“Hey, Stache.”
My dad looked back in surprise, and I almost laughed. His face was splattered with blue paint, especially his moustache. He raised a bushy brown eyebrow.
“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for bed?” he asked, looking at his watch.
Ha. The earliest I’d gone to bed in this new house was, like, three in the morning.
“Just wanted to say good night,” I said, looking around the bathroom. “Looks good. Maybe you were right about this place.”
He beamed. “It’s definitely coming around.”
I hesitated, feeling a bit awkward. “Also, I just wanted to say thanks. Mom told me a few weeks ago that one of the reasons you moved was to give me a fresh start, and I forgot to say thanks. Been a little busy, I guess.”
My dad laid his paintbrush down on the can and turned to me. “And do you still like it here, Laurabell? You seem a little…distant sometimes.”
“No, I like it here,” I said, feeling a sudden surge of emotion I wasn’t at all expecting. My eyes threatened to tear up, and I tried to get myself together. Obviously I’d been holding more in than I thought, and my dad’s tone was breaking down all my walls.
He gently took my hand. “If you don’t, we can move again.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You’ve been working non-stop since we got here.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, squeezing my fingers with his strong hands. “I’ll move ten times until we find somewhere you like.”
That did it. I felt my eyes well with tears, and I quickly blinked them back. I knew how much he loved this place, and how much work he had already put into it, and he was still willing to give it up. This was my out. I could ask him to move, he would, and I could leave all this monster crushing stuff behind me. I could let someone else worry about it. And even if things went wrong, and the monsters got to the surface, we would be far away from Riverfield. My family would be safe.
But even as I thought it, I knew it didn’t feel right. I didn’t want my dad to give up on his dream home. Or Tom to give up his new crush. Or my mom to have to start a new job somewhere else. And more importantly, I didn’t want to give up my job either.
That surprised me. I was afraid of fighting monsters. I was afraid of those things watching me from my yard. But for the first time in my life, I had something really, really special to do. Something I was chosen for. And I wasn’t going to quit again. I did that once already. Whatever happened, I was going to stick around.
I stepped forward and wrapped my surprised dad in a hug. “Thanks, Stache. That means a lot. But I don’t want to go anywhere. This is just starting to feel like home.”
“That’s good to hear, Laurabell. And now you have paint on you.”
“Crap,” I said, pulling away again and looking down at my T-shirt. It was speckled with blue paint. “Well, I guess I’ll go change before bed.”
He smiled. “Probably a good idea.”
I walked back upstairs feeling much different than I had on the way down. It was one thing to feel forced into a job; it was another thing to accept it. I got to my room and closed my computer. I had laid out some of my old collectibles on the table, and I picked up my grandpa’s pen and smiled. Somehow I knew he’d be proud of me. He was always telling me I was capable of doing great things. He probably meant like be a doctor or something, but crushing monsters was pretty cool too. I wondered what my grandma would say: her only advice had been to give myself a chance. I was certainly doing that.
—
Training that night was a little different. Some of my Swords were there for the first time: Allison, Steven the grocery manager, and Liz. Laine was watching my house with Laren, and some of the roaming Protectorate of Arnwell that helped out where necessary. Eldon didn’t let Allison and me spar—I wasn’t sure who was more disappointed—but he did ask her to teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow. She was like a freaking master archer, and when she was done putting another arrow between a fake monster’s eyes, I decided I was happy we weren’t sparring.
I ran the Way a few times as usual, and when I was suitably sweating and flushed, Eldon asked Lee to show me a few moves with a large fake hammer carved from wood.
I stood across from him in the ring, trying to copy his slow, deliberate movements. But my brain wasn’t exactly processing things correctly. Like when he showed me how to do an overhead swing, I just saw that his arms really bulged and his chest got tight beneath his shirt. And when he did a forward jab, I noticed that he had a cute little frown line between his eyes. And then he tried to tell me some things about strategy, I saw that he had a dimple on his right cheek that deepened when he smiled.
“You listening?” he asked, smirking.
“What?” I snapped back into it. “Yeah. Hit stuff with the hammer.”
He laughed. “More or less. Come on, take a swing.”
I immediately took a few light swings, and he easily beat them away.
“I saw you blow up that goblin head,” he said. “Take some real swings.”
Flushing, I picked it up a little, swinging at both sides of him and even a few overhead blows. He blocked them all, but his muscles were straining and glistening with sweat as I pushed him back, and I saw him smiling admiringly.
“Not bad.”
I grinned. “Well I am kind of a Monster Crusher you know—”
I’m not entirely sure what happened. I think I stepped on a shoelace or something, because one minute I was
