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luluwquidprocrow · 6 months

Text

sometimes a family is three orphans, their adopted daughter, one not-so-sad writer, and two triplets

frank, beatrice the second, the baudelaires, lemony, ernest, implied ernest/lemony

gen

3,598 words

In the grand tradition of all parents, the extended baudelaire family find themselves trying to pull a fast one.

for @asouefanworkevent's woevember day 4, the hotel denouement! some rambling headcanon nonsense half-fic about post-canon family that i had great fun doing. my favorite thing in the whole world is post-canon babybea interacting with her absurd enormous family. i love them all so much.

okay. so bear with me here

so i think most parents/guardians are at one point or another faced with Pulling The Ultimate Fast One on their children. this is related to Your Beloved Pet Died But We’re Telling You We Sent Them To Live On The Farm, but this version, in particular, is infinitely easier and harder. this one is The Switch. The Replacement. The Double. when the intrepid parent or guardian, under the cover of night, goes to the pet store to purchase The Exact Same Animal because the first animal had an untimely death. i will admit, this is the easiest with like, a goldfish, or something else small where you can usually get one that looks very similar.

now, for babybea, it’s a pumpkin.

so babybea (who is twelve at the time this story takes place), at the very end of september, carves a pumpkin, and she goes in with a VISION. she spends a couple hours on this pumpkin, carving an owl. It’s not, yknow, a realistic owl, but she adds a lot of tiny details, lots of lines for the feathers, and she carves a little mouse on the side too, and even gets the side of a tree in there, and the pumpkin carving kit the baudelaires purchased that year came with these little stick lights, to put in the owl eyes after carving, so it has orange eyes!! this is!!!! The neatest thing babybea has ever seen, and she is so thrilled with the results and very proud of this pumpkin. (for the record – violet carves a few pumpkins into a starry night with a moon, klaus carves monstera leaves, and. let’s be real. sunny bites a series of turnips into jack-o-lanterns.) (and then she stabs a couple white pumpkins into bigger jack-o-lanterns, for variety. all of them get different expressions!

sunny, arranging her carved vegetation on the baudelaire porch in order of emotion: perfect.) (no, i don’t know what order of emotion means. But sunny does.)

Then they all pile into violet’s car – pumpkin included!! – and drive almost an hour out of the city to the bildungsroman bed and breakfast. (frank and ernest decided, at this point in their lives, if they were going to commit to anything, it may as well be The Bit.) (it has a local reputation as a place with solid wifi, stellar bread, and great mattresses. The owners are considered minorly eccentric, mostly for the portrait they have in the lobby, of, just one of them.

some impassioned yelp review: okay so the stay was great big recommend PLEASE try the bread but i cannot figure out the story behind the portrait in the lobby????? it's just one one of the owners?????? but I don't understand why bc they're twins and it's just ONE of them?????? and he's wearing this frog-patterned tie in the painting and when you see them like in person. neither of them wear the tie. what's the deal here

the locals are sure it's not an ego thing, bc the owners don't seem to be self-centered or anything like that. In fact, if asked about the painting, both of them will say, “oh, that's a painting of my brother.”

an additional yelp comment: I think. there's THREE of them a third yelp comment: don't be silly, they're definitely twins.)

frank and ernest have a very elaborate series of outdoor autumn decorations, with lots of pumpkins and mini gourds and hay bales over the front steps and corn stalks on all the porch posts, and babybea wants to not only show her uncles her hard work, but also put the pumpkin on their steps where everyone can see it!!

(her uncles also include lemony, of course – I think he did live with the baudelaires for some time after reuniting babybea with them, but has recently moved into ernest's side of the private apartment at the back of the hotel. this was mildly distressing to babybea, who likes everyone she loves under the same roof, but she can't deny that lemony is very happy. and so is ernest. and now she can see all her uncles in the same place whenever she wants!! so the baudelaires tend to spend weekends at the bed and breakfast, because they also miss lemony. and they get to know frank and ernest better, which is very important to them, as people who are important to babybea, and to lemony, and, to the baudelaire's past.) (not to like, detract from the sentiment here, but i do need everyone to know that i imagine ernest spends like, 80% of his working hours just making out with lemony.) (okay maybe not 80%. ernest does legitimately get work done, it’s his hotel too. ………but like, a lot of time.)

AND SO. the baudelaires arrive at the bed and breakfast, and frank and ernest and lemony are very proud of their niece's pumpkin. they take a lot of pictures. (re: my previous post-canon thoughts, frank has actually acquired a phone now, and does text. it is a flip phone.) babybea places it, very gently, on the third front step, and is so pleased. sunny steals two mini gourds while looking ernest dead in the eye. ernest approves.

But october turns out to be unseasonably warm, and babybea’s pumpkin, while lovingly carved but now lacking the support an uncarved pumpkin has to keep itself A Pumpkin, does not take kindly to the weather, and babybea actually becomes very distressed at the smallest signs of rot beginning to form in her pumpkin, when it is only the second week of october. She doesn’t TELL anybody, because there’s not really much you can do about a pumpkin doing what a pumpkin does in warm weather, but she’s very upset. (almost uncharacteristically so. usually she’d say, oh, well that’s how it happens, and rather pleasantly move on, but lately, she’s been kind of. quieter than usual.) And frank, who spends a great deal of time at the front desk, closest to the pumpkins, becomes Concerned.

now, in general, babybea’s family is like, pretty good at being realistic with her. She is of course an optimist, but still Aware of a great deal of the ways of the world, given her family, her upbringing, lemony’s books, her own adventures, everything. You can’t really shield this twelve year old from the ways of the world, even if that way of the world is, a rotting vegetable. All things have their time, and it cannot be stopped. Including seasons, and in-season foods.

However. She put SO MUCH WORK into that pumpkin, and as the week goes by and the pumpkin starts to shrink in on itself, turning all of babybea’s work black from the inside out, those charming little glowstick eyes CAVING IN, and the baudelaire’s weekly weekend visit grows closer and closer, frank has been imagining her devastated reaction when she sees the pumpkin, and decides, He Must Pull The Fast One. he will re-carve the pumpkin, exactly as babybea carved it, replace the pumpkin, and no one will be the wiser. They get a little more time with the pumpkin, presumably at least until halloween, and his niece gets to see her beautiful handiwork as much as she likes. Maybe, you know, there is a little magic in the world after all, to make a pumpkin look so nice.

(also, i think frank has. A shaky relationship with babybea, from his end. She loves him, as much as she loves everyone else in her family, and babybea herself would NEVER rank her uncles in order of how well she knows or admires them, but i, lulu vandelay, putting this together, have no qualms in saying she knows lemony the best, bc she has spent the most time with him, between trying to find him and both of them trying to find the baudelaires and all of them having lived together, and she’s rather deeply attached to him – ernest is very personable, and funny, so he’s easy to get along with – and she and frank both like tiny detail work, so they have things in common, but frank always seems very awkward around her. And he is. It’s bc he’s very nervous around her. Frank doesn’t think he’s good with kids. And he is usually acutely aware that in an ideal world, he isn’t the one she’d be spending her time with, that dewey would be so much better at all of this than he is. A better parent, a better brother, a better everything. Because dewey always was, to frank. but, dewey would probably want frank to do as much as he could for her, and would believe him absolutely capable of doing it, without a doubt. So he wants to be a proper uncle to her and THIS is his opportunity, he thinks. He so desperately wants to do something kind and considerate and important for her, like family is supposed to do for each other.)

the thing about pumpkins, though, is that, for some reason, mid-october, THEY ALL DISAPPEAR. I’m serious, you ever try and find a good pumpkin even like a little over halfway through october? It can be hard.

frank: i need your assistance. ernest: i’ve killed my quota for the month. frank: i – ernest, please. ernest: alright, my apologies. What do you need? frank: a pumpkin. lemony, from the kitchen: jarrahdale or red warty? frank: no, i mean a carving pumpkin.

The three of them take a good, long look at babybea’s pumpkin. Uncle Instincts Have Activated. They, very solemnly, bury the pumpkin in the back garden (lemony is the one who takes one for the team and removes the glowstick eyes from the depths of sad, sad pumpkin). And then embark on a mission. Please imagine the three of them packed into a mint green 1960 chevy corvette. Sunglasses optional. Who’s driving? That is up to you, my friend. Oh, google informs me it is cascade green. Imagine accordingly. (yes, no corvette has ever been made with more than two seats, but isn’t that just funnier? They really are packed in there. Lemony sits in the middle.)

The hunt for the right pumpkin is long. Grueling! Kinda chilly! This is october!! Much comparison is made between potential pumpkins and the pictures they took of babybea’s pumpkin. Snacks are purchased. (lemony, who has recently been introduced to instagram, posts a picture of his pretzel. [ernest is out of focus in the corner, eating a chocolate ice cream cone.] [#pretzel.]

sunbad: what is that lemonysnicket: I have purchased a pretzel sunbad: without me sunbad: you’re dead to me.)

(it was actually not sunny who introduced lemony to instagram, although she was his first follower. It was klaus.) (klaus uses instagram mainly to never post anything ever, just to follow his favorite authors, so he wanted lemony to have an instagram, especially since he just moved out.) (klaus……..my heart………..) (oh, frank bought chex mix. he likes those gross rye bread pieces.)

(don’t get me started on lemony with an instagram……….I think this is a hilarious but also heartwarming thought – this man who has avoided being photographed for years and years and years and YEARS (yes that much repetition was in fact necessary) is at a point in his life here he is not only comfortable of taking pictures of his life, but he is capable of doing it, he’s allowed!! It’s still probably mostly food and it’s so good!!!!!!!! and think of the amount of pictures he keeps just in his phone gallery, too!!! violet’s inventions and klaus’ library displays and sunny’s baking and babybea’s school projects and ernest’s record collection and frank’s breakfast spreads, and nature shots with lemony’s thumb in the corner, AAAAAAAAAAAA) (uh, anyway, these men are on a mission. back to the mission.)

Eventually, they do find a comparable replacement pumpkin! Does it fit in the car? Lemony, by virtue of sitting in the middle, holds the pumpkin.

They return to the bed and breakfast. Between the three of them, many different knives, and all of their photos, frank and ernest and lemony painstakingly recreate babybea’s pumpkin, down to the last, smallest detail. Including the little mouse and the side of the tree and the feathers and everything. (frank does do most of the work, because ernest and lemony very much see that this is important to him, but he doesn’t mind them helping, because, yknow. This is about family, and babybea is their family too.) (frank feels like he owes lemony a lot. for trying to set the record straight about their past. or as straight as one could try and set it, with what all of them did. for their niece. for making ernest happy.) (ernest deserves to be happy, with everything they put each other through. ernest thinks the same for frank, too.)

(ugggggg if you told the three of them when they were so much younger that one day they’d stay up late recreating their niece’s perfect pumpkin masterpiece so she’s not upset about the passage of time………..)

(who’s in charge of the bed and breakfast while all of this is happening??

ernest: mallory, you’re in charge. mallory, a twenty-two year old with a major in hotel management who runs the front desk when ernest and frank can’t: sounds like a plan.

mallory has a deep respect for the denouements. meanwhile –

mallory: so you’re lemony snicket. lemony: i am, yes. mallory: you don’t look like your photo. lemony: that’s my legal representative. he has a stamp.)

meanwhile meanwhile – it is not necessarily about the pumpkin.

For babybea’s part, she already firmly believes that there is some sort of magic in the world. Even at twelve. Especially at twelve!! Look, she knows it wasn’t magic that reunited her with her family, that it was her and lemony’s hard work, but she wound up with SO much more family than she expected, when she first contacted lemony. And like, that is what there’s magic in. this whole group of people who care about her and love her and want to spend time with her. Babybea thinks she has the best family in the whole entire world. (AND SHE’S RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!)

But that is also babybea’s problem right now. She loves her family so much, and she loves having them, and it’s been a couple months but she is still not entirely comfortable with people she loves being so far away from her. Not now! Not when they’re all supposed to be in the same space, like they’re supposed to be!! And some kids at school have teased her, not so much about her puzzle-piece family but that she talks about her uncles so much. She’s just proud of her family and she loves them!! But middle schoolers are like, rude as fuck sometimes, okay. And they don’t even think they’re saying anything wrong, just offhand comments about how much she talks about them. They don’t even know anything about her parents, not really, but babybea starts to feel like, it’s the unspoken throughline in what they’re saying, why doesn’t she ever talk about them? Why only her uncles, her guardians? They’re her family, but –

she feels almost guilty, that she goes through periods where she doesn’t even think of her parents at all, and periods where she can’t stop thinking about what they would look like and what they would be like, and that makes her feel like she doesn’t value the family she DOES have. So it’s not necessarily about the pumpkin starting to rot, what’s making her upset. It’s that, the pumpkin is another thing in a line of things babybea is Thinking about, things that aren’t Going the way she thought they were supposed to go. Her uncle moving out, missing somebody who was supposed to be there, her pumpkin not staying like it’s supposed to, she’s SUPPOSED to love her family but is she loving them right? Is she loving the right people right? Can you miss people you didn’t even know? And babybea has it very set in her head, the things she knows and is supposed to do – this is something she hasn’t quite worked on, but she’ll get to it eventually, she is still twelve – and they keep not happening like that. And now. Something else she worked really, really, really hard on, that isn’t going right either.

So she spends the week a little gloomy about her pumpkin, and worrying the whole ride friday afternoon after school to the bildungsroman bed and breakfast. Violet and klaus and sunny are very aware of babybea’s mood, and try to cheer her up by asking her about what she’ll be for halloween, but babybea’s heart is not super into this conversation. (she has ideas about a big group costume where they’re all different local birds, but now she’s not even sure about that.)

And then! She sees her pumpkin!! Glowy eyes and all!!!!! And, mysteriously, those little spots of rot she’d noticed the week before are gone, and, in fact, it looks a little sharper than it had before? And she didn’t think she’d cut the lid quite like that, but! That’s her pumpkin, exactly where it’s supposed to be!!! And it makes her feel just a little better. That’s good. That’s right. But she still can’t, entirely shake off all her previous feelings, about family. But. right now. Her pumpkin still looks very special.

Later, babybea can’t sleep. So she sneaks out of bed and goes down to the lobby, and sits down on the floor in front of the front desk, and looks at the big painting on the wall, that ernest did of her father.

This, of course, is where frank finds her. (because frank has never been very good at sleeping consistently, even when there’s nothing to worry about now, and he likes to walk through the hotel to make sure it’s secure.)

(ernest would say something very clever, like, aha, with a raised eyebrow, but all frank says is – )

frank: hello, beatrice. beatrice: oh! beatrice: hello, uncle frank. frank: may i sit down? beatrice: yes, please.

They spend a little while looking at the portrait.

beatrice: um – beatrice: does it –

What she wants to ask is, does it look very much like my father, which she then realizes is such a STUPID question if her father was a TRIPLET and she has a mirror image of him right in front of her, who acts like she thinks a father is supposed to act, so, but, it’s not like that doesn’t mean dewey didn’t look like dewey. Just because dewey looked like frank doesn’t mean he only looked like frank. And beatrice forgets, sometimes, that he would’ve just looked just like her uncles. But still!

beatrice: i mean – the painting, is it –

But she thinks it’s such a terrible thing to ask!! But frank knows EXACTLY what she means.

(some time ago, when the hotel had just opened and ernest had just painted the portrait of dewey –

ernest: i wanted it to look like him. And, it’s not like i, don’t know what he looks like. Looked like. I mean – that could just be me or you up there, couldn’t it. It doesn’t look like it’s him. frank: no, it does. frank, knowing exactly what he means and feeling like, he needs to make ernest Not look so abjectly miserable: you don’t look nearly as happy. ernest, in tears, very amused and touched and still terribly upset: wow!

The point being, god of course it looks like dewey. It couldn’t be anybody but dewey, even if dewey looks like other people. Dewey looks like himself, he looks like his family, he looks like beatrice, around the eyes. And family means lots of things. It means your guardians raising you, and your uncles raising you, and your father’s portrait on the wall and never knowing him at all, and loving so many people and being loved back by them, whether or not it’s Supposed to be a specific way, and sometimes it means missing somebody, sometimes it means missing different people, sometimes it means being sad for something you’re not sure if you should or could miss, sometimes it means not missing anyone at all, sometimes it means your uncle going to live with his definitely boyfriend even if they won’t say the words out loud who’s also your uncle just on the other side of your family and that doesn’t mean anyone’s going anywhere. Sometimes it means your pumpkin rotting, because things change. uh, does this make sense.) (admittedly, i put a lot of things in this.)

frank: yes, it looks very much like him. frank: i think about him a lot. beatrice: ......would he like my pumpkin? frank, without hesitation: absolutely. beatrice: do you like it? frank: i do.

of course babybea already knew that, but it's nice to hear. it's just. nice. it's not, like, everything? just like before. but beatrice is loved by a lot of people, and she loves them, too, and. she feels loved, right here, like she's supposed to, and that's what's Supposed to happen.

beatrice hugs him, and it's not the first time she's hugged frank, but it means more? frank hugs her back.

beatrice: thanks for fixing my pumpkin. frank: i’m sure i don’t know what you mean, beatrice.

beatrice hugs him again, and then goes back upstairs. frank looks a little longer at the portrait, and then goes to bed himself, and doesn't get back up until his alarm goes off.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #woevember #tadaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...................#you know what. for as much as i Did In Fact jam in here. bc my thoughts get away from me. i DO think i wrapped it up rather nicely.#the capitals are inconsistent bc i wrote this in googledocs and it just wants to capitalize EVERYTHING. AGAINST MY WILL #i am as stunned as you are that this is frank-centric. but sometimes the words happen.#if you were wondering. yes my parents did in fact Pull This Fast One on me. with. yes. fish.

