Lia, done meditating upon the now-active and empowered symbols she’d set up to defend her home, opened her eyes. It was just after sunset at Potter’s Yard. The sky was a pool of blue ink above, flecked with a first dusting of tiny silver stars. The trees were black silhouettes set against a backdrop of luminous twilight. Lia’s expression remained blissfully serene and untroubled for one instant, until she remembered something, and frowned.
“Hannah,” she said to herself, then leapt to her feet and hurried off toward the front of the Yard.
Tom followed, after resuming control and stretching the muscles of his waiting catbody.
Hannah picked up a paper plate with a piece of withered fruit on it that was lying on the ground inside the Yard’s front gate. She dumped the old fruit into a green plastic trash bin, then set the plate back down and fanned a newly-sliced apple out onto it. Lia had left her in charge of this one final task.
Within seconds, the apple wedges withered, browned, and visibly began to mold. Hannah watched the accelerated process of decay in total mystification.
“What makes that happen?” she asked, looking up when she realized Lia had emerged from the foliage behind her, with her tomcat close at her heels.
“Crouchers,” Lia told her. “Doorway demons. You buy their loyalty with snacks. That’s why I had you do this.”
“So there’s something there… eating it?” Hannah said, eyeing the sliced fruit uneasily.
Lia shrugged. “The part that counts, yeah.” Then, before Hannah could pose a follow-up question, she said: “Listen, Han, you’ve gotta get out of here, okay?”
“What, now?” Hannah asked, looking bewildered. “But I thought-”
“We’ve done everything I know how to do,” Lia told her. “But I’ve got no way of knowing if it’s gonna be enough.”
She knew it scared Hannah to see the worry in her eyes, but she also knew Han really believed what she said when she spoke so nakedly.
“I couldn’t live if something happened to you,” she said, her voice tightening up as she forced one of her worst fears into words. “And I might not be able to keep my guard up properly if I’ve got too much on my mind.”
Hannah stared at her for a long moment, unsure of what to do. Unsure of everything, it looked like. “Okay. I understand,” she said at last, although she clearly didn’t.
Lia wanted to hug her, but she could be awkward in her expression of feeling (having been socialized under some fairly unusual circumstances), and the appropriate moment for it passed her by.
It was plain enough that Hannah’s experience of meeting Dexter Graves had called her basic picture of reality into question, sparking an agonizing reappraisal of her entire belief system. Lia felt her searching for words to express herself. She did understand what Hannah was going through, from personal experience, and so she chose to let her friend talk through it, for a minute, despite the approaching darkness.
“Lia?” Hannah ventured in a troubled tone. “This’s all been, I don’t know… so different from the things I’ve seen you do before.”
Lia smiled. “Like getting plants to grow and reading people’s tea leaves?”
“Yeah. I guess,” Hannah said. “And those sorts of things are impressive enough, believe me, but this, this has been… I don’t even know. On another level.”
“C’mon,” Lia said. She helped Hannah up and guided her toward her car, which was parked on the far side of the gravel lot.
“Where’d you even learn these things?” Hannah asked.
Lia shrugged, glancing down at her black cat. She’d never figured out how to explain her teacher, or the relationship they had. It was something else she’d never found the right moment or the right words for.
“The earth,” she said, in partial answer to Hannah’s question. “Books, certain plants…” She hesitated, then told her friend the simple truth: “Black Tom’s taught me more than anyone.”
Hannah’s eyes widened, as eyes do when the people behind them are told something crazy. “You mean your cat?” she said, making no attempt to disguise her knee-jerk incredulity… until she saw how it abraded Lia’s feelings. Then she paused, as they reached her Volvo, and looked down at the animal in question. He blinked back up at her with his bright green eyes.
“He’s not really a cat, you know,” Lia said, trying not to sound defensive. “I mean, yeah, of course that’s a cat, but a cat’s not all that’s in there. If you know what I mean.”
“I… I did not know that, no,” Hannah said. After a beat she admitted, very softly: “Nothing looks like it did to me this morning.”
Lia did hug her then, feeling for her but also feeling the pinch. “Hannah, honey, I know,” she said, into the older woman’s ear. “But we’ll have to talk about it tomorrow.”
Hannah pulled back and offered an awkward smile. “I kind of want to stay and see how some of these things work,” she said, sweeping a hand around in general reference to the nonsensical projects they’d labored over all afternoon.
“But you won’t want to be here if they don’t,” was Lia’s terse reply.
Hannah understood that this was probably so, and nodded reluctantly. Lia herded her into the old Volvo and closed the door behind her. Hannah’s driver’s side window was already down.
“Go home,” Lia told her through it. “And call me when you get there, but don’t call me by my name when you do. Okay? That’s important.”
“Okay.”
“Go on, then,” Lia said. “Get out of here.” She slapped the top of the car like a cowpoke motivating a sluggish steer and then hurried off, back into the darkening Yard and onto other last-minute errands.