It’s a—”
“Competitive market. So I’ve heard.” The shopkeeper held aloft a small fold of bills. “Two hundred, for your troubles.” They cocked their head. “Chanticleer, by the way. I don’t believe we’ve been properly acquainted.”
Mouth still hanging open, Mick nodded. “R-right. Nice to . . . nice to meet you?”
Somehow, with his next blink, he found himself standing there with no pizza box and a handful of money. Chanticleer held the box in both of their small, yellow hands and continued staring at Mick sideways.
“Well, I hope you get home safely. It’s a strange moon tonight,” they said.
Then, they turned, padded back to the employee entrance, opened the door, and disappeared into the maw of the mall. The door swung lazily, creeping closer and closer to closed, until a hand shot out of the bushes beside it and grabbed its edge. Before Mick could process what was going on, Eleanor swung herself up, ignoring the twigs and leaves tangled in her long hair, and stepped into the darkness of the employee corridor.
All of a sudden, Mick could find his voice again.
“Eleanor!” he hissed.
Without thinking, he shot forward, following her into the dark.
And the door clanged closed behind him.