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luluwquidprocrow · 6 months

Text

like a row of captured ghosts

kit snicket

teen

2,568 words

Kit Snicket visits a house in the city.

for @asouefanworkevent's woevember day 2, the baudelaire mansion! featuring my enduring headcanon that the baudelaire mansion was previously the snicket mansion, and b+b get it when they marry lemony. i am 100% willing to admit it is Unlikely, however let us not forget kit saying “our families have always been close”, so, yknow

title from welcome home by radical face

Kit could get in if she wanted. She’d been given lockpicks expressly for the purpose, because the locks on the house were special, but she didn’t need them. She knew the statue in the back of the garden had a hairline crack in one of the hands – she didn’t remember which one, but it wasn’t as if there were many options – that, when pressure was applied, opened a brick in the patio. Under the brick was a lever. If one were to pull the lever, the little window in the hidden attic opened, roof shingles shifting out of the way, and one could wiggle themselves in, with enough effort. Her grandfather had put a number of clever little secrets in the house, and Kit had gone looking for them when she was very, very young, so she knew a decent amount of them. Few others did.

(The lockpicks confirmed that. If they thought that was the only way someone could get into the house, Kit was not going to correct them. And there were worse things, weren’t there, than simple theft, things for which no real defense existed.)

Night air bit at her ankles, her fingers, her neck. She wasn’t dressed nearly warm enough for November, having grabbed her blue spring jacket in her hurry, but the cold was of little concern to her. The mansion stood across the street, set back from the road, with that winding brick path up to the front doors, the maple trees scattering their leaves around the yard. It was in the heart of the city but in a place one would never know unless explicitly looked for – a turn off an erroneously marked dead end, then another, to an old avenue along a river with more trees than houses. Her grandparents had picked it on purpose. Presumably safe, but close enough.

They had added to the windows. Neat, decorative ironwork, curled into hearts and vines.

Kit put her hands in her pockets and crossed the street, her footsteps the only noise.

The fence out front had been replaced as well. Kit’s grandmother had done most of the architecture, and Bernadette Snicket had favored a simplistic, practical style in her work, but the new fence matched the intricacy of the window grates. That just-too-big space in the bars a person could slide themselves through if they desired, that Kit had, years ago, when she’d – that was gone. Kit walked the length of the fence twice, considering. She couldn’t linger long. There was a light on in a downstairs window, glowing soft behind the drawn curtains. Kit could not put it past them to eventually see her. She walked down the sidewalk one more time, picking up her pace. There was no way around the fence. Climbing over it didn’t seem like an option. The points at the top of each iron bar looked sharp, glinting in a stray hit of light from the streetlamp over near Kit’s car.

(Kit wondered how much was a choice – how much was a needed decision – how much was meant to erase. She couldn’t judge Beatrice and Bertrand for that. Not without damning herself, which Kit was not, overall, in the habit of doing.)

Of course there was a sewer grate nearby, and of course Kit pushed it up soundlessly and slipped down inside.

Her grandfather had three boxes – one Kit had already taken some years ago and given to Bertrand, for reasons better left unsaid. One had been given to Lemony. The third was still in the house and held a very specific map of the city. Headquarters wanted it, among other things. And if Kit came across one of those other things, she was at her liberty to take them.

(She and Beatrice had argued, Kit remembered. The sewer was dark and icy, and Kit shivered hard, grinding her teeth together. They’d argued about those other things, and Kit had not been able to give Beatrice, or herself, a satisfactory answer. It was one of the last conversations they had, if not the last. Most likely the last, if Kit was honest. Beatrice had made it clear where she and Bertrand stood, and where Kit stood, and that it was no longer in the same place. And it never would be.

Kit told herself over and over that she would never do it. There would always be another option, as long as Beatrice and Bertrand were alive to emphatically refuse. Right now, there was this option – Kit was going into the house. She was taking the box back. Nothing else. And the box wasn’t even going to headquarters. There were other plans for that box.)

The box would be in the downstairs office, under a floorboard. Probably Bertrand’s office. The windows were one of the ones her grandmother had put the stained glass in, and shards of blue fell over the green floor when the sun sat just right in the sky. It was a good room for thinking, and Bertrand likely did a great deal of it there. Kit swallowed and hurried further through the sewers, past the names that didn’t matter, and started scanning the curved ceiling. If one knew where to look, there was a sloped hatch up there that led up into the passage between the house and 667 Dark Avenue. Kit would open the hatch, get inside, go into the house, and then leave the same way. And there it was. Tucked in a shadow, just waiting for her. Kit reached up for the wheel, ready to heave the door open. It was going to stick with so little use.

The wheel turned easy under her hands.

Kit jerked back, her whole body seizing up. Someone had been here. Someone who was not her. Someone who wasn’t just checking. Kit spun the wheel frantically and the hatch fell open.

(She’d brought Olaf here. Her grandparents hadn’t cared who knew the location of their house, but their generation had been different, and Kit’s parents had stressed, when they could, the importance of keeping this secret. Her associates thought it was a safehouse, one they could never quite find the location of, and wrote off as another ruse. She’d driven Olaf, pointing out landmarks the whole way, because she’d thought –

Kit was not foolish enough to think she’d get married. But Olaf was important to her, and she was foolish enough to think he’d stay important, and that when Lemony inevitably married Beatrice and they took the house, Olaf would be there too.

They crept in through the fence. Olaf chased her around the maple trees. Kit took him into the house through the font doors and showed him what her grandparents built. And he understood what the Snicket mansion meant, in the way he had to understand what the Count’s mansion meant. Some time later, Kit realized he had not.

Olaf’s memory was shit, except where it mattered. Except in the things she wanted him to forget. He’d remember where this house was and it was only a matter of time before he – before anyone – got their hands on the Baudelaires.)

Kit hoisted herself up into the passageway. She tugged the hatch closed behind her, then felt around in the black for the dip in the center. Her fingers kept slipping, shaking, pushing into metal that wasn’t right, nicking her nails, her heart thudding faster and faster in her chest and rising to a crash in her ears – where was it? There. She found the button and jammed her thumb into it. The metal hissed as it sealed from the inside. It wasn’t enough, Kit knew. Nothing would ever be enough now. But it would have to do.

She ran along the passageway, keeping one hand on the wall. It came to an abrupt end, and Kit had her hand ready to pull open the trap door into the office when her mouth went dry. She swallowed, and then did it again. Once more. She let the trap door fall open and climbed into the Baudelaire mansion.

The office was dark, as expected. Bertrand kept his desk by the windows, because of course he would. Not because Kit’s grandfather had, but because Bertrand would obviously like the view. The bookcases still lined the walls, but the books must surely be different. Kit wondered what he kept there, but there was no time to get into it. She could see the strip of light hovering under the door. It was poetry, probably. He probably kept poetry. Fairy tales he read to his children. The chair at his desk was different than the one her grandfather had there, perfect for sitting in and telling stories. She turned and faced the wall.

The floorboard was in the far left corner, at the front of the room. Kit moved slowly, quietly, barely breathing. Bertrand had covered the whole floor with a thick, heavy carpet, so at least that was in her favor. She bent down, tugging the corner of the carpet up, and lifted the single loose floorboard.

(She always wound up doing this, she thought, in a voice that sounded stunningly like Lemony’s, wry as he ever was. Sneaking into someplace to steal something important. At least now she had experience.)

There it was. Just as it had always been, another secret waiting for its time. The small, jeweled box with the complicated lock with the code her grandfather had taught all three of them. Kit tucked it inside her jacket and replaced the floorboard.

It hit her like a shot, her breath catching in her throat. The sewer hatch locked only from the inside. She couldn’t go back that way. She whirled around, clutching the lump in her jacket to her chest. The best way to leave – the closest way out – that was through the library, two rooms down, through the passageway in the wall and up to the hidden attic. But that meant leaving the room. Standing in the hallway. Walking to the library, unseen.

(She did not have experience. That voice sounded like Jacques, if Jacques had ever been so straightforward in his disappointment. She had to get out of this house before she kept thinking.)

Kit waited. Listened. She couldn’t hear anything from here in the office. She went through the map of the ground floor in her head, the foyer at the front, into the parlor, the living room to the left, the kitchen to the back, the dining room to the right – the hallway behind the kitchen, with the office, the billiard room, the library. The left wall in the library, where the hidden door was. Conceivably, it was easy. Wasn’t it?

She turned the door handle and left the office.

The hallway was half-lit from the living room at the end of the hall. Now she could hear the phonograph, playing a jazz record she didn’t recognize. Beatrice and Bertrand had to be in there, and it was right across from the library. Unless they were in the library. Unless they were – Kit gave herself a shake. She wouldn’t know anything until she moved. She just had to move. She just had to move. Kit just had to move.

She couldn’t see the green floors. Beatrice and Bertrand had rugs everywhere, in elegant red and ivory. Kit tiptoed over it, hesitating. Paintings hung in groups down the hallway, flowers and little portraits and framed children’s drawings, scribbles of the garden hung with the same care as the art. They must be Violet’s. The jazz record kept going. Kit’s grandmother had liked oil paintings of flowers. She’d had a few in the hallway herself in her time.

(Katherine, Bernadette Snicket had said.

No, Kit insisted. How old was she then? Four? Just Kit. And her grandmother had looked pleased, like Kit had passed a test. Everything was a test and always had been, tests she’d completed perfectly, and why did it hurt? How far had Kit gone down the hall? The box sat against her ribs like another heart, heavy. Everything ached, especially her jaw, clenched shut like her life depended on it. And it did. This life around her she wasn’t a part of anymore, this family, this safety, Kit’s life existing outside of this place, everything depended on Kit, on her walking out of here alone, back to her apartment. The whole series of events spooled out in front of her as a nightmare unraveling. Was she crying? Why was she crying?)

Kit took another step, then another. The library was one foot away on the right, a mile away, mere inches, an eternity. The passthrough to the living room on her left gaped open.

Bertrand hummed a bar of the jazz record. And then –

“What’ve you got there?”

Kit froze.

“I knew I left it somewhere in here – ha! That book I was looking for, for Violet and Klaus.”

“You really want to do the cob, don’t you?” The smile was clear in his voice, and Kit pictured Bertrand leaning forward in his chair, his hand on his chin, gazing at Beatrice and bursting with delight.

“I absolutely do! I get to do a fake death scene and everything. How many kids books are going to give me that kind of opportunity, Bertrand?”

They were alone. Their voices were far enough into the room that they shouldn’t see her at the doorway. They joked like she remembered, exactly like she remembered. Did they joke like that with their children? Would they have joked like that with Lemony, here, like they used to? With her? Would Olaf have – would her grandparents – wasn’t Kit supposed to be here too, not because it was hers, that wasn’t what mattered, what mattered was –

Kit held her breath and didn’t let it out until she’d slipped into the library, until she’d rushed to the wall, until she’d nearly slammed her hand into the door hidden in the dark wallpaper, until she was safe in the narrow passageway. She wanted to run, to keep running. But they’d hear her in the wall. She took it step by step with her chest burning, traveling up two floors to the hidden attic. There was the little window in the roof, waiting for Kit to wiggle her way out. She did. The climb over the roof and down the trellis was harder, with her whole body trembling, but she made it.

She stumbled through the garden, racing over the brick path back to the road, to the fence – she shoved her heels into the ironwork, scrambling over it, the tip of a bar slicing into her calf and her palms. She slipped on the way down the other side and her hip met the sidewalk, pain skittering through her leg and up her side. Get up. Get up, Kit. And Kit did, back to her car across the street, into the driver’s side.

Kit took long and deep breaths. In and out, until her head was back on straight, with the plan set right in her thoughts, as it was supposed to be. Everything was as it should be. She set the box down gently on the passenger seat. She did not look at the Baudelaire mansion. She would patch herself up later, when she had time. She took another breath and put the key in the ignition.

She had to go back home.

#asoue #woevember #no you do NOT see my unformated dashes shhhhhhhh i am so tired okay :) i'm not fixing them i'm going to bed :)#uh. this fic is a Time. in many ways. like.................#kit snicket and the terrible horrible no good very bad evening of Situations. by lulu vandelay #where is this in canon????? uhhh. tentatively violet and klaus are like toddlers i think. yeah?#i struggled with the title. frantically scrambled for a new one bc my original one. look i thought it was tonally too creepy. i think that #was what was freaking me out about it.#AT. 1:56 IN THE GODDAMN MORNING #the next day 2:23 pm update -- changed some words/smoothed some things/left a lot of the passive voice bc i think it's needed here

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luluwquidprocrow · 1 year

Text

sweetest things

violet, klaus, beatrice, bertrand

gen

3,155 words

To the consternation of most of the Baudelaire household, the third Baudelaire child takes her very sweet time making an appearance.

my fic for @snckt for @asouefanworkevent's wicked way exchange!!! lainey, i loved ALL your prompts so much and i, fully 100% intend to do another one as well, when i can get my head around it better. but here is some baudelaire family slice of life!!

By Friday afternoon, according to Violet’s checklist, the Baudelaire family had tried –

1) An after dinner walk (It was fun for the four of them to go around the block after dinner, with Klaus pointing out all the summer flowers, but it hadn’t done anything at all. Mother hadn’t been very optimistic about that option anyway. She walked around all the time, and if that wasn’t enough to jog anything, more average physical exercise was unlikely to move things along.)

2) Surprising Mother (Father had hidden himself around the house all day and tried to startle her – it had only really worked once, and mostly just succeeded in Mother almost smacking Father right in the face with her summer book. They were all very thankful Mother was rereading Violet and Klaus’s books from when they were very little, and not her customary enormous summer novel. Violet wondered what would’ve become of Father’s face if he’d been smacked with, say, Mother’s gigantic illustrated Moby Dick with the gilded cover. Something very horrid, she thought. Father was very handsome.)

3) Dancing (Also a regular activity, but one Mother enjoyed much, much more than the after dinner walk. They’d all been sure that a whole afternoon of elegant tangos and brisk but careful sambas would be the perfect thing – but Mother had ended the day sitting and grumbling when nothing happened.)

4) Not doing anything in particular (On the chance that merely suspending their wait and pretending they weren’t waiting might cause something to happen. They all carried on with their usual day – Father brought Mother lemonade, and Mother read regular, adult books, and then did a crossword puzzle with Klaus, and Father worked on his puzzle book, and Violet and Klaus played chess in the library and gave answers when Father asked them for help with the trivia section, and then Mother and Father played game after game after game of backgammon, and they all painted their toenails again (with Violet and Klaus and Father taking turns doing Mother’s toenails), and none of them entered the nursery just to even look at it and make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, and they even moved Mother’s hospital bags from the front foyer into a closet, and then they all sat around in the afternoon sun not doing anything until Mother let out a very dramatic sigh and said they should give it up as a lost cause. They’d gone out for ice cream that night, as a reward for all their trouble. They were a few days past Mother’s initial due date now, or her due week, because Violet had been late and Klaus had been early, so when it came to expecting her third child, Mother circled the whole first week of August so she was prepared at any moment. After the ice cream, she’d looked at the calendar in the hall almost like it had betrayed her.)

5) Laughing (Father told the most terrible, awful puns and jokes, and went around a whole morning making jokes in the library to make Mother laugh. Violet and Klaus thought Mother had to be humoring him, but it was her genuine laugh, every time. Maybe, they figured, when you married someone, you thought them saying “You’re a real page turner” and looking between Mother and the book she’d been holding was endearing, not embarrassing. Either way, that hadn’t worked, either.)

Violet starred the next thing on her list – spicy food – then put down her notebook and scooped up her invention into her arms. She carried it back downstairs, stepping over Klaus, who was in his usual position on the floor outside the kitchen, where the sunlight came in the best through the big glass window above the sink and filled up all the spaces of the Baudelaire home with a soft, yellow light. It fell right on the pages of Klaus’s book, just the way he liked it.

“What are you reading?” Violet asked, looking back over her shoulder.

“Nothing,” Klaus mumbled. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet this week, Violet thought, barely helping at all with Violet’s list. It was like all the anticipation, all the excitement, all the wondering and waiting just passed right over him. Violet frowned down at Klaus’s head, buried back in his book. She figured that when Klaus wanted to talk, then he would surely tell her what was bothering him. She’d just have to wait him out, too. And Violet was getting excellent practice at waiting things out.

“Ah! Is this it?”

Violet turned back to the kitchen. Father was looking at her expectantly, standing by the counter with the tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and one onion all laid out. She rushed over and set her invention down.

She picked up one of the tomatoes and fit it onto the top dowel. Violet pressed the tiny button she’d put a tomato sticker on, and her invention whirred to life as she and Father watched – the tomato spun around as the record player underneath it started up, and on the first revolution, the skin of the tomato peeled off, and on the next, it split open, sliced out from the inside, creating neat little cubes of tomato that fell onto the transparent plate below, all to the tune of one of Father’s bossa nova records, the sound coming out of the gramophone horn fixed on the side. Violet beamed. She’d designed it last week, after seeing a box grater display in the supermarket, and knew she could do better.

“Wonderful!” Father said. “Very well done, Ed.” He removed the tomato pieces and set them in the big glass bowl at his elbow, then set one of the cucumbers on the dowel. “You can get started on the croutons,” he continued, gesturing at the sideboard cabinet, where he’d put the bread last night.

Violet picked up the big bread knife nearby and got to cutting. It would be easier, she started thinking, if there was a machine for this, too – and something that would toast the croutons – and something to saute the garlic to put them in – and maybe something to tell time while you were doing it, too – and maybe –

“Croutons first!” Father said.

Violet realized she’d been reaching for the ribbon in her trouser pocket. She gave herself a little shake and got back to the bread. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Father set the chopper for the cucumber. He was humming along with The Girl From Ipanema, and perfectly at ease. An excellent opportunity to try and catch him off guard.

“Where’s Mother?” Violet asked, to start.

“In the library,” Father said. He removed the cucumber and replaced it with a pepper. “Relaxing.”

“And it did not work,” came an irritated voice, and Violet and Father both looked up to see Mother in the doorway, holding onto the jamb as she stepped over Klaus as well and lowered herself slowly and gingerly down into one of the stools by the counter. Klaus watched her carefully until she’d sat down, and went back at his book.

“Aha! Here she is!” Father exclaimed. “Miss Tall and Tan and Young and Lovely herself!” He leaned over and gave Mother a quick kiss on her forehead, brushing some of the hair that had fallen out of the bun atop her head out of her face.

