Olive paused before locking her empty apartment. She took a breath. “This feels so weird.”
Eliza sat in the back of Mave’s bug with Jared and put her stuffed toys in between them. At the shop, she picked the same flavour of gelato he picked, maple walnut, a cone with one scoop. Jared was surprised he could taste it, intensely sweet with soggy chunks of nut. They stood outside with their cones to get out of the crowd while Olive and Mave were still taste-testing.
“What do you think?” Jared said.
“I like the cotton candy one better,” Eliza said.
“Maybe you should ask your mom for another scoop.”
When Olive and Mave came out, Eliza taste-tested their cones and switched with Mave. Spots of fresh blood dotted Olive’s gauze.
Mave nudged Olive. “I’m going to miss you two so much.”
“I don’t know what we would have done with you,” Olive said.
Mave and Olive hugged. Eliza licked the melting, pink ice cream off her hands. The watery autumn sun headed towards the horizon, blazing the low clouds orange. Traffic streamed like a river.
—
Huey lay on top of Jared’s dresser, faded. He was more of an impression of Huey, lips vibrating with his sleeping breath. Did Huey need to breathe? How could he breathe without lungs?
“I dunno,” Maggie said, giving the sleeping Huey a poke. “A helpful flying head? That’s not the magic I know.”
“Huey kept the sorcerer away,” Jared said. “He’d bounce on it. He helped Eliza, too.”
“Has the flying head ever told you what he wants?”
“No. He doesn’t talk and he never shares mind to mind. I’ve tried to feed him, but he doesn’t eat.”
“Did you ever feel tired around him? For no reason?”
Jared frowned. “Yeah, but I worked late and I had school. And I was always watching out for David.”
“There’s a reason he’s sleeping close to you, Jared. Things want to juice up on you.”
“Huey has never given me that vibe.”
“Well,” his mom said, “there’s the proof. Your feelings.”
Eliza came in to say good night. She and Olive were sleeping in Mave’s bed and Mave was couchsurfing. She gave Jared a hug and then hugged Maggie too, who seemed to be waiting the hug out but still patted the girl on the back.
“Night,” Eliza said.
“Night,” Jared said.
After she left, his mom said quietly, “You realize she’s been sneaking back some of the warding you gave her.”
“Has she?”
“All the hand holding and hugs? Yup. Even a five-year-old has more sense than you.”
Jared sighed.
“Eliza is the King Kong of juice. If you were a different person, I’d say you were sucking up to the powerful.”
“Yeah,” Jared said. “Don’t worry. Give me time. I’ll piss her off.”
“That’s my boy.”
Sarah came in carrying cedar branches, which she hung in the corners of his room, with an extra branch over the spot where the toe-sucking sorcerer usually crawled out.
“It’s better in here tonight,” Sarah said. “The creep factor is way down.”
Maggie said, “Toe-sucker knows he’s been made. He’ll lay low for a bit.” She glanced at her son then focused on the wall. “They’ve brought Phil and Shirley back from autopsy. Sophia’s having them cremated. Shirley’s ashes are going home. Sophia’s taking Phil to Alert Bay.”
He nodded. “Oh.”
“She’s cleared out the coy wolves as fast as we can find them.”
Sarah didn’t look surprised. His mom must have given her the heads-up. Planned the way they were going to tell him. Tensed and ready for him to take off again.
“You okay?” Sarah said.
“No, but I’m not running, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
They exchanged a look. Jared went to his desk and picked up the Big Book, holding it out for his mom.
“Okay, I’m blowing this Popsicle stand,” his mom said.
“Mom,” Jared said. “There’s something in here. It’s important.”
“I have no interest in your cult,” she said, “and you are testing the limits of my patience.”
“I…I…it’s not…” He wanted to open it, but he couldn’t. Wanted to show her…something. His mom watched him with one hand on her holster, her finger tapping away, then turned to leave.
“Night, Maggie,” Sarah said.
“Night, Twitch. Don’t do anything stupid, Sonny Boy.”
“Don’t get killed,” he said.
“Big, angry balls, Jared.”
When his mom was gone, Sarah said, “You really know how to push her buttons.”
—
What was he missing? What wasn’t he seeing?
Georgina wasn’t riding his mind. The sorcerer was hiding in the wall. On this rare quiet night, he wanted to relax, unwind with a cold one. Sit on the balcony and drink till he couldn’t feel his face.
The first arm came through the ceiling, dots of glowing yellow-green. Bob the Octopus lowered himself slowly.
Jared felt for Sarah, but her mind was dreaming. Bob hovered above Jared’s bed, the suckers suddenly dark in the darkened room. He didn’t feel alarmed, but, as his mom said, feelings weren’t proof.
A single sucker lit up and then went black, blinking. Then another and another, on and off in sequence, leading towards Bob’s sharp black beak like runway lights on a landing strip.
Bob’s mind was full of things Jared couldn’t grasp: tasting light, breathing water, sinking to the dark depths of an ocean teeming with things far stranger than Bob.
Bob began to spin clockwise, tentacles stiff like the spokes of a bicycle. His beak chattered like castanets and then he made a sound like a fart in a full bathtub, a bloop.
If you’re going to eat me, just do it. I’m getting dizzy, Jared thought at him. And nauseous.
All the suckers went dark. Then a single light stuttered, some alien octopus version of Morse code, a signal Jared couldn’t read, yet Bob repeated it over and over as the night spun towards morning. Intense loneliness washed over Jared. Not his, but Bob’s. Apparently that was universal. At first light, Bob’s arms became wiggly again and he shot upwards through the ceiling.
21
DOUBLE TROUBLE
Olive’s sister and brother-in-law showed up in the morning and moved Olive and Eliza’s travelling suitcases into their Toyota Sienna minivan. Mave went to help and Jared