Violet barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Father was at it again. Certainly, Mother was tan and young and lovely, but not very tall at all. But it made Mother look a little less grumbly, and that was good.

“Anything I can do to help?” Mother asked. She adjusted her position in the stool, sitting at an angle so the curve of her stomach didn’t hit against anything. “Get you the vinegar? The coriander? Dance around with the salt shaker until I salsa this child out of me?”

“All you have to do is sit there and look nice,” Father said. “Which you already do, effortlessly. And not eat all the cucumbers,” he added, waving Mother’s wandering hand away from the big bowl.

Violet waited a few moments, slicing into the bread again. She wasn’t sure how she’d fare against both of her parents at the same time, now, but maybe it would cheer Mother up. And hopefully Klaus would join in. “I wonder if Ginger will like gazpacho,” she said, keeping her tone light.

Father started humming again. Mother was suddenly inspecting her fingernails, looking very interested.

Violet reached over into the icebox for the half-used garlic bulb. “Or if – ” She caught sight of the mason jar filled with soft, small green leaves. “ – Sage will like garlic croutons.”

Father smiled once more, his eyes sparkling behind his glasses, and Mother successfully stole a piece of cucumber from the big glass bowl and popped it into her mouth. “Very refreshing,” she commented. Father gave her a mock-stern look, until Mother said, “You said all the cucumbers, that was one cucumber.” She maintained eye contact as she reached into the bowl and took another. “Two,” she said, around the cucumber.

Violet puffed out a sigh. Mother and Father had been so tight-lipped for the past nine months about what they were going to name their third child. Violet and Klaus had taken to dropping name options at every opportunity, to see if they could jog a response. Not even food-themed names could get them to talk. Mother and Father were going to make them wait until the baby was born. Which, at this rate, could take an age.

All of a sudden, Klaus cut in. “Babies can’t eat gazpacho,” he called, looking into the kitchen. “Or garlic croutons.”

Violet didn’t scowl – she thought she was much too old for scowling – but her face scrunched up, just like Mother’s had been doing. Why didn’t Klaus want to have fun anymore? It wasn’t as if they’d run out of food names. And of course babies couldn’t eat gazpacho, but that wasn’t the point.

“Perhaps Pepper will like gazpacho when they’re old enough to try it,” Father said. He scooped up the last pepper and dropped it in with the rest of the ingredients. “Klaus, stop sulking down there and get the vinegar and citrus juice for me, please.”

Violet almost thought Klaus would insist he wasn’t sulking, he seemed in that sour of a mood, but it was hard to talk back to Father. So Klaus got up from the hall, bookmarked his page with a thin slip of paper, and joined Violet and Father and Mother in the kitchen.

While Violet and Klaus bustled around, getting the remaining ingredients, Mother chopped up a scallion into little pieces with a knife. Scallions! The one thing Violet hadn’t allotted for in her invention. She’d have to make an adjustment for that, later. Mother complemented Violet’s handiwork, then helped her cross a few wires so they could use it as a regular record player too, without needing to slice or chop anything more, and the Gilberto album went on, filling the kitchen with soft saxophones and guitars. When Father and Mother had mixed everything together in the bowl, Father placed the soup in the fridge so it could chill, and then the four of them made the croutons together.

They crowded around the stove top, pressed close to Mother as she sauted the butter and garlic in a pan before tossing all the bread cubes in alongside. Klaus got to shake the pan around to coat the bread, and use the big salt grinder to sprinkle them with salt after, and he looked a little happier.

Mother and Father piled the croutons atop a cream napkin on plate. “Well, we have to try them,” Mother said. The gazpacho would take forever to chill – or at least a couple hours – but garlic croutons were considered spicy too, Violet realized, and maybe that would be enough to convince the third Baudelaire sibling to make their appearance.

“I concur,” Father said, and the four of them each took a crouton. “What do you think?” he asked over all the crunching.

“Buttery,” Klaus said.

“Toasty,” Violet said.

“Garlicky,” Father put in.

“Very garlicky,” Mother said, looking pleased, and she took another crouton, and then a handful of them. “Well done, troupe.” They stood in the kitchen, waiting and waiting, but the only thing that happened was that Violet’s feet started to get a little sore from standing. The warm summer breeze continued, and the sun was still bright in the mid-afternoon sky, and Desafinado was playing now, and Mother was still, despite everyone’s best intentions, very, very pregnant. Violet frowned; Father kissed Mother’s forehead again; even Klaus sighed.

“Maybe the gazpacho will do something,” Mother sighed, and dusted crouton crumbs from her fingers. “It’s early, but how about the two of you set the table anyway, mm?”

Klaus got the napkins, and Violet got the silverware, and they passed under the big archway between the kitchen and the dining room, filled with soft purple and blue shards of sunlight from the pieces of stained glass in the dining room windows.

“I could always try to scare you again,” Violet heard Father offer, back in the kitchen. “I’m still upset that didn’t work.”

“If you tell me you’re going to scare me, how is that going to work, Bertrand?”

“Forget I said anything – look, that’s an awfully interesting frying pan, isn’t it? What if you look at it while I go over to the other side of the kitchen and get a washcloth and on the way back, while you’re very engrossed in the pan, who knows what will happen?”

Mother started laughing. Violet and Klaus followed each other around the table, putting each place setting down a piece at a time. It was a good sized table, Violet thought. Definitely enough room to accommodate the fifth Baudelaire.

“Which end do you think the baby will sit at?” Violet asked. She thought the far end, by Mother, would be the best, so Mother was right there if they needed anything.

“Babies can’t sit up right away,” Klaus said. “It’ll be months before they can sit at the table.”

Violet knew that, but that wasn’t the point of it, either. She thought maybe she should stop waiting out Klaus in particular and just come right out and ask him. She was his older sister, and soon to be the eldest sibling out of three, and she should be able to problem-solve this like she’d problem-solved an unexciting box grater, like she’d been making the list of things to try and help Mother, like she wanted to be able to do for their new sibling. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Klaus said again. He folded the fourth napkin and set it down on the table, a little too hard. He ran his fingers over the bend in the cloth. “Do you think the gazpacho will work?”

“I hope so,” Violet said. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

Klaus shrugged. “I mean – I liked things the way they were,” he said quietly. He adjusted his glasses, then the collar of his shirt, like the way Father fidgeted sometimes. “A baby changes a lot,” he pointed out. “Mother didn’t even read her summer book, this year.”

Things had been a little different this year, Violet realized. But not in a bad way. In a fun way, of getting things ready and helping Mother and Father, and they still spent a lot of time together, all of them. But Violet hadn’t been able to go to the museum with Mother as much as other summers, and Father had spent a lot of time looking out the window with a little crease of worry in his brow, when he thought no one else was watching. They’d all have to spend a lot of time looking after the baby when it finally did arrive. They might not be able to go to the museum at all, and maybe – it struck Violet with a pang – maybe Mother wouldn’t have time to read a book with Klaus next summer, either. Things might change a lot.

“And,” Klaus continued, “what if something goes terribly, terribly wrong? Babies aren’t supposed to be late.” He glanced past Violet and back into the kitchen, and when Violet followed his gaze, she saw the book Klaus had been reading earlier placed on the counter. One of Mother’s pregnancy books that they’d all taken turns reading.

“Oh, Klaus,” Violet said. “I don’t – I was late,” she remembered. “And Mother was okay. And – ” She hesitated. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing. “We’re all still a family, aren’t we? That doesn’t change just because some other things do.”

“It feels like it,” Klaus said miserably. “I like it when things stay the same.” He wiped the side of his hand under his glasses, over each eye.

Suddenly, Violet had an idea. She reached over and put her hand on Klaus’s shoulder. “I think Brie will really like you, Klaus,” she said, trying to put on her most serious face. The corner of her mouth twitched, just as Klaus met her eyes.

It worked – Klaus started to laugh, just like Mother’s genuine laugh, a loud and bright startled sound. “You think so? Wheely?” he asked.

“Of course they’re gouda,” Violet said, giggling.

“I hear puns!” Mother called. “Bad puns!”

“Excellent job!” Father called after.

The gazpacho was delicious. Mother was still pregnant after dinner – but the gazpacho was delicious, and so were the remaining croutons, after all of them sneaking handfuls while the gazpacho chilled. And Violet and Klaus and Mother and Father sat around the table, all of them suggesting the silliest food names they could come up with, making Mother laugh until there were tears in her eyes.

Father and Violet and Klaus gathered up all the dishes and took them in trips to the kitchen, letting Mother stretch out in her chair. When Violet and Klaus came back for the glasses, Mother grabbed hold of them and pulled them down onto her lap, all of them making a little oomph noise. They were a little too big to really fit comfortably, especially with Mother’s stomach taking up most of the room on her lap, but she held Violet and Klaus so close against her.

“Let me tell you a secret,” Mother whispered, looking at Violet and Klaus. “Don’t tell your father I told you, alright? Look surprised when he tells you. But I want to tell you.” She got a look in her eyes like she’d heard every word Violet and Klaus had said before dinner. Violet thought there wasn’t a thing in the world Mother didn’t hear. “Both of you, sweetest things.”

“What is it?” Klaus asked.

Mother smiled, slow and beautiful. “Sunny,” she said. “That’s what we’re going to name her.”

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #wicked way exchange #i will fix the dashes..........lllllllater #much like bea with sunny i had a hard time getting this to Exist. i hope it reads well and is. soft

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luluwquidprocrow · 2 years

Text

good things come in threes

harry, hawk, ed, margaret (mentions of frank and hank)

gen

5,874 words

One slow autumn afternoon in the fall of Harry and Hawk and Ed’s senior year.

for @countdowntotwinpeaks ’ wonderfulxstrange 2022, i got @doesnt-own-a-sportscoat, who asked for og bookhouse boys doing good deeds and having some hijinks! (margaret and frank wound up sneaking their way in, too.)

Hank had detention, so it was just Harry and Hawk and Ed that afternoon, walking through the school parking lot.

(Hawk frowned when Harry told him during lunch. “Again? What for?”

Harry shrugged. “You know,” he said. He hadn’t been there when it happened, but he could guess; some smart comment Hank’s trig teacher hadn’t liked. Mr. Simmons didn’t stand for any backtalk, and especially not for Hank’s. Senior year probably wasn’t going to make Hank any less of the good-looking troublemaker he’d always been, but Harry was holding out hope. Hank was one of his best friends, after all. Still time for him to turn around. And at least it wasn’t on a day with football practice. Coach had stood on the field for morning practice and looked at the sky and said, “Not today, men,” and walked off.)

“What’d you get on the English test?” Ed asked.

“90,” Hawk said. “Mrs. Garson didn’t like what I said about Keats. What about you?”

“I don’t know what you said about Keats.”

Hawk went in to push his shoulder up into Ed’s; Ed, one of the best defenses on the football team, dodged away from him, chuckling.

“Too much red pen,” he said, falling into step with Hawk again. “I couldn’t read a single thing she wrote. There might be an eight in there, somewhere?”

“Let me see it later,” Hawk said. “I’ve got pretty good at reading her handwriting.”

Harry lagged behind Hawk and Ed for a moment, and glanced over his shoulder at the long side window where the detention classroom was. He couldn’t see anything, not from this distance. He pulled the strap of his bag up higher on his shoulder and turned to Hawk and Ed.

“Hey Ed,” Harry said, coming up on Ed’s other side, “you see that new show the other night? Mod Squad?”

“Nah,” Ed said. “Been out with Norma a lot, must’ve missed it.”

“You sure she was with you?” Harry grinned. “Cause there was this girl on it that looked exactly like Norma—”

Ed raised both eyebrows. “No fooling?”

“Oh yeah, I saw that!” Hawk said. “Ed, you’ve gotta watch it next week. She’s the spitting image of Norma.”

“Huh,” Ed said. “That oughta be something.”

Harry and Hawk and Ed wove their way through the parking lot, coming to a stop a few feet away from Ed’s car. It was a deep blue 1960 Chevy Impala, and they stood there and took it in. It really was a honey of a car, Harry thought. She was, he amended. Ed never named the car, but he called every car she, like a true mechanic. The outside shone in the sun like the sea itself, the white hood and stripe down the side like hints of foam. It was like riding inside a wave, one that could carry the three of them away one day, riding across town and out down Highway 21. (Harry hoped it wouldn’t. At least, not all that far. He didn’t know for sure about Hawk and Ed, or Hank, but Harry had plans in Twin Peaks.)

Ed sighed. “Well, let’s get on to it,” he said. Harry and Hawk gave him neat salutes and got into position.

It went like this—Harry and Hawk and Ed took off their bags and piled them in a corner of the backseat. Ed got in the driver’s side, tried to start the Chevy, and the Chevy refused to start. There was one weekend, legend had it, in junior year, that Ed swore the car started completely on its own, but Harry and Hawk hadn’t been there and both doubted whether or not it happened. Harry and Hawk got around back, and Ed lowered all the windows, and the three of them steered and pushed the car off the slope Ed parked it on and down through the parking lot until it got enough of what Ed called umph that the engine stuttered to life and the Chevy started to pick up speed. Harry dove into the backseat, and Hawk leapt in the passenger side, and they were off, driving out of the lot and down the road.

(Hank—of course it was Hank—gave Ed a lot of grief about the Chevy, saying it didn’t make sense for a such a good mechanic to own a lemon. Actually, “lemon” was the most polite thing he said about the Chevy. Ed insisted it wasn’t that bad, it just needed an extra touch here and there, and Ed was willing to do it. Harry understood that.)

Ed always took the long way, whenever he drove. He cruised around through town, left arm leaning along the edge of the car door, right hand splayed over the edge of the steering wheel, and went at it with his usual casual confidence. Harry liked Ed driving around. It gave Harry a chance to see everything, make sure there wasn’t anything in town he’d forgotten about. Not that he ever could, but he had to keep an eye on it.

Hawk bent over the back of the passenger seat, motioning with his hand. “Hey Harry, could you—”

“Sure thing.” Harry dug around in Hawk’s bag until he found the little notebook with the pen stuck in the spiral and handed it over to Hawk. It was a word scramble book Hawk brought with him everywhere, with a puzzle on each page, blank on the other side. Hawk did a puzzle every day on the ride home, and on the other side, he wrote poems, in smooth, perfectly straight lines of blue ink. Hawk was never self-conscious about it, and even showed them to Harry and Ed sometimes, when he was real proud of them. Harry didn’t always get them—Hawk had a great way with words that Harry sure didn’t—but Hawk was his friend, and Harry was proud of his talent.

The Chevy slowed up. Harry didn’t have to look up to know where they were now—Ed went there practically every day. The shadow of the diner sign passed over the car, and Hawk and Harry grinned at each other where their reflections met in the passenger side rearview mirror.

“Be just a minute,” Ed said, and left the car idling while he got out and half-jogged into the diner. Harry could see him through the big glass window in the front, going up to the counter and leaning over it to kiss Norma on the cheek, like they hadn’t seen each other a whole half hour ago when school let out.

“He could just drive Norma here after school,” Harry said, sitting up and leaning his arms on the headrest of Hawk’s seat. He wouldn’t mind Norma crammed into the car with them on the way home. (Hank might mind, but—Hank wasn’t here today, anyway. Was it bad manners to ask a girl to push a Chevy? But they’d gone on enough dates, Ed and Norma, she knew how the Chevy worked. She probably wouldn’t mind.)

“He could just ask Norma to homecoming instead of just hinting at it, too,” Hawk said. He turned in his seat, putting his back against the dash. “You know, if I have to hear him talk to Norma about the homecoming decorations one more time, or how neat the theme is—”

“He thinks ‘under the sea’ is neat? Wasn’t that last homecoming too?” Harry would swear on anything that all of Frank’s homecomings were “under the sea” too.

“—I’m going to ask her to homecoming myself.”

Harry laughed against the headrest. “Yeah? How’s old Diane gonna feel about that?”

The previous summer, Hawk’s dad took him on a road trip, and somewhere along the way he’d met Diane Shapiro, on her own family vacation coming from the east coast. They sent each other letters regularly; Hawk wrote her real long ones.

(Once, Harry’d tried to write—something—for, well, someone. He didn’t think anyone would have given him a hard time for it, not really, but Harry had been so embarrassed at the thought of it all that he threw the paper away with only a doodle of a fir tree in the corner. He wasn’t that kind of person.)

“Old Diane has heard enough about Ed and Norma dancing around each other,” Hawk said. “She’d be glad to hear the end of it.”

“They’re not gonna do much dancing if Ed doesn’t ask her.”

Ed emerged from the diner a moment later with a big grin on his face and ducked into the car. “Norma says hi,” he said, a little breathlessly.

Harry leaned across the seat to the open window on the other side. “Hi, Norma,” he shouted, waving at the diner window. Norma couldn’t hear him, but she was definitely still watching the car, and she waved in return.

“Hey Norma,” Hawk called, stretching across Ed and towards his window, “about homecoming—”

“Aww, come on,” Ed said. This time he was the one trying to get Hawk in the shoulder, but Hawk, the best defense on the football team, dodged even better than Ed and dropped into the passenger seat. “I’m getting around to it—”

“Ed,” Hawk said, “I’m saying this because you’re my friend, and I care about you. You gotta just ask her.”

“I’ve got it covered,” Ed said. He reversed out of the parking lot and pulled onto the road, leaving the diner behind them. “I got it all planned out. Got a Tammy Wynette tape and everything.” He fished in the joint of the seat and the backrest and pulled out the cassette, jiggling it in its case, then put it back.

Harry saw Hawk roll his eyes in the mirror. He decided to spare Ed the commentary on whether or not a Tammy Wynette cassette tape was the right way to ask your girlfriend to homecoming. For all his and Hawk’s teasing, Ed must’ve been doing something right with Norma. They’d been together for four years, and asking her was just about the principle of asking your girl. It could be worse, Harry thought. There was this short red-haired girl with big eyes, whose name Harry could never remember, who he saw in the hallway sometimes and seemed to disappear whenever anybody walked by her. Whatever romance she wanted, it didn’t seem like it was going well.

(Harry wasn’t jealous. Not all that much, not really. He wasn’t the only senior without a girlfriend. He talked to plenty of girls, he—and Norma was a real sport to hang out with Harry and Hawk and Ed and Hank altogether sometimes, but it wasn’t—Harry had other things to think about.)

Ed drove on. Past the cleared lot the town wound up not building a house in, grass growing up out of the piles of dirt left behind. Past that tiny store that had had six different owners in Harry’s lifetime. What was it now? He squinted at it. An antique shop, with a bunch of porcelain in the window. Over to the busier parts of town and past the half-done foundation of the new department store, past Calhoun Memorial, down a short side street with houses lined with orange and yellow mums. Around to the residential streets again.

Harry saw a moving van sitting parked by the curb below a big white house with a sloping yard and concrete steps. All the doors and windows were open, and the front porch piled up with cardboard boxes. The Palmers, Harry guessed. Leland and Sarah Palmer got married earlier in the year up at Pearl Lakes, in a big lavish wedding. Dad had gone, because Dad went to every wedding in the area. They’d heard tell the Palmers were searching for a house in the area after. He watched the house even after Ed passed by, turning his head to see the hint of a curtain flutter in one of the windows. It was the strangest thing, all of a sudden. Harry couldn’t think if anyone had ever lived there before them.

The Chevy turned the corner, and Harry sank into his seat. They were in the last cluster of quiet streets before the road would take a sharp curve and cut through the nearby section of woods. Smoke stung in Harry’s nose, a surprising and sharp tang. He rubbed at his nose with the side of his hand and looked around again. White smoke wisped its way out of some of the chimneys along the road, fireplaces working away as the weather started to get chilly.

It wasn’t the same, but it always made Harry think about it again.

They’d been freshman, he and Hawk and Ed and Hank, and the school year had just started when the fire broke out. It only burned that night, one too-hot evening in the middle of September, when the four of them were sitting on the floor of Harry’s living room, pretending to do English homework but really watching The Fugitive and talking about how football tryouts went during the commercials. Frank was home for the weekend and supposed to be supervising while Dad was out, but he was as interested in The Fugitive as the rest of them, and gave pointers from his own football career. It was one of those good and slow nights, Dad liked to call them, spent with people you liked.

Hawk and Hank did their long-standing thumb wrestle for the last piece of dessert in Harry’s kitchen, and Hawk won, like he always did. Hank hovered behind him, trying to snag a bite of the danish from Wagon Wheel Bakery, and Hawk was fending off Hank and his fork with his elbows when they heard it. The fire siren, wailing out across town.

Frank opened the front door, and the four of them crowded behind him to see what it was. But there was no way they could miss it—a thick, black plume of smoke was billowing over the woods like a stain, spilling up into the clouds.

The smoke choked Harry then, too, the smell of burning wood filling up the whole house, even after Frank herded them inside and left to see what he could do. He looked back at Harry before he left their house, and they nodded at each other. Their unspoken agreement, what they’d always been taught.

Harry and Hawk and Ed and Hank got themselves ready. They checked the street for excess debris that might catch if the fire came their way, made sure the radios had working batteries, got the food and water ready, enough for them and enough to hand out to people who might need them. Harry even made Hawk and Ed and Hank call their parents. They already knew where they were, but it was worth it to double check and be safe, in the event of a fire.

(He hoped it might be like the last big fire, when he was nine. That was a night to remember. The Elk’s Club caught fire, and everything had been so dry that the blaze managed to spread and jump the river before it could even get close to contained; the Martell dogs got loose; a transformer blew and knocked out half the electricity in town; Mr. Packard broke his ankle trying to get to his car. He said he tripped over one of the hounds, and the Martells said Mr. Packard was a—Harry never exactly heard what it was they’d said, because Dad hadn’t wanted to repeat it, but he got the gist of it.

And the whole entire town came together to help in the aftermath. Mr. Packard commandeered rebuilding the foundation of the Elk’s Club with his own lumber straightaway from his hospital bed, and coordinated an effort to recapture the hounds, and people from out of town came to help restore the electric. School was canceled for a couple days, and Harry and Hawk and Ed and Hank had biked meals to the firefighters still cleaning up the ash.)

But it was like the fire was gone as soon as it started. Hours later, it was over, and Dad and Frank came back home, and Hawk and Ed and Hank went home. Dad said the fire was contained quickly, and just a few acres of wood had been scorched. None of the trees were even felled. But there was one casualty.

Harry didn’t know Mr. Lanterman very well, but Harry thought it was awful, that he’d died right after getting married. All the Trumans went to the funeral. Harry didn’t know Margaret Lanterman all that well, since she was older than him, and that was one of the first times he really saw her. She stood tall in her grief, wrapped up in black, her eyes red but her face dry. He hadn’t remembered her ever carrying a log before, though.

Dad had gone up to her, Frank and Harry beside him. He put a hand on Margaret’s shoulder and said something to her in his slow, deep voice. But Margaret’s eyes found Harry instead, staring straight at him. Almost like she could see right through him. Harry stood up a little straighter, because that was polite. Then Margaret shook off Dad’s hand and leaned down to Harry.

“Good things come in threes,” she said. Then she nodded at Dad and Frank and walked away.

He turned it over in his head a lot after she’d said it. Four years later, Harry still didn’t know what she’d meant. He thought about it sometimes when he was with his friends—they were three good things to Harry. But then Harry wondered where that left him. Harry wanted to be one of those good things too. All his life, that was the only thing he wanted, especially in a town like Twin Peaks. You took care of a town like Twin Peaks, because it was the kind of town that needed you to take care of it. And Harry wanted to do it with people he liked. That’s why he always roped in Hawk and Ed, and Hank. (And he could take care of them, too.)

But it was pointless to think about it, probably. Margaret said a lot of stuff like that, stuff that didn’t make sense, especially after the funeral. Some of the people in town called her the Log Lady now, and he’d heard the other things they said about her too. (The other things Hank said, too.) That she was crazy, that she deserved to live alone in the woods. Harry’s face scrunched up thinking of the way Dad would reprimand him if Harry repeated the things he’d heard. Harry didn’t agree with them, but he didn’t think Margaret was someone he was going to go out of his way to see, either.

Something flickered in front of him; Hawk, waving a hand in front of Harry’s face again.

“Where’d you go there, Harry?” Hawk asked.

“Hm? Oh, uh—just thinking,” Harry said.

They’d passed the curve while he was daydreaming. The trees bent over the road here, making giant patches of shadow, the afternoon sun only showing in the occasional gap. Ed hadn’t taken this road in some time, and it was like a split between two worlds—on the right side, remains of the controlled burn Hawk’s father had overseen back in the spring. The town had started doing a while ago to try and limit the amount caught up in forest fires. The bottom edges of the trunks were burnt black, but the brightest, most lush and green fledgling trees burst up out of the soil. On the left, though, was a pocket of the remains of a fire that had never grown back right. The leaves that were left weren’t like the changing autumn orange a lot of the town was now, but a burnt, cold orange, with thin branches hanging limp and broken along the ground. The bark wasn’t as dark, but the trees were withered and brittle, like any moment they could fall apart. Harry couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Then the road opened up again, the branches stretching away from the road, turning into strong, towering Douglas Firs, untouched by anything and spaced farther apart. It was like taking a deep breath. (Harry even took one himself.) Harry knew all of Twin Peaks, but this part in particular was familiar like the back of his hand. He and Hawk and Ed and Hank had gone through there a lot as kids. It seemed like a whole age since they’d done it, now.

“Hey,” Ed said suddenly, “you see that?”

Harry turned. “See what?”

Ed slowed the Chevy down to an idle again and stuck his head out the window, staring at the woods. “I don’t know,” he said. “Thought there was something in there.”

Harry and Hawk and Ed sat there, watching. Harry didn’t see anything suspicious, but, it wouldn’t do to let something like that go, now would it? Ed even turned the Chevy off completely, pulled the keys out, spun the keyring around his finger once and pocketed it. They looked at each other, one by one—and then the three of them jumped out of the car and ran together into the trees, laughing in turn as they each leapt over an old fallen tree trunk, dark and rotted out with time.

Autumn was really coming on fast now, wasn’t it? Red and yellow maple leaves crunched under their shoes as Harry and Hawk and Ed tromped along, and the chill Harry noticed earlier was more present in the shade there. The cool breeze kicked up, lifting sections of Harry’s hair, and he tried to smooth the curls back down. Maybe he should get a hat to wear, one of these days. A nice, big hat.

“You think I should get a hat?” he asked.

“Have to be a pretty big hat for all that head,” Ed commented.

Harry rolled his eyes. “What about, like a, like a cowboy hat,” he said. “How’d I look with a cowboy hat?”

“Like a cowboy,” Hawk said, shooting Harry a grin over his shoulder.

Ed started whistling that these from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Harry had begged Frank to drive them to Newport two years ago to see it, since it likely wouldn’t make its way to the town drive-in. Harry and Hawk joined in, whistling along until a high, warbling birdsong swelled out of the trees around them, louder than their whistling.

“Guess we’ve got some competition,” Hawk said. “Look at that—look!” He pointed up at one of the tree branches. Harry and Ed stood on either side of him and looked, just like he said. “I forgot my binoculars, but—”

Harry and Hawk and Ed could still see it. Picking along a tree branch was a small orange smudge of a bird, one of the varied thrushes Hawk was always trying to see when he went out birding with his family. It whistled down at them, once, and then twice, and then took to the air around them. Harry and Hawk and Ed turned in a half-circle to watch it go.

There was more to see. Harry and Hawk and Ed tracked a garter snake for a little while, walking alongside it a few feet away as it slithered through the underbrush, a weaving stripe of brown with white down either side. Eventually, they lost sight of it when Ed pointed out a nearby cabin. There were lots of them spaced out in the woods, not along any of the half-made paths, just wherever they wound up being. Harry swore, in fact, that some of them moved. He felt like he never saw the same cabin in the same spot twice. As Harry and Hawk and Ed wound their way around a cluster of firs, Harry felt sure there had been a squat, long cabin with a brick fence and thick red curtains drawn over the windows the last time they’d been through there. It couldn’t have gotten up and walked away, he knew, but it sure wasn’t there now.

But there was another one, up over a small hill. A dark wood cabin in the shade of a close ring of trees, with an empty clothesline strung out back. The windows were open, and a good-sized pile of wood sat by the far side of the house, but other than that, it seemed completely isolated and undisturbed, like nobody lived there at all.

Somebody could live there, though, Harry thought.

“Let’s go check it out,” he said, and Hawk and Ed followed behind him on either side.

They crept up slowly to the cabin, taking their time. It was probably the angle of all the trees, but it was even more shadowy up close, and the wood even darker. The front porch was stacked with possessions—an old butter churner, a dresser that had seen better days, a bench with a fringed blanket on it. Harry and Hawk and Ed peeked through one of the open windows at the front as they passed. It didn’t look all that scary on the inside. He could see big shelves in the walls with books tucked neatly on them and cozy blankets draped over the backs of chairs. In the center of the room was a circular wooden table with a scalloped teapot, white with a ring of orange butterflies.

With a loud, quick creak, the front door opened. Harry and Hawk and Ed jumped back, stumbling into each other, scrambling for balance.

Margaret Lanterman stood in the doorway, gazing at them without surprise or reproach, but with careful consideration. She still held that log in her arms. Harry felt Ed shuffle beside him, jamming his hands in his pockets. Ed didn’t care much for anyone he didn’t already know his whole entire life. Hawk looked curious, because Hawk liked and respected most people, unless he had cause not to. Harry was curious, too. This was the first time he’d seen Margaret since the funeral for her husband. He didn’t know why he thought she’d be the same, but she was a little older, like anyone would be four years later. She wasn’t wearing black, and her glasses had different frames, and she looked more stern than Harry had seen her before, but the corners of her mouth were soft. He could picture Dad again and the reprimand he’d imagined for thinking bad of Margaret earlier. Harry wondered what she’d say to him this time, if she’d say anything.

“You can come in,” Margaret said. “I’m having tea.” Without waiting for a response, she turned around and walked into the cabin.

“D’we have to?” Ed asked.

“It’s not gonna hurt to have some tea,” Harry said.

“I hope it’s chamomile,” Hawk said.

“It’s chamomile,” Margaret called back. “And I have cookies.”

That got Ed’s interest. Harry’s too—school lunch was some time ago now. The three of them filed in, Ed shutting the door. Margaret was already sitting at her circular table, fixing her skirt and setting her log in her lap. She’d brought out plates and cups for them, the same style as her teapot, and put a bigger plate near her piled with the largest chocolate chip cookies Harry had ever seen.

Harry and Hawk and Ed sat down in the wooden chairs around the table. Margaret poured them all tea, and then offered the plate of cookies to them in turn. Ed even took one with a “thank you, ma’am.” It was almost like eating with a grandmother, although Harry didn’t think Margaret was going to ask how they were doing in school.

“I heard you in the woods,” Margaret said.

Harry choked on the tea in his mouth. He and Hawk and Ed exchanged sheepish glances.

But Margaret took a sip of her tea. “You should be careful. But I think you know that. Did you see anything you liked?”

There was a great pause. Ed took an enormous bite of his chocolate chip cookie.

“We saw a garter snake,” Hawk said.

So they told her about the garter snake, and the cabins in the woods, and the burned trees by the road, and the varied thrush. Margaret didn’t smile a lot, and she didn’t laugh at all, but she seemed pleased to listen to them and tell them in return about a few of the things she saw in the woods too. It was nicer than Harry thought it would be, really talking to her. He still thought she was strange, and most of what she said still sounded odd, but it was better than Harry imagined. And the cookies were great, too.

As they talked, Harry got the strangest feeling. Something about Margaret’s house seemed so familiar, he thought. He and Hawk and Margaret, sitting in her cabin, drinking tea, the plate of cookies by her elbow. An afternoon in the woods, coming upon Margaret out of the blue. Everything felt like he’d done it before, even if that wasn’t possible at all. He’d dome some of those things regularly, though, without Margaret. Maybe that’s all it was. Harry did a lot of the same things all the time in Twin Peaks.

Margaret hadn’t expected them to drop by, so it was only fair that Harry and Hawk and Ed offer to do her dishes for her. They took the dishes into the small kitchen in turns, first the plates and the cups, and then Harry with the teapot last. But when he went to join Hawk and Ed in the kitchen, Margaret stood from her chair and stopped him. Harry was a lot taller than four years ago, but he still found himself staring up at her, suddenly apprehensive.

“Do you remember what I told you?” Margaret asked.

Harry straightened up again, like he had before. He shifted the still-warm teapot in his hands. “Uh—you said, good things come in threes.”

Margaret sighed. “I asked if you remembered, not what I said,” she said. “I remember what I said.”

“Well—I remembered,” Harry said. He balanced the teapot in one hand and scrubbed at the back of his head. “I did.”

“Good.” Margaret put a hand on her shoulders and steadied him, just like when Dad had put his hand on her shoulder before. Then she said, quietly—“Keep it close to you, when you go looking for the truth.”

“Uh—” Harry swallowed. “Thanks, Margaret.”

She dropped her hand from his shoulder and then pointed at the kitchen. “The dishes are waiting for you.”

The dishes weren’t the only thing waiting. It turned out there was a loose bulb in Margaret’s kitchen, one that flickered over the sink, and Harry and Hawk and Ed set about fixing it for her before they left. It was really the least they could do.

Margaret stood at the door and watched them go after. They all waved, even Ed, but Margaret didn’t wave back. Harry saw her nod at them. Just once, just like Frank always did. He smiled a little and waved again, and then turned away.

Ed’s Chevy was still right where they’d left it, by the side of the road where they’d entered the woods. Harry and Hawk and Ed stood there and looked at it again, and then got into positions once more.

Getting the Chevy up and running a second time proved more of a challenge than it had at school. Rolling it along didn’t help it to start, and Ed wound up with Harry and Hawk at the trunk, walking on Hawk’s other side, helping the Chevy coast into town, the sun on their backs as it kept slipping down through the sky.

“You two can go on home, if you want,” Ed said, somewhere around Sparkwood. “I can get her to my dad’s shop.”

“Nah,” Harry said, “I don’t mind.”

“Good exercise,” Hawk added.

“Gives you what you don’t got, and all that,” Harry said, because Ed’s dad had always said that when they were younger, and Harry and Hawk would go over Ed’s house and no one felt like eating his mom’s brussel sprouts.

“Better than the brussel sprouts,” Hawk commented.

Ed hid his face in his arm, but Harry knew he was smiling.

They got the Chevy back to Ed’s dad’s garage, and his dad gave Harry and Hawk a ride home in his own car. There was barely enough light by that time, and Harry saw his way up the front steps of his house by the porch light Dad always kept it. There were things he had to do now. Figure out something for dinner, for one. Homework, for another. He unlocked the door and stepped inside.

“Dad?” Harry called out. He waited a couple seconds, but there was no response. He hadn’t figured on one, but he always checked, just in case Dad came home early. He stayed real late at the station these days, and sometimes he was more tired than Harry ever remembered him being before. It meant Harry was usually alone in the house, unless Frank visited for the weekend, but it wasn’t all that bad, not always.

Hank should be home from detention by now, anyway. Harry dropped his bag by the front door and went to the hallway by the kitchen, where they had a small wooden shelf with the phone on it, and dialed Hank’s number.

The phone rang, and rang, and rang. Harry let it ring on for longer than he should’ve before he dropped the receiver onto the hook. He sat down on the floor next to the shelf, scrubbing a hand through his hair again.

(He didn’t want to think about it, but—sometimes that’s all Harry had the time to do.)

There was something Dad said a lot lately, when he was home, and it was the one thing Harry didn’t agree with him on. Dad said—sometimes you could care about something a whole lot, but that didn’t mean it cared about you back. But Harry didn’t know how to stop caring. He was going to make it matter, all that care, he had to. Because you had to take care of things, especially the things that might not always care about you. This whole town, with the new things and old things, with the fresh leaves and the burnt trees, with Margaret, with Hawk and Ed and Dad and Frank, with Hank. What else could he do? And somebody had to care. Somebody had to hold on.

Somebody had to do his math homework, too. Harry went and got his notebooks out of his bag, switched on the small light above the phone to see better, and sat down again with his back against the wall.

A while later, it rang. Harry scrambled to his feet and grabbed for it. “Yeah?”

“Okay,” Hawk said, sounding pleased. “Get ready—new poem, fresh from the notebook. I wrote it about pushing the Chevy home. Do you want to hear it?”

Harry smiled. “Lay it on me, Hawk.”

#twin peaks #doesn't-own-a-sportscoat #countdowntotwinpeaks #wonderfulxstrange

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luluwquidprocrow · 3 years

Text

a sense of some lone consequence wheezing down my neck

anthy

gen

541 words

well. if utena wants to play the game, anthy will let her. [anthy picks her duelist.]

just a short little thing, about anthy in the first episode

title from death, thrice drawn by the scary jokes

i want i want i want, anthy thinks, viciously, so much it almost surprises her. it doesn't, but it could. i want i want. akio has a new list and she hasn't seen it yet, because she is in the hallway and she is looking at a girl walking away from her, with hair that falls in a soft wave down her back, a girl that wears some corruption of the boy's uniform, a girl chattering away in a carefree voice. someone bumps into anthy's shoulder as they run past; she lets them. she doesn't care. the girl has said the magic word, and she keeps saying it. she wants to be a prince? well. anthy is nothing, if not willing. if that girl wants to play the game, anthy will let her. she follows her.

her name is tenjou utena, and she is nothing special—in fact she is worse, and anthy feels sorry for her. maybe that's all it is. from the other side of the classroom, she watches utena lean on one hand and the sun catches her hair and turns it a precious pink, like the roses in the garden. just a pale imitation, another replaceable piece. roses grow so frequently and so recklessly. anthy has to deadhead them this afternoon. i want i want i want. it won't end well, but it's a valuable lesson. everyone needs one. isn't that a good thing.

one of the girls from the drama club sits behind her, and she taps anthy twice on the shoulder. "hey hey, that's too on point," she says in a big stage whisper. it is, isn't it? sorry.

a girl with a ponytail hangs on tenjou utena's arm, clinging like an annoying child. oh, but anthy knows that girl, by sight at least. wakaba. how long has she seen her stare at saionji? longer than anthy cares to think. ah. wouldn't it be funny, if one of those love letters he always threw away was from that girl. wouldn't it be funny, if she had to see it pinned up in the hallway for everyone to read. it would make her upset. and what did princes do when girls were upset? slay the dragon. save the princess. win the bride, of course. it might be unfortunate that wakaba has to be a casualty, but unfortunate things happen all the time.

anthy picks wakaba's letter and its terrible pink envelope out of the trashcan. it's very pretty and very sickening. anthy's done better. the hallway is empty as she tacks it to the board, carefully pushing the pins in the top corners, attaching the envelope next to it for the full effect. she smooths the paper with a brush of her hand and steps back. well done, anthy.

i want. she snips the heads off the roses. they don't make a sound on the floor. she holds the pruning shears tight. i want, i want. she cuts one of the new roses, whole and hearty. it drops heavy into her palm. she curls her hand around it, the petals crushing together softly under her fingers. i want, i want, i want, i w a n t. she's allowed to. what?

she puts the shears down.

#revolutionary girl utena #rgu #utena #tenjou utena #himemiya anthy

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luluwquidprocrow · 3 years

Text

columbo and the g-man

columbo & dale cooper

teen

2,646 words

California, June 1980; Two timeless men have a conversation over chili and cherry pie.

my fic for @spunkyjacobin for @countdowntotwinpeaks’s wonderfulxstrange!! some diner talks and time/life shenanigans with columbo and coop.

His Peugeot always was a sturdy little car. It coasted along for another mile or so down the side of the busy San Francisco boulevard before it slid to a quiet stop across two parking spaces beside a bold, silver diner, just missing the Dodge Diplomat in the next spot.

Columbo took in the sight, standing by his car and rubbing the back of his neck. It wasn’t that his car looked old—the past twenty years with it had dented the shine, a little, he’d admit, but it still looked good. You knew it was a car, you knew it was a solid car, the kind of car that was going to take you places with minimal fuss, appropriate storage, and could handle a little wear here and there from Dog, as all cars should. It was more, next to his car, the diner looked very, very new.

He went around to the front of his car and hoisted the hood up, bending over to get a good look at the engine. If that was the engine. Unless it was the accelerator. Unless it was the—what was it? The oil tank? He kept one hand palm-flat against the underside of the hood to keep it up, cigar between his fingers, and shuffled himself in closer across the gears. Maybe that was the oil tank. It looked about how he thought an oil tank could look. You learned something new every day, Columbo thought, always amazed. He inched himself back out and gave the whole thing a once-over.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding a little. Twenty years of car ownership still didn’t make a mechanic, even if you loved your car. He closed the hood and gave the side a bracing, sympathetic pat. There had to be a phone inside the diner, and a phone book or an obliging waiter he could ask for a towing company to take it to a local mechanic. His regular one back in L.A. was gonna give him an earful when he got home, that was for sure.

Columbo was pleased to see the inside of the diner had much more character than the polished outside. It was his kind of diner. Just bursting with personality. A blue-hued homey atmosphere, crowded booths you had to peel yourself out of, an impressive rotating dessert rack just to the left of the doors, a very obliging waiter who let him behind the front counter to use the phone and gave him the number of two towing companies, and another number for someone he assured Columbo the best mechanic in the city, bar none. He was a chipper young kid, ready to help. He had Columbo chuckling to himself as he dialed the phone. Columbo loved people, he really did. He saw some of the worst of people, in his line of work, sure, but he got to see the kindness, too, the cleverness, the brightness. Deep down, the whole world spun on that, that brightness, that humanity. And he really, really loved it.

The first towing company said they could be there in an hour, and that was just fine with Columbo. A diner, after all, was one of the best places to kill an hour.

“Lieutenant?”

A young man in a crisp, black suit was raising a hand, standing up from a window booth, smiling broadly. The FBI agent from that big fiber-sample procedure seminar this morning, who’d sat near Columbo and loaned him a pen, talking comfortably with him during the break about their jobs and San Francisco and Los Angeles, a real companionable sort of guy—Dale Cooper, that was his name. Columbo never forgot a name. Had he given Cooper his pen back? He patted down his pockets as he made his way over. Yes, he had. He found the waiter’s pen still tucked in his hand next to his cigar, though, and slipped the pen into the front pocket on his shirt. He’d have to give that back.

“Lieutenant, this is a fortunate surprise,” Cooper said, shaking Columbo’s hand in a short, professional motion. “I had thought you were on your way back to the City of Angels.”

“Well, so did I,” Columbo said. “But my car had a different idea. Second time it broke down this month, can you believe that? You know, my wife, she told me I should’ve taken her car up here, but—” He looked out the window at his car, which was attracting a few stares from people on their way back to their own cars. “—you just can’t leave a quality car like that sitting at home when you leave town.” And, it had an indent from Dog’s weight in the backseat, and the passenger seat still smelled like his wife’s perfume from when he dropped a bottle of it, and you had to take the good things with you. Also, his wife refused to drive the Peugeot, and if he took her car, how was she gonna get to night school? Her sister was out of town too, so—“Now, the towing company said they’d be here in about an hour, so it looks like I’ll be sticking around for a little while longer.”

“Would you like to join me for lunch while you wait?”

“Oh—well I couldn’t impose—”

“The exact opposite of an imposition,” Cooper said. “It would be my treat.” He gestured at the booth seat across from him, and he sat back down once Columbo took the seat.

He’d talked with Cooper for a while at the seminar, but here, under the bright lights of the diner, Columbo got a real good look at him. Cooper had to be a good twenty years younger than him, maybe more, but there was nothing green about the man. He carried himself with a calm, collected expression and a genuine joy that intrigued Columbo, because it still couldn’t hide the hollowness in his cheeks, like he’d lost too much weight and never quite recovered it all. Cooper had said before that he’d been in violent crimes for some time and was now on his way to counterintelligence, but Columbo didn’t think that accounted for everything. The age in Cooper’s eyes, the slight tremble in his hands when he picked up his fork, the way his whole person just didn’t seem to sit right on him. The two times Columbo had seen him, he was alone. Sometimes people liked to be alone, sure. But Cooper looked like he was waiting.

All of a sudden, Columbo got the feeling Cooper wasn’t the kind of person you could get a real, true straight answer out of, not if you asked him something important. Not that that mattered, because he wasn’t a murder suspect, and Columbo didn’t poke and prod and push his friends, most of the time. It was just something he noticed, because Columbo noticed everything.

If Cooper knew that Columbo was watching him, he didn’t show it, because Cooper was contentedly digging into the big slice of cherry pie on the plate in front of him. It was a nice piece of pie.

“Say, that’s some lunch,” Columbo said, leaning across the table. He brought his cigar close to his mouth, and Cooper’s shoulders shifted, a flinch quickly caught and stopped and pulled back down. “Oh, uh—excuse me,” Columbo murmured. He considered his cigar. It was well on its way to quietly smoldering out, so he placed it gently in the pocket of his raincoat.

Cooper’s posture relaxed fully, and he adjusted his grip on his fork, that grin returning to his face. “I believe the quality of a diner can be judged on how they proportion the filling of their desert pies to the crust, with cherries in particular—and when it is especially well done, it is only fitting to indulge oneself on a well-made pleasure.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Columbo said with his own grin.

Cooper motioned the young waiter over, and Columbo traded the waiter the pen for a menu. He didn’t keep it for long. He caught the word chili and it was all he needed; that was his own diner test. He ordered it with a coffee, plain black, because it was pretty hard to go wrong with coffee. Possible, but unlikely in a diner. “That chili, that comes with crackers, doesn’t it?”

“Yes it does, sir,” the waiter said.

“Could I have some extra crackers?” Chili wasn’t chili without good crackers to crumble.

“Of course.”

“Could I have an additional piece of pie, as well?” Cooper asked.

“Of course.”

The waiter took the menu back and disappeared into the kitchen. Columbo folded his hands together on top of the table to wait for the chili, missing his cigar just a little.

Cooper took the bite of pie that was still on his fork. When he swallowed, he said, “You mention your wife a great deal, Lieutenant. How long have you been married?”

“About sixteen years now,” Columbo said.

Cooper smiled again, so pleasantly. “You must love each other a great deal. I’m very happy for you, sir.”

“Thank you,” Columbo said, nodding his head, feeling a little bashful. “Thank you, very much." There was something waxy about Cooper’s smile, even when it was that pleasant. Like he was trying harder than he should’ve been, for a conversation about someone’s marriage. Columbo didn’t feel bad for him—feeling bad for anybody never helped them, not really. Pity, in his opinion, just made people feel better about themselves. You helped when you did something for someone else. He cast around for something to ask in return that would be easier for Cooper to talk about. “So, where do you stand on donuts? Cause, for me, I think they’re the top dessert.”

Cooper’s eyes lit up immediately.

They chattered back and forth about desserts until the waiter returned again, putting down Columbo’s chili, cracker packets tucked all along between the bowl and the plate, and his coffee, and then Cooper’s next slice of pie. Columbo tore a few of the packets open and shook the crackers into his hand, crumbling them up over the chili. He scooped a great pile of chili onto his spoon, while Cooper made quick work of the rest of the first pie slice before pushing the plate away and pulling the new one closer.

It was a fine lunch, with great company, and the chili was one of the most remarkable bowls of chili he’d ever eaten, helped considerably by the crackers and Cooper’s company. He liked to listen, and Columbo liked to talk, and he spun stories about the lighter side of his work, said nothing more about his wife, mentioned Dog a few times—Cooper didn’t seem to like dogs a great deal, but Columbo assured him, he’d like Dog. Nobody didn’t like Dog, he told him. A low-to-the-ground hound with big droopy eyes, that was hard for anybody to resist. His story about the ducks in the park near his house, Cooper especially enjoyed that one. Columbo finished his chili, Cooper ordered another piece of pie, and then Columbo could feel it, like a breeze running through his fingers. Time was slowing down. Columbo was no stranger to time moving around him. That was what time did, it shifted and moved and went on, sometimes when it should, sometimes when it shouldn’t.

He wasn’t sure if Cooper noticed, but Cooper’s fork had paused over the pie again. When he looked up at Columbo, a shadow was passing over his face, and it stayed there, like it belonged there, at home on Cooper’s thin face. The undercurrent thing that ran through Cooper’s whole person. Columbo was not surprised to see that it looked like fear. It made Cooper even younger.

He caught a quick look at himself in the reflection of the window. Age suddenly cast him in a distinguished, crumpled grey, deep crows feet pulling at the corner of his eyes. He looked back at Cooper.

“One day you won’t be here,” Cooper said.

Columbo smiled and inclined his head. “No, I won’t,” he said. His voice had faded too, into a soft gravel. That was going to be something to look forward to, when it happened for real.

Cooper’s face distorted into a pale and reversed version of it, his eyes a deadly blank.

“That’s how it goes, you know,” Columbo pointed out, not unkindly.

Cooper’s expression turned over, and he was different again, much, much older, his face drawn and shrunken in, hair greasy and shoulder-length. Then he looked the same age, but closer to the way he was supposed to look now, before that fear had unsettled itself inside him. The sadness on him was bone-deep.

Columbo squinted at him. His left eye was gonna do it even more as he got older and older. Cooper wouldn’t be here either, it looked like, but in a different way. Sometimes that happened. You lost yourself, until you only had pieces left. Columbo had never had that problem. He knew who he was, inside and out, where he was going, where he’d end up. He was content with the life he led and what he would do. When you weren’t so sure, it could be dangerous.

“What will I do?” Cooper asked.

“I’ve never really been one for all those philosophical questions,” Columbo said. He scooped up the last of his chili. “What do you wanna do?”

He was young again, younger. A line of blood ran down the front of his shirt. “I don’t think it matters,” he whispered. “I’ve done nothing to stop the evil in this world.”

Columbo chewed thoughtfully. “Is that what you think’s out there?”

“I know,” Cooper said. “I know.” He sounded like he could say it again and again and never stop. Columbo could hear it echoing around them.

He didn’t think you could argue or reason with evil. It was only one piece of the puzzle, after all, and just one little piece at that. Cooper probably didn’t want to hear it. Nothing was gonna change his mind, not now. So Columbo offered what he always did.

“You gonna finish your pie?” Columbo asked, nudging the plate closer to Cooper.

Cooper looked down at the plate. Then he dug his fork into it and took another bite.

Time started up again, flowing back through the diner. Columbo looked once again like the version of himself he was supposed to be right now, and so did Cooper. They continued like nothing had happened, because sometimes that was all you could do. Cooper finished his pie.

A loud, impressive rumble came from outside the window, and he and Cooper turned. The tow truck had pulled into the parking lot, a man getting out of the cab and stopping when he saw Columbo’s car.

“Oh, that’ll be for me,” Columbo said. He stood up from the seat and brushed the crumbs off of his pants. Cooper stood up after him.

“It’s been a pleasure, Lieutenant,” Cooper said. “A lunch I will not soon forget.”

“You take care of yourself, now,” Columbo said, shaking Cooper’s hand. “And if you ever find yourself down in L.A., my wife and I would just love to have you come over for dinner. She makes this lasagna—well, you’ll just have to stick around and see for yourself.”

Cooper smiled. It looked pretty genuine. “I’ll keep that in mind, Lieutenant. Thank you.”

Columbo made sure Cooper had turned back to his pie before he found their waiter and slipped him the cash for the lunch. Columbo told him to give his compliments to the chef for the chili, and the cherry pie, and then made his way back outside, into the bright summer afternoon, taking his cigar out of his raincoat pocket again.

#spunkyjacobin #wonderfulxstrange #twin peaks #columbo

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luluwquidprocrow · 3 years

Text

(the three-part folding mirror)

the denouements & the snickets, olaf, r, olivia

teen

15,985 words

The year the schism gets worse is the year one of the quarterly information costume parties is held in the grand ballroom on the third floor of the Hotel Denouement.

@lyeekha won my commission in the @asoue-network fandom against hate raffle and asked for the denouements, so i put together some shenanigans with the denouements and the snickets, with slight ernest/lemony kit/dewey frank/jacques, and a few other associates hanging around ~

some minor warnings – language; smoking; brief mention of murder; referenced parental death; identity anxiety about being seen physically and personally

title from i am alone by they might be giants

10:59 PM—The Ballroom—East Drink Table

Kit skirted the perimeter of the crowded ballroom, stopping at the side wall by the drinks, one eye on the table and the other on the dance floor. She couldn’t put her back to it. Not now. There was a tall, potted boxwood nearby, unreasonably lush, almost slouching against the decorative golden pillar beside it. She picked up one of the wineglasses, the only signal she could think of to properly get his attention. She’d have to find Lemony as well; where was he?

The plant coughed.

“J,” Kit whispered, “listen to me.”

A few of the branches parted, and Jacques’s blue eyes appeared out of the green. “What happened?”

Kit breathed slowly. Her free hand curled into a fist, crinkling up the fabric of her dress. She swallowed. It did not help. She gripped the glass. Beneath her feet, the floor gave a slight shudder as the clock out in the lobby readied itself to chime the hour.

“Someone in this very room has—”

WRONG!

7:25 PM—Above The Lobby

It was Saturday night, and Saturday night always meant one thing—Guess The Guest.

Ernest stood in the small alcove situated around the gears of the hotel clock, far above the lobby, and looked down. Like any other night, the sleek gold and red lobby was filled with people, loitering around the front desks and the fountain and each other before they made their way up to the grand ballroom on the third floor. Well, the ballroom was different. This was a work event, as Frank had so brilliantly labeled it on their schedule, so no one was a regular guest tonight. Frank, who had never appreciated the joy in making up grandiose lies or exaggerated half-truths about the strangers who came in and out of the hotel, certainly wouldn’t appreciate the thrill in watching all of his associates in costume and trying to guess who was who, either. Dewey thought the game was slightly mean, because Dewey was just too kind for this sort of thing.

It was good that Ernest was not Frank or Dewey. Not right now, anyway. Ernest knew how to get joy out of the little things.

He watched a flash of green scales move erratically through the lobby, a cheerful voice calling enthusiastic greetings that echoed all the way up to the ceiling—Montgomery. There was a reason he did undercover work so sparingly. Two women in nearly identical butterfly costumes by the door, one purple and one white, hand in hand, standing close together—Ramona and Olivia. It was nice to see them together. A woman with a deep blue dress that swept around her like a wave—Josephine, here alone. Ernest had it on good authority that the Anwhistle brothers weren’t coming. Another loud voice, but deeper, following the confident swath a tall figure in black cut through the crowd—Olaf. Ernest turned away, in time to catch a glimpse of a long red cape shifting from behind one pillar to another around the edge of the room, carefully avoiding Olaf—aha. Kit. Which meant another one was nearby. Not that the Snickets had arrived together, because none of them ever did, but where there was one there was always at least one other, ready to make a decent amount of trouble. (Ernest liked trouble. The little things, of course.) And there, near Ramona and Olivia, Lemony Snicket, a figure shaped in grey shadows.

The alcove door opened. Ernest knew exactly who it was, so he didn’t give him the courtesy of turning around, keeping his eyes on Lemony. Grey was a fitting color on him, on the long line of his shoulders, his legs. Ernest’s stomach flipped over, once.

“It looks like a full house tonight,” Frank said, standing beside Ernest. He adjusted the sleeves of his jacket and folded his hands behind his back. “I wasn’t sure.”

Ernest leaned a hand on the alcove railing. “Takes more than a murder to stop a party, I suppose,” he said.

Frank didn’t reply, but Ernest knew that for once he agreed. The double murder in Winnipeg two months ago had, like any other sudden, suspicious death they’d dealt with over the years—Ernest shuddered and flexed his fingers—barely made a ripple in VFD, except that after the funeral, everyone had closed ranks significantly tighter.

This worried Frank; this did not worry Ernest. Very little truly worried Ernest, at the end of the day. That, of course, only made Frank worry more, but Ernest couldn’t help that. Frank would find something to worry about if Ernest was still on “his side”. Ernest had much more pressing commitments than the heavy, idle worry that everyone else shuffled between themselves without any results, and it wasn’t that he’d be found out. It was change. The real kind of change, not the noble one, not the fragmentary one. Change Ernest could see.

He shifted his hand on the railing once more. If he kept thinking about it, he was going to argue with Frank, and they’d rehashed the argument so many times the past few months without any resolution that it was better, Dewey had eventually insisted, if they just didn’t talk about it at all. So they wouldn’t. Ernest stood next to his brother, and the silence dragged out between them, punctuated by the soft ticking of the clock gears, and they wouldn’t talk about it. Not at all.

“Ernest.”

Almost.

“Frank,” Ernest said back, in the same critical tone, tilting his head to the side and giving his brother a look.

Frank shot him a flat and unimpressed stare in return. At least he still did that. “Promise me you won’t do anything—” he paused, his face pinching in an aggrieved sort of way before he settled on a word. “—rash tonight,” he finished.

Ernest laughed. “I don’t intend to do anything rash, Frank.” Of course not. You couldn’t carry out a pre-established plan rashly.

“I should hope not. I—”

The door opened, again. Dewey burst into the alcove, all smiles as always, and stopped on Frank’s other side and leaned over the railing, gazing into the lobby. Like Ernest and Frank, he wore the muted red manager uniform, because somebody had said it was the “host prerogative” to not dress up for a costume party. Somebody had felt bad about it when Dewey was disappointed, but somebody had still not relented, and there they were, a matched trio, everything outwardly perfect.

“Everyone’s costumes are so beautiful,” Dewey said. “Who’s that, in the big blue dress?”

“Josephine,” Ernest and Frank said at the same time.

Ernest raised his eyebrows. Frank, stooping so low as to actually guess the guest? Even Dewey blinked at him in surprise. The tips of Frank’s ears went slightly pink, but he didn’t say a word.

“Oh, Frank, you left your name tag downstairs again,” Dewey said. He pulled the name tag from his pocket, the slim gold rectangle glinting briefly in the soft light of the alcove, and pressed it into Frank’s hand.

“Thank you,” Frank murmured. But when Dewey turned away, Ernest saw the tag disappear from Frank’s fingers, most likely slipped up into his sleeve. None of them wore their name tags with regularity—the black ‘manager’ embroidery on their jackets was really enough—but Frank’s kept showing up places, and Ernest and Dewey kept giving it back to him, every time. Ernest didn’t quite know what to make of it. He wondered about asking Frank about it, but he didn’t want Frank to take it as another argument. Ernest didn’t actually enjoy arguing with Frank. About small things, sure, like Dewey’s stupid poetry and Frank’s inane hotel schedules, the sorts of things brothers argued about. But Ernest was sure Frank would make it into another one about VFD.

Dewey was studying the lobby, one hand on his chin. Ernest watched him go from one friend to another, then stop when he got to Kit’s red cape sweeping towards the stairs. It was an unusual color for her, but Dewey, whether he thought it was nice or not, knew how to identify someone from the pieces they let slip through too. Kit was straightforward about everything, and the way she walked, determined and with an endpoint in sight, was no different.

Ernest and Frank exchanged a quick glance.

“So,” Frank drawled, “when’s the wedding?”

“I look best in black,” Ernest put in. “Take that into account, Dewey.”

“I look best in blue,” Frank said. “Take that into account.”

Dewey’s face went its typical six shades of red, flushing through to his ears as well as he jumped back from the railing and sputtered, “What—we’re not—we haven’t even—I don’t—Kit’s not—you two are impossible.” He stormed out of the alcove, shutting the door with a slight snap behind him, because Dewey had never slammed a door in his life.

Ernest enjoyed a brief chuckle with Frank before his brother fell silent again. The lobby crowd was thinning as everyone made their way to the elevators or the stairs, or to the bathroom, or, perhaps, to some clandestine hallway somewhere else. Ernest could see the ring of neatly-trimmed boxwoods lining the lobby now. He wasn’t sure, but he thought there was one more than usual, sitting right inside the door.

He leaned forward, squinting. “Did we always have a boxwood there?” he asked.

Frank moved his head down a fraction of an inch and considered the lobby. “Of course,” he said. Then he straightened his sleeves one more time, and left the alcove.

7:35 PM—The Lobby

Among the Snicket siblings, there was an ongoing discussion about the best hiding place. Kit preferred the quiet, professional approach. She stood behind newspaper stands, put her face into books and brochure racks, stayed in the shadows of a store awning. Lemony was difficult about it. He thought the best place to hide was the least likely place someone would look for you; the place you wouldn’t look for yourself. He took dangerous perches in train station windows, seats in restaurants he vocally hated, or sophisticated and cramped corner cafes that had never heard of a root beer float.

Jacques, meanwhile, with a lifetime of hiding experience, always liked to hide in plain sight. People barely ever remembered what was right in front of them as long as it appeared relatively normal. And there were a number of options—a large potted plant could be overlooked among a dozen other potted plants, people received packages every day and wouldn’t notice if there was one more oversized box, every city park lost track of how many statues were supposed to be there, even a regular man in a fine suit crossing the street or driving a taxi was expected and forgettable. Another boxwood was just another boxwood sitting in a free space in the empty Hotel Denouement lobby, slowly making its way to the ballroom for optimal eavesdropping. Another volunteer in costume was just another volunteer in a lion costume borrowed from Bertrand, for the moments tonight when Jacques had to communicate information to an associate.

That was the point of the party, after all. Jacques couldn’t deny that everyone liked dressing up—he liked dressing up, a little—but the main objective for most of them tonight was the passing of relevant information that had happened in the three months since the last official gathering (not counting the funeral). It should have been at Winnipeg, as they usually were, the organization taking over the Duke and Duchess’s sprawling, sparkling mansion, the couple’s easy laughter flowing from room to room. Jacques didn’t blame Ramona for not wanting to do it after what happened there. He doubted she’d actually been in the mansion since, although it was entirely hers. But the Hotel Denouement was a suitable replacement. It was too public to ever lose its neutral position among both sides. No one was going to get killed here, Jacques was certain. But he was mildly worried something else would happen. He didn’t know what. But something.

Especially considering Lemony was here. Not that his brother was a troublemaker—Jacques would never say it out loud, at least—but because Lemony wasn’t supposed to be at the hotel tonight. He had told Jacques that he was going to be with Beatrice and Bertrand, who were working on plans for an upcoming assignment. This meant two things—one, that Lemony had lied to Jacques. But Jacques had counted on that. He had assumed, however, that Lemony meant the three of them were finally going on a date and hadn’t wanted anyone to know. Two, that if Lemony never did anything idly, without a specific purpose, then he was here for an unknown reason. Something else was going to happen, Jacques was certain. Something Lemony wanted to be here for.

First, though, he had to get the boxwood he was hiding in from the lobby to the ballroom upstairs. The pot was significantly heavier than Jacques had counted on.

8:05 PM—The Ballroom—Main Doors

Every time they all got together, Frank was so amazed at how many of them there were. Despite some noticeable gaps—Beatrice’s overbearing presence, for one, which Frank was happy to do without for an evening—the grand ballroom had barely any free space. Every available and noble associate was here, and it filled Frank with a sense that everything was going to be alright. All these people, including himself, doing what was necessary to keep the world quiet. Tonight would be fine. Ernest wouldn’t do anything regrettable; Dewey would forgive him about the costumes and the gentle ribbing; the meeting would pass without incident. Tomorrow would come. Sometimes Frank almost thought that it wouldn’t. Typically when Ernest was being difficult, but tonight even he seemed to agree that the organization—their organization—was impressive.

He spotted a potted plant by one of the drink tables, a boxwood that matched the ones lined around the room and back in the lobby. One branch was bent out of place. Frank would have to have a word with the person responsible later. But he should fix the branch now.

Everyone he passed on his way across the room gave him a quick nod, a brief smile. Frank returned it as that familiar buzzing started under his skin, like it tended to in groups. He shrugged it aside. He gave the controlled smile of a manager with everything in place, and no one said a word.

All of a sudden, his view of the boxwood was blocked. Through the mass of associates came Olaf, head to toe in a suit and mask of black, spiky fur, smiling with all his teeth, unceremoniously pushing a woman in a silver dress painted like a large, rocky moon aside on his way towards Frank. Frank steeled himself. You never knew what you were going to get with Olaf, if he would try and charm you with a reckless humor or annoy you with a joking cruelty. It was one of the many reasons Frank had never particularly cared for him.

“Ernest!” Olaf exclaimed when he got close. He hooked an arm through Frank’s. “Lovely to see you, wonderful party.”

The cold, dark hand twisted its way along Frank’s insides. It gripped down through his chest, put a film over his eyes that made the room seem distant and wrong. The party continued around him, Olaf was still talking into his ear, and Frank couldn’t hear any of it. The name tag pressing into his wrist up his left sleeve didn’t help. Just because it was his didn’t mean it was him. His name meant nothing if no one was going to care about who it was, about what made Frank instead of Ernest or Dewey. No one should need evidence to tell the difference. No one should make a mistake between the three of them. How many times would it happen?

Time was still passing. Frank blinked once, twice, until Olaf’s voice filtered back in and the noise of the ballroom swelled up once more.

“—incredibly delicious, I have to say, but, to be frank with you—ha! This champagne has seen better days, which one of you is responsible for this travesty?”

Frank smiled, a little turn of the corner of his mouth, the professional smile of all three of them. If Olaf wanted Ernest, alright. Frank would be Ernest. “Frank,” he said. The word sounded like it couldn’t possibly have come out right, but Olaf didn’t break his stride, so it must have.

“That does not surprise me in the least,” Olaf said. “Meanwhile, allow me to take up one single minute of your time,” he continued, and pulled Frank into the shadows by the door. Frank’s stomach gave a terrible lurch as the stark terror he woke up with every morning came back, riding over the dissonant gap he still felt between his body and his brain. What did Olaf want with Ernest? Had Olaf found out about him? Frank had covered up for Ernest before, but would he be able to keep doing it if more people knew?

“Have you thought about it any more?” Olaf asked, leaning close.

The sheer relief that Olaf didn’t know battled with the swooping fear that Ernest was doing something new Frank didn’t know about, and with Olaf. He remembered, with startling clarity, the last time he talked to Kit, when she told him that Olaf had been spouting dangerous ideas about the organization and trying to rope in as many people as possible. It was one of the reasons, according to the rumors Frank had heard elsewhere, why he and Kit had ended their relationship. What was he trying to get Ernest into? Ernest needed absolutely no encouragement, and neither did Olaf. He had to say something.

“I have,” Frank said. It was the safe answer when you were pretending to be someone else.

Olaf grinned again, big and excited, which was a terrible sign. “And?”

“No,” he said, because it was also the safe answer, and the faster Frank could untangle Ernest from whatever trouble he was into this time, the better. “Sorry to disappoint,” he added, with the cool tone Ernest used.

Olaf frowned. “Really? I must admit, I am a little surprised. I mean, I know you weren’t entirely on board, but you’d given it a shot before, and I was hoping you’d come around again.”

Before? They’d talked before? Frank thought a series of incredibly inappropriate words Beatrice was always using that he would never say out loud.

“But!” Olaf pivoted quickly, in his speech and his actions, spinning on his heel away from Frank and shrugging broadly. “Who am I to bend your arm about it! I’ll keep you in mind, though, in case.” He showed all his teeth, his eyes glittering. “And keep me in mind, next time you have anything else worth sharing, will you?” He flounced off again, tearing through the crowd.

It took a few minutes for Frank’s heart to go back to where it was supposed to be from where it was thundering in his throat. He put his hands in his pockets and gripped the fabric, something real and his to hold onto.

Anything else worth sharing. Since their apprenticeships, Frank and Dewey and Ernest had been tasked with organizing a great deal of information, mostly about the history of the organization, but sometimes, and especially as they got older, the very information that was passed along between volunteers. It was part of the reason Dewey had started building his personal archives in the basement. He liked the business of collecting facts. Of course all three of them were still being given that information. Of course Ernest still had access to every single piece of that information. Ernest, collaborating with Olaf, Ernest, sneaking around behind Frank’s back, Ernest, who had promised, at the beginning of all this, that he wasn’t going to jeopardize their positions by doing something stupid.

Ernest, what are you doing?

8:40 PM—The Archives, In Progress

Dewey was not hiding. He liked parties a great deal, and he loved people, but like his brothers and everyone else, he too had his own appointment to keep tonight.

His just happened to be in the basement.

He still sort of felt like he was hiding, especially the further he went into the archives. But things always needed organizing, and while he waited, he had to do something to keep his hands busy. He searched for a set of organization accounting records for five minutes before realizing he’d already shelved it, last week.

So Dewey was nervous. Plenty of people were nervous. Olivia went around all the time being nervous and no one gave her any grief for it. But Olivia didn’t have a sister to give her any grief for it. And Dewey didn’t mind, not really. He loved it when his brothers teased, because it meant they were getting along. But this time it was slightly personal. Because he was meeting Kit, and he was nervous.

Kit was—well, normal. Like Dewey was normal. He loved his brothers, but Frank was high-strung and made it everyone else’s problem, Ernest was often disagreeable for the sake of it, and with the Snickets, Jacques was always hiding in furniture and Dewey didn’t think he’d ever seen more of him than one hand and possibly an eye at a time, and Lemony was wonderful but sometimes too cryptic and morbid for Dewey’s taste. He liked things a little more sensible, comfortable, pleasant. And Kit was organized, reasonable, quiet when other people were reading, cool under pressure. She let herself get lost in books and people she cared about, underneath all the professionalism. Her smile was a careful, slow thing, something private she only showed you if she genuinely liked you. And it meant a lot to be on the receiving end of that smile.

His brothers didn’t get it. He wasn’t involved with Kit, and he wasn’t going to ask her out, because you didn’t do that with Kit. If Kit wanted to spend time with you, that was her own choice. She never did anything she didn’t want or she hadn’t thought through first. That she wanted to spend time with Dewey, specifically, to see him, and no one else, was nice. It made the whole of him feel all tingly and weightless. He wanted their meeting in the archives to be as nice as that feeling.

Dewey grabbed a set of Agatha Christie translations he kept on hand for when things got boring (rarely, but Beatrice got bored easily, and if you gave her a translation she sat down for a while to prove she could read it) and walked to the next aisle to shelve them. His foot snagged on something in the middle of the floor and he stumbled, hugging the books close to his chest so they didn’t fall. He turned around to see what it was, and found Kit blinking up at him with wide eyes from where she sat on the floor, a thick book open in her lap, her long red dress pooled around her on the floor. Her dress had an off-the-shoulder neckline, but most of her shoulders were covered by the matching red cape pulled around her. In the wide diamond of skin left between the cape and the top of the dress, he could see the sharp edge of something black around her collarbone, a point of the nearly-finished tattoo she’d been getting done. The red sleeves disappeared into short white gloves, with her hands folded together at the bottom of the book pages. Oh. Dewey’s heart pounded for a horrible, exhilarating moment, his mouth going dry. He swallowed once, twice, a third time.

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling wryly, closing the book and sliding it gently back in the middle shelf. “I got distracted.”

“Oh, no, that’s completely understandable,” Dewey said. He folded himself down beside her, crossing his legs, still clutching the books to him. “Happens to me all the time. What were you reading?”

Kit smiled again, and it was that slow, beautiful smile, her eyes lighting up. “Have you heard,” she said, “about the cookiecutter shark?”

Dewey had absolutely heard about the cookiecutter shark. “Isistius brasiliensis,” he said. “It can travel in schools, and it bites little circular sections out of fish, like a cookie cutter. Have you heard about the brownsnout spookfish?”

“Barreleye fish, has mirrors in its eyes. Toothless upper jaw,” Kit replied easily. “Anostraca.”

“Fairy shrimp, they swim upside down,” Dewey said. He leaned forward, grinning. “Sometimes even found in deserts. Frilled shark?”

This was his favorite game, with his favorite person, in his favorite place. Both of them were librarians, or librarian-adjacent, so he and Kit dealt in information, not only about nobility but about the rest of the world around them. And the whole world was so fascinating, and there was so much to know and share, so how could you not try and see who could stump the other first?

“An eel-like living fossil, with six pairs of gill slits. Chaunacidae.”

Dewey scrunched up his face, thinking. “I think you got me there,” he admitted.

“Sea toad,” Kit said, looking pleased, “and coffinfish. Deep-sea anglerfishes. The sea toad has fins that can be used as leg flippers.”

“Really? Wow.” Dewey made a mental note to check that out later. He hoped, on the scale of unsettling sea creature to pleasantly spooky sea creature, that it was somewhere in the middle. “So besides oceanic intrigue,” he said, “what else is going on with you?”

“I’m supposed to get something from Frank tonight,” Kit said. “But, I also came to give you this. From Bertrand,” she clarified, and then picked through the seams of her dress, which revealed themselves as hiding at least ten different pockets.

When he had the time, Dewey wanted to study clothing design. Kit and Beatrice always found the place for so many pockets that you could never see from the outside, and Dewey wished he had the same capacity in his slim manager’s jacket and trousers for all the things he wanted to carry around. Poetry; chocolate-covered pretzels; the pencils Kit always left behind; spare buttons; sturdy rope, in case he needed it; maybe a mini chess set. He’d have to work on it. Maybe he could hide them in shoulder pads, or his shoes.

Kit pulled out a book from a side pocket. Dewey finally put the Agatha Christie down, piling it in a neat stack between them, and took the book. It was the one Bertrand had spoken to him about last week—Undercover Underwater: Diving For The Truth, a truly terrible murder mystery novel he said Dewey had to read to believe. He was greatly looking forward to it.

“That was awfully sweet of him,” Dewey said, running his thumb over the cover. He looked for a place to put it, and then just put it on top of his book stack. It felt a little sacrilegious, if it was as bad as Bertrand said, to put it on top of Christie, but he didn’t want to misplace it. “Thank you very much.”

Kit shifted on the floor and put her back to the bookshelf. “Did you hear the Anwhistle brothers finished building that marine research and rhetorical advice center?”

“Yes,” Dewey said. “I guess that’s why they aren’t here tonight? Josephine was all alone when I saw her earlier.”

“They should’ve celebrated with the rest of us,” Kit said. “What a massive architectural achievement—and I wanted to hear about the leeches, too.”

“Yes!” Dewey exclaimed. “Have you seen them yet? I haven’t.”

“No,” Kit said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Not in person. Ike gave Lemony one of the earlier ones as a paperweight some time ago but I haven’t been able to see their recent work yet. I hear the teeth are impressive.”

“Cookiecutter shark impressive?”

Kit grinned. “Potentially.”

Dewey laughed. He wished he and Kit could go see them, together. For the scientific curiosity. For spending time with someone who really, really wanted to see him. No, for the oceanic intrigue, of course. “You know—” Oh no. He hadn’t intended to actually start the sentence, but it was out, and Kit was looking at him expectantly, and Dewey was rapidly losing all handles on the conversation. His face was heating up. Everyone else made talking to people whose company they enjoyed look so easy, but the words jumbled together in his mouth. “We should—go? I mean—not right now, but, soon, we could—to the research center—for the leeches, for, for science.”

Pink colored Kit’s face under the freckles along her nose. “For science,” she said. Then—“Not a date,” she added firmly.

“Definitely for science,” Dewey insisted. “Oceanic intrigue, and everything.”

“Yes,” she said, blinking quite a few times. “That would be fine.”

They stared at each other for the longest minute of Dewey’s life.

“We should probably get back up to the party,” he said. The archives were feeling much, much too close, all the books and shelves pressed up against him, the point of Kit’s tattoo still peeking out from under the edge of her cape.

Kit nodded quickly. “Yeah.”

8:55 PM—The Ballroom—Near The Piano

Next—Jacques had to find Olivia.

He abandoned the boxwood by the east wall, for the time being, out of sight near the piano, where a man with a white half-mask played a pleasant Beethoven sonata while a woman in a sharp, pointed gold suit argued with a man dressed as an octopus with a hat. They did not notice Jacques, even in his own costume, but he noticed them. He noticed everyone in the room so singularly. He’d almost forgotten so many people could be in one place at the same time. You spent a lot of time alone, hiding in small spaces, you got used to yourself.

Olivia was easily identifiable. Nothing she did could ever disguise the tightly-wound nervous energy coiled inside her, not the shimmery white butterfly wings curled over her shoulders or the mask of purple flowers on her face. Something always gave her away. Tonight, it was her hands, twisting together as she talked to someone in a large, leafy tree costume, so consuming Jacques couldn’t make out the face. He scanned the crowd, trying to locate Ramona in her reversed purple wings and white mask. He saw her making her way towards one of the drink tables. Ramona wouldn’t leave Olivia alone for long.

The tree left soon after, and Jacques made his way over to her, getting a decent amount of elbows into the side along the way. “Olivia,” he said, when he stopped in front of her.

Her eyes passed over him and onto the rest of the room, like she was staring straight through him. Jacques frowned. He’d certainly said something. He’d certainly moved, Olivia was right in front of him. People moved around them without sparing him a second glance; someone said a cheerful hello to Olivia and she returned it. His voice dried up in his throat, like if he tried to speak he’d never make a sound. When was the last time before this he’d spoken out loud? No one expected him to talk, in his line of work. When had he done it? No, perhaps she simply hadn’t heard him.

He cleared his throat a few times. That was a sound. That was undeniably a sound. Jacques existed here.

He touched his hand to her wrist. “Olivia?”

Olivia jumped nearly a foot. She turned her head from side to side frantically, and Jacques gave her a short wave.

“Oh!” Olivia pressed her hands against her chest and laughed, breathless. “Oh, Jacques, you startled me. How are you?” she asked, as unfailingly kind as always, as if he hadn’t just frightened her. She looked like she wanted nothing more than for Jacques to tell her the long, substantial answer, instead of the polite one. He almost did. But Jacques was here for business.

“Fine,” he said. “And you?”

“Alright,” she said, still smiling. “Ramona’s gone to get some champagne, would you like to join us?”

“Not tonight,” he said. “I have a message for you.”

Her bright smile faltered, her hands seizing together again. “I see,” she said quietly. “What is it?”

“We’d like you to take up the outpost at Caligari Carnival.”

Olivia blanched. “The—the hinterlands?” she repeated. Her voice trembled. “That’s, ah, terribly far away, isn’t it?”

“It is a distance from the city,” Jacques conceded, “but not far.” It was far from Winnipeg, though. It was very far. Eventually, Ramona would be back there, at least in some capacity. Things would be different, especially if Olivia was wanted in the hinterlands permanently.

“Jacques, I really—I don’t—I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “I promise, I’ll think about it.”

An assignment from headquarters was not exactly optional. Her eyes darted somewhere behind him, and Jacques knew who she was looking at. She and Ramona had just gotten together only recently, before the Duke and Duchess’ deaths. Any kind of love was difficult within the confines of their organization, but the solace here, Jacques thought, was that she and Ramona were both there. They would never be that far away. They might see each other a good deal less, but they would see each other.

“You can take your time to leave, if you wanted,” he said.

“I’ll think about it.” Her voice was firm. “But, thank you for letting me know, Jacques.” She gave him her soft, breezy smile again, and slipped off through the dance floor.

Jacques watched her go. They would see each other. That was an invaluable thing, in their line of work. Being seen. Sometimes even the best person you loved with your whole being couldn’t see the part of you that mattered. To be seen when you disappeared from the rest of the world—that was worth holding on to. It would be difficult. But he had no doubt Olivia and Ramona would do it.

The floor rumbled, like it always did before the lobby clock chimed.

9:00 PM—Room 687

Miranda raised an eyebrow. “Does the clock always sound like that? Like it’s saying wrong?”

“Incessantly,” Esmé sighed, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I think Frank’s responsible. Heaven forbid he goes an hour without reminding everyone else how little he thinks of their decisions, you know.”

9:00 PM—The Ballroom—North Drink Table

The hotel was not Winnipeg. But right now, that was exactly what Ramona wanted. The modern angles, the warm, well-lit ballroom, the dark corners and firm rigidity of it all currently felt homier than the soft, open pinks and whites of the Winnipeg mansion. She was glad to have another excuse to avoid it and the constant questions. Tonight, she was going to see her friends, and dance with Olivia, and drink champagne, because Olivia said every occasion was cause for celebration and champagne, and Ramona was going to have a good time. She picked up two champagne flutes from the table and took a sip of one in the careful way her mother taught her, so she didn’t leave lipstick on the glass. Her heart stuttered as she saw the press of plum purple streaks on the glass when she pulled it away. The hotel clock was chiming, sounding like a heavy, distorted vibration of a word. It was right. The lipstick was wrong.

Who had done it? Everyone wanted to know. The firestarters? Likely, but they had been quiet for some time, and Ramona wasn’t going to point fingers without evidence. Some older enemy? Ramona didn’t know enough about whoever that was to consider them. Someone new?

She didn’t want to think about it. Her parents were dead, and she’d found them, and she didn’t want to think about who could have done it or why they did. It wasn’t going to change that it had happened. Ramona wasn’t looking for answers. She was looking for—

An arm slung around her shoulders, jostling her and the champagne, which sloshed around in the flutes as she lurched forward. Scratchy fur and outrageous cologne bore down on her, and she knew exactly who it was.

“My dear duchess,” Olaf said, squeezing her tight. “How have you been?”

Ramona found it in her to roll her eyes. Some people didn’t like Olaf, which she completely understood. There was something about him though, as brash and outlandish and obnoxiously tactile as he was, that had to make you laugh sometimes. She felt comfortable, close to a friend. “Just peachy,” she said. She offered him the other champagne glass; she could get another for Olivia. “Champagne?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” Olaf said. He hooked his free hand around both glasses and set them back on the drink table. “Look, I wanted to give you my sincerest condolences—” And he did look sincere, sliding around in front of her, his hand still on her shoulder, the joy immediately gone from his face and replaced by an uncharacteristic seriousness. She was struck by it, by how glassy and shiny his eyes were under the dark of his mask. “I’m sorry about your parents, Ramona.”

Her mouth wobbled at the edges. She knew Olaf could understand. They’d had similar positions in the organization their whole lives—their parents their chaperones, their time split between assignments and society, the safety that existed in his manor as well, its own controlled pocket of the world, like Winnipeg had been, like the Hotel Denouement was, too. She thought of the Count and Countess, still alive. She hoped they’d stay alive.

It wouldn’t do to cry at a party. Ramona picked up her flute again and took another small sip. “Thank you,” she said.

And just like that, he straightened up and pulled away from her. Some of the mirth found its way back into the shape of his mouth and his arm found its way back around her, this time a tight grip at her waist as he steered her back into the crowd. Ramona felt slightly less consoled than ten seconds ago. Easy come, easy go, with Olaf. “I hate thinking about you all alone in that big house,” he said with a sigh. “All that room, all those things—remember when I knocked into that vase in the hallway?”

“Very vividly,” Ramona said.

“A glorious time!” he crowed. “Well! At least you’ve got all of us, haven’t you. What are your friends if not your family, et cetera, et cetera.”

But he still understood. That was what made it so important to be here tonight. What were all the people in the room, the friends she’d grown up with, people she knew and loved, if not her family as well, just as much as her parents had been? They were more than associates or volunteers, stepping in around her not to fill a void, but to offer back some little part of what had been taken from her. Her throat tightened up as she thought about it. Everything they did was hard, but it was also so special. Ramona wanted to hold it close to her and never let it go.

“And what wouldn’t one do for one’s family, am I right?” Olaf continued. “So, if you ever need me for anything—a shoulder to cry on, although certainly not in this jacket, or, say, a partner in crime, or a willing participant in any daring assignment you might come across otherwise—do not hesitate to let me know, okay?”

“Of course.”

“I mean it.”

Ramona stumbled to a halt as Olaf stopped abruptly. He looked down at her with a gash of a grin. “People like you and me, we’ve got to stick together, duchess.” He gave her a squeeze one more time and then finally let go, dashing away.

Goodness, but he was rough about things. Ramona gave herself a shake, trying to collect herself back into order. She stood up on her toes to try and see where he’d gone. She didn’t get much more height, already being in heels, but she did manage to see him already making grandiose hand gestures across the room to those white-faced triplets Ramona had seen once or twice. They were younger than she was, still in their training. The three of them stared at Olaf with three immaculately raised eyebrows. Ramona chuckled a little, dropped back down, and went back for Olivia’s champagne glass.

9:40 PM—The Ballroom—Center

Over an hour had passed, and Frank hadn’t seen any sign of Ernest. He had better things to be doing than keeping track of Ernest, and yet here he was. He couldn’t have gone far—the hotel was enormous, but it was a hotel. The whole world contained on nine floors. You couldn’t disappear from it.

Frank edged his way through the dance floor, searching for him through three separate groups of associates doing three slightly different versions of a circle dance. A snake and a tree frog whirled past, a phantom with them, a tangled shape of dark greens and blacks and bright blues and exuberant laughter. When they’d gone, Frank found himself in the center of the floor and face to face with Dewey, coming towards him from the other direction, his cheeks pink.

“Are you alright?” Frank asked immediately.

Dewey blinked. “Of course,” he said. “Just dancing. Is everything okay?”

He should have known, but Ernest had him on an edge he hadn’t expected to be tonight. He tried to look apologetic but wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. “Have you seen Ernest?”

“Not since earlier,” Dewey said. “Oh, and Kit was—”

“When you see him, could you tell him I’m looking for him?”

Dewey’s shoulders drooped down. “If I see him,” he said. “Then I’ll tell him.”

“Thank you,” Frank said, and he meant it. He smiled at Dewey until he smiled back, and then Frank moved past him, pushing back into the crowd.

He hadn’t meant to be short about it, but Frank’s worry never came out like he wanted it to. It became biting irritation instead, or a slow-simmering temper he never let boil, or professional, distant orders about hotel business, or a refusal to talk at all in case he said the wrong thing. More often than not, he still wound up arguing with Ernest. He didn’t argue with Dewey, but their conversations were so much more stilted than they should have been lately.

But it was because he feared Ernest was going to slip away from him one day and never come back. Realistically, it was unlikely. After all, Ernest was still here. Indecision entering their home hadn’t taken him away from it. But what if that changed, one day, and it was Frank’s fault, because he reacted too quickly or too slowly? And Dewey—Dewey was so sweet and so kind Frank thought the world might crush him. He had to keep them close, and he had to keep them safe. It would’ve been so much easier, though, if Ernest wasn’t so difficult about it, if Dewey understood that Frank didn’t want anything to happen to him, if they would listen.

Frank glanced at his watch. It was getting late. He’d look for Ernest on the way, but for one small hour, Ernest was going to have to wait.

9:59 PM—The Floor Behind The South Drink Table

Through typical party events, The Herpetology Squad (Plus Hector) found themselves on the floor behind one of the drink tables.

“So how do you tell them apart?” Gustav asked, stirring his drink with a spoon. “Because, and I do feel terrible about this, but I can’t do it. We’ve known them for ages, and I can’t do it.”

“Frank is taller,” Monty said immediately, and very confidently.

“What, no, he can’t be taller, they’re triplets,” Hector said. “Do genetics work like that?”

“Hey Haruki,” Monty called around Gustav and Hector, “do genetics work like that?”

Haruki leaned into Hector’s shoulder and considered it. “I’m really not sure,” they said. “But, I always figured, Ernest was kind of quiet, and Frank was kind of stern, and Dewey was kind of, well, kind.”

“But that seems so reductive,” Gustav pointed out. “You can’t just identify a person down to one base trait and leave it at that. And I say this as a screenwriter and director. You need to be creative.”

“All your characters sound exactly the same, though,” Hector said, frowning. “Or, like, so different, I don’t think you’re keeping track of them between scenes.”

“Oh, that’s awfully rude,” Haruki said.

“No, he’s right,” Gustav said. He hung his head into his hands, his glass tipping sideways through his fingers. Haruki reached over and grabbed it, twisting their arm around and up to slide it back onto the drink table where it’d be safer. “I always thought they did, and now I know for sure. I’ll have to renounce film making and go back to herpetology. Or, submarines. I can’t disparage your honor too, Monty.”

“Oh, Hector, you hurt his feelings,” Monty said. He patted Gustav on the back consolingly. “Gustav, you write wonderful scripts. I loved the, the Werewolves In The Rain.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I can’t handle a drunk Gustav,” Hector said, closing his eyes. “Gustav, I’m sorry. To be fair, I only watched—what was it—” He waved his hands around. “—the one with the—you know—”

“Vampires In The Retirement Community,” Haruki said.

“And it was once. And—hey, weren’t we talking about something else?”

10:10 PM—The Short Hallway Between Rooms 40-45 and 46-49

Unassigned numbers within the Dewey Decimal System were not the trouble they appeared to be to a hotel based on it. They still existed in the hotel, no matter how much Ernest had protested that it made no sense to have rooms that had no theme or purpose in a hotel whose very purpose was theme—Frank and Dewey’s rebuttal was that it made no sense to nonchalantly remove numbers out of their sequential existence because they didn’t fit in neatly otherwise. They existed. They didn’t have themes, even this stretch of ten, which had been previously designated but was now just a blank space between encyclopedias and magazine publications, which left the rooms relatively blank and boring, typically unnoticed and unused, but they still existed.

In the brief, dark hallway between the two sets of unassigned rooms, Frank could sit on the bench against the wall, and he didn’t have to think about family or the hotel. Frank sat featureless in the shadows and thought about himself. Usually, it meant he felt better about everything. But tonight, with the worry set aside once more for now, all he felt was that chill through his insides again, when Olaf mistook him for Ernest.

He took the name tag out of his sleeve and turned it over in his hands. Frank was a man in a manager’s jacket, with a face that looked like two other faces, someone who could be anyone. The name tag did nothing but identify him without caring who he was. What was it that made Frank himself, the imperceptible, innate existence of him that mattered? His love for Ernest and Dewey? Visible. His organization? Trivial. The fear he was going to lose everything? Meaningless and a weakness, in the face of everything else. It was hard to say for sure. He had gone his whole life getting mixed up with Ernest and Dewey and it was exhausting to keep trying to prove he was real when it felt like the world was rubbing him out. He leaned his back against the wall.

He heard Jacques before he saw him, like always. Exact, economical footsteps, nothing extraneous, the tap of his expensive shoes on the rugs, the swish of his jacket. Everything measured, as it had to be.

Jacques appeared around the corner, that bent piece of the boxwood plant stuck in his hair. He seemed to brighten when he saw Frank, like Frank’s presence set something off inside him. Frank watched him. What did Jacques see, when he looked at Frank? What was it that made Jacques notice, over and over again, over other people? How was Jacques so certain that when he looked at Frank right now, at that moment, that Jacques was looking at him?

Jacques sat down next to him on the bench. Frank had seen him in a mask earlier, something terrible and orange, but it was gone now, and he faced Frank fully. He was inches away from Frank, and Frank could see every part of him, even in the dark—the calm, if tired, resolution in the set of his jaw, the way he waited, still and patient, as if he could do nothing else. He had the darkest eyes of his siblings, a steady and unchanging deep blue.

“That which is essential is invisible to the eye,” Jacques whispered.

Frank let out the breath he’d been holding. How long ago had he said that to Jacques? “I initially said that to insult you,” he said.

“It was deserved,” Jacques said. “And I never forgot. Do you know how I always know it’s you now?”

“Enlighten me.”

He put his hand against Frank’s jacket, resting his fingers against the fabric to the left of the buttons. Jacques kept it there, and he didn’t take his eyes off of Frank for anything, not even when the heartbeat under his hand sped up. Frank felt almost split open to the core. He always did, every time. Jacques saw whatever it was. The man who was always hiding knew exactly who he was, because he looked.

“How very sentimental of you,” Frank managed. His breath hung between them. He traced the side of his thumb over the collar of Jacques’s shirt, just below the skin. If he moved his hand just a centimeter he’d be able to feel his heartbeat as well.

“It’s the truth,” Jacques murmured. “Sentiment is—dangerous. Truth is immutable.”

“Do you know how I know it’s you?” Frank said against his mouth.

“How?” Jacques asked.

Frank finally pulled the branch out of Jacques’s hair. “You do terribly stupid things.”

Jacques laughed, and the sound vibrated all the way down through Frank’s throat.

10:19 PM—Room 366

Frank had to be somewhere. Kit was not overly concerned with finding him, but she would rather do it sooner than later. She worked from the ground floor up, combing through the hallways but finding no sight of the Denouement, until she was on the third floor again. The faster she found Frank, the faster she could, maybe, go back to talking to Dewey. About completely professional things, of course. The fact that she felt different when she was with Dewey was simply because he was pleasant, welcome company. He wanted to look at leeches with her, for the delight of science. They expected nothing from each other but a nice time.

She immediately pictured Beatrice waggling her eyebrows at her, if Kit had said that out loud. Not that kind of nice time, she thought, but the mental Beatrice kept laughing joyously at her.

“He’s a nice person,” she grumbled to the empty hallway. He was calm. Regular. Okay. The exact opposite of everyone else, Beatrice. Could she go five minutes without them all picking apart her romantic life? This was why she wasn’t interested. This was why it was strictly nice. There were other, more important things that needed her attention.

The door to Room 366 was ajar, and Kit, who had naturally been trained to investigate the suspicious, investigated the suspicious. She slid herself carefully through the gap in the door and into the dark room. She’d been in there a few times to know it was an absurdly comfortable meeting room, with plush chairs and a bookcase that spanned the length of the far wall. A figure sat against the side wall, reaching up and tapping ash from a cigarette out the open window. For a moment, they looked like a blank, featureless shadow, until a light outside the window shifted and Frank—no, Ernest’s face resolved itself in front of her. The tip of the cigarette burned bright orange against his fingers.

“I heard about you and Olaf,” he said. “Would you like an apology, since I’m sure you’ve been getting enough I told you so’s?”

Kit sighed. “I really don’t want to talk about it.” But she shut the door and walked over, sitting down on the floor beside him. She took her own pack of cigarettes out of one of her dress pockets and accepted Ernest’s lighter to light one. She never carried her own.

“He did,” she muttered, giving the lighter back. She brought her legs up and wrapped an arm around them. “Tell me, I told you so. Not in so many words, of course, but I knew he was thinking it.”

“Ah,” Ernest said. “The disappointed look of, I’m not going to say it, but I’m going to think it, in your general direction. Which is worse.”

“Exactly,” Kit said. “At least argue with me so I can tell him he’s wrong.”

Ernest breathed out a long line of smoke. “Yes.” She thought he was going to say something else, but when he didn’t, Kit pressed on.

“He acts like it was my fault,” she said. “Should I have known better? I—” It was a harsh thing to admit, but she and Ernest didn’t do this to lie to each other. “Yes. Fine. But he acts like I can’t be left alone now to make my own decisions. He keeps following me, hanging around.” She slouched against the wall. “My own brother thinks so little of me.”

Ernest hmmed. “Well—”

“Do not. Do not say I’m short. I’m not short. Jacques has one inch on me, Ernest. Esmé is short. I’m not short.”

“Sorry,” Ernest said, laughing.

“Say it,” she said, and pushed her elbow into his side.

“Ow—Kit, you are anything but short.”

“Thank you.” She took her elbow back. The two of them sat in silence, blowing out small circles of smoke as the cigarettes smoldered down. “What’s Frank disappointed about?”

Ernest waved his hand with the cigarette dismissively. “Frank’s disappointed he can’t find a tie that matches the custom paint in the lobby,” he said. “It doesn’t take much for him. I was five minutes late, I didn’t give him the mail on time, I missed a meeting, and he just—” He did an obviously perfect impression of Frank’s unimpressed stare.

Kit snorted. She had to admit, Frank did look like that a lot, even if you caught him in a good mood.

“If he wasn’t so difficult,” Ernest muttered, “he’d be almost bearable.”

“Wouldn’t they all,” Kit sighed. “Brothers.”

“Brothers,” Ernest agreed.

10:25 PM—The Ballroom—West Hors d’oeuvres Table

Dewey stood at the hors d’oeuvres table, away from the crowd of his friends, surveying the food. At least, with everything going on, there was always good food to look forward to. It was awful to glare at it like he was. He’d felt so good after talking to Kit, and now he was glowering at little rows of canapes like they were the source of his problems.

He wasn’t usually upset with his brothers. No matter what they did, he knew they had their reasons, and Dewey loved them regardless. But sometimes they really were impossible. Frank’s quiet temper and Ernest’s secrecy and indifference had driven such a wedge between the two of them that when Dewey suggested they didn’t talk about it, it had seemed like the best idea at the time to get them to go forward. Otherwise, he’d been worried that Frank was going to say something he’d regret, because he wasn’t going to change Ernest’s mind, and Ernest might’ve done something terrible. Dewey didn’t think he was capable of something truly terrible, because Ernest was his brother, and he knew Ernest. They both believed in a right way to live, just in different ways, so Dewey respected him. You couldn’t let anything change that. But he was still as worried about Ernest as Frank was, and he had just wanted the arguments to stop.

But it had led to Frank and Ernest almost refusing to talk to each other, ninety percent of the time. The other ten percent was pleasantries or conversations that skirted the edge of an argument, which was worse. Dewey particularly hated it lately, when he was asked to pass messages between them, typically from Frank. He wasn’t a messenger system, he was their brother, and he was, in fact, if either of them cared to remember, the oldest. But they treated him like someone to protect because he wasn’t as forceful as them. He frowned down at a section of tiny shot glasses of—he picked one up. Gazpacho. It looked so charming and Dewey couldn’t even appreciate it.

What it came down to was, the schism couldn’t come between him and his brothers if they didn’t let it. Just like his current irritation couldn’t come between him and his brothers if he didn’t let it. He considered it, because he was angry, but he didn’t let it change anything.

He found a narrow, palm-sized spoon from one of the other hors d’oeuvres and poked at the gazpacho with it. He thought, for a moment, about the Anwhistle brothers, sitting in their brand new marine research and rhetorical help center, probably having a lot of fun together talking about fungi and grammar. Gregor and Ike were two of the most different but most companionable people Dewey knew. Nothing got between them. They probably didn’t forget who was the oldest. Who was the oldest out of them, anyway? They probably didn’t let it matter.

Oh, Dewey was letting it get to him. He piled some of the gazpacho onto the spoon and took a bite. He wished Bertrand had been able to come. Bertrand would’ve loved the appeal of the gazpacho as well. Bertrand didn’t have a single sibling to complain about and he would’ve enjoyed the gazpacho wholesale. He could’ve stood around with Dewey at the table, and maybe they’d have brought in Lemony, too, and talked about flavor profiles. Lemony, who was legitimately the youngest of his siblings, commiserating over cold soup about how they never stopped trying to protect him either. Who could possibly think Lemony of all people needed protecting, too? There was always that quiet, competent energy around him.

Dewey finished the gazpacho and put the jar on a passing hotel attendant’s silver tray. Where was Lemony, actually? He was sure he’d seen him earlier. Dewey remembered, because it was the first time he’d seen Lemony in a long while. Wherever he was, Dewey was sure it was probably more enjoyable than here.

10:32 PM—The Ballroom—Dance Floor

“Josephine,” Olaf said, sidling up behind her, “Jo, angel of my eye—”

“The correct word for that expression is apple,” Josephine interrupted. She did not take her eyes off of her plate of puff pastry. “We’ve been over this.”

He continued, persistent as ever, his smile stretched like candy. “Would you do me the honor of dancing with me, angel of my apple?”

“No.”

10:45 PM—The Elevator

The night was passing by, and Kit still hadn’t found Frank. She’d made it all the way up to the ninth floor with no sign of him. Was he the type to be on the rooftop sunbathing salon? Unlikely. But she should check, just in case.

She had her hand against the rooftop door when the elevator dinged behind her. Kit turned to look. The elevator doors parted, revealing the gold-walled interior with rather harsh lighting, and there was Frank, standing with his hands folded behind his back. He caught Kit’s eye and gave her a slight nod. “Kit.”

“Frank.” She stepped into the elevator beside him and pushed the button for the third floor. As the doors closed, she smelled smoke for a moment, and her heart leapt before she realized the cigarette smoke must’ve clung to her gloves. She tugged them off and stuffed them into one of her pockets.

“I heard the Anwhistles finished the research center,” Frank said, as the elevator started to move down.

“Yes.”

“And the mycelium—are they still working on it?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

Frank sighed. “Do you have any concerns?”

“Some,” Kit admitted. There was no denying it was dangerous. Necessary, but catastrophic if it ever got out of hand. “If anything happens, it can be dealt with.”

“Good,” Frank said, decisively. Silence dropped through the elevator, the hand counting down the floors moving slowly from eight, to seven, to six. Frank raised an eyebrow; Kit realized she’d been staring at him. “Is something wrong?”

“I was under the impression that there was—” More, or something else entirely. It was Kit’s understanding that Frank was to give her a list. There was usually only one kind of list that mattered in their organization, and unless she had radically misjudged the ages of the Anwhistle brothers after personally knowing them for years, they wouldn’t be on that list. “—something more specific,” she wound up finishing.

Frank looked at her with his impassive, unimpressed mask. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

The hand moved again, six to five to four. Kit had the strangest sensation that she was missing something. She should’ve been given that list, not subjected to a brief interrogation, especially about something she was already aware of. The smell of smoke flitted in front of her again.

Disbelief shot through Kit like an arrow, pushing the air from her lungs. She felt like the floor was dropping out from under her. She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t. She stared at the man in the elevator, and he stared back, cool and collected. It couldn’t be. Because that would mean—but the longer she looked, the more certain she was.

“Frank quit smoking,” she said quietly, “but you didn’t.”

The corner of his mouth turned down. “I—”

Kit slammed her hand against the stop button on the button panel, and kept her hand there, boxing him in against the wall even after the elevator had halted, the counting hand stuck between four and three.

“Don’t lie to me, Ernest.”

One Month Ago—City Headquarters

It wasn’t like there was, say, an initiation ceremony or anything. They’d been through that already, there was no need to do one again. You knew what you were getting into this time, you were just, “changing sides”. And it was so subtle that it barely mattered. Nothing about Ernest’s life really changed otherwise. He ran a hotel with his brothers. He ranked tea brands with Dewey during lunch. He played loud music in Room 784. He carried a lighter in his pocket that he used for other things. He went to headquarters, sometimes as himself, sometimes as Frank, never as Dewey. He acquired messages, and took his sweet time delivering them or delaying them, spaces of time where nothing changed, either. He almost wondered what the point had been, until he overheard Frank spout off some noble patter again. At least he wasn’t like that. At least Ernest knew better.

And since nothing had changed, no one knew. Not even the “firestarters” knew there was another one, namely because Ernest hated the name and disliked a great deal of them, but also because Frank made him be so careful about it. He thought a few people in VFD suspected, or at least suspected someone of switching, because everyone could feel something was happening and they were trying to pinpoint a source, and it was only a matter of time before someone suspected a Denouement. Triplets were naturally suspicious. But it wasn’t like they could do anything, even if they ever had proof—how often did anyone know which Denouement they were talking to, anyway? It was likely Ernest could exist like this for the rest of his life.

The thought almost stopped him on his way into the city headquarters. Day after day of calculated, performative nonsense without an end in sight. Age sagged through him. His bones were too heavy and to move them another step was impossible. He kept walking.

What had made Ernest change? That, exactly that. Change. He’d lived in VFD for practically his entire life, and nothing was different there, either. There had been no great strides made towards the nobility they all talked about, only tiny little steps that were easily set back. Ernest watched his friends and his family get sucked in by this big, dramatic fight that never ended, a fight none of them had ever initially had a part in. He’d learned that you couldn’t achieve “nobility”, whatever that even was, by a bunch of absurd spy behavior and kidnapping, or by coded messages and age-old discussions that went nowhere, or by acting like information weighed more than your life, by pretending any of that was normal. None of it did anything. Ernest was going to find some way to make something happen, to make what they’d lost worth it, and if it meant Frank thought he was a traitor, fine. He’d do it even if Frank didn’t appreciate that Ernest was doing it for him.

The note for Frank that he’d intercepted said that there was a file under the fifth floorboard of the back staircase in the city headquarters. Frank was supposed to give it to Kit.

He made his way to the back staircase. It went up to the observatory, which no one had used since Esmé burned that spot into the rug with her telescope out of protest. The corridor and the staircase were, predictably, deserted. Ernest slowly lifted the fifth board, but it came away without resistance, so he pulled it up all the way and saw the slim folder waiting inside. He took it out, replaced the floorboard, and sat down at the bottom of the stairs. He opened it.

He wanted to crumple the folder in his hands but he made himself breathe and look at it. It was the upcoming recruitment list. There were some he recognized faintly, distant associates, long-lived families in VFD, but a majority of the names he’d never seen before. New families to carve apart. He flipped through the pages—addresses, dates, times. A few photographs. Ernest closed his eyes and held them shut tight. When he opened them, he was still looking at the folder.

Of course none of it mattered, he thought bitterly, shoving the folder into his jacket. He could intercept or stop a thousand messages and there would still always be more. There would always be more children, more fires, more lies, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stop it.

Ernest leaned the side of his head against the banister. He thought about Olaf, suddenly. He’d been trying to corner everyone lately, Ernest among them, talking his ear off about big ideas that Ernest agreed with, but Olaf had a habit of taking an age to follow through with them. Ernest did not have the time to wait an age. He’d shared some information with Olaf a few times, on the off chance that it would spur him into action, but Olaf had hidden it away, for “later”, and it obviously had not helped.

Maybe the only way you could fight a long game was to play the long game back. Maybe that was what Olaf was doing. He was on to something, at least, with his words. Maybe Ernest could try again. Maybe he could learn to wait. Maybe the payoff would be worth it. Maybe.

Ernest stood up. He didn’t at all feel like going home, but he wasn’t going to stay at headquarters any longer.

The staircase creaked. When he looked up, he saw Lemony Snicket at the top by the observatory door, standing like he’d always been there.

“What are you doing up there?” Ernest asked.

Lemony watched him carefully. Ernest got the distinct feeling that he was being appraised. He shivered. When they were younger, you could look at Lemony and see the gears working in his head, like watching—yes, like watching change take shape and form and meaning before your eyes. Lemony Snicket was going to do anything, lead them all anywhere. Ernest hadn’t been foolish enough to believe a twelve-year-old in a brown hat was going to demolish VFD from the ground up. Then Lemony had disappeared, and in the years after resurfacing at sixteen, he looked less and less like that powerful, mythical figure everyone had worshiped and more like he’d seen too much. Ernest sympathized.

But here, Ernest finally saw it, that hunger they’d all talked about. In his eyes, bright blue in the shadows. Physical change, a juggernaut of determination. Ernest’s breath caught in his throat.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Lemony said softly. “Do you think we could talk?”

10:50 PM—The Elevator

Damn.

The disbelief on Kit’s face was gone, replaced by a blazing, dangerous fury, the threatening and exacting professionalism she hid inside her on full display. She wasn’t all that short, Ernest thought, inanely. He wasn’t going to be able to bluff out of this one. She knew. It was significantly more terrifying than Ernest had imagined it would be. How stupid could he have been, to forget about the way that cigarette smoke would cling, to think Kit Snicket wouldn’t notice. “Kit—”

“How long?” Kit demanded.

“Does it matter?”

He could see that it very, very much did. Kit was already disgusted over dating Olaf; that she’d spent so much time with Ernest when he wasn’t on her side was going to eat her alive, Ernest knew. He winced.

“It wasn’t personal,” he tried.

She glared at him. “What were the names Frank was supposed to give me?”

That, he was going to hold on to. They’d already burned the papers, anyway, up in the observatory. No one was going to get that list now. “I guess you’ll never know,” Ernest said.

Her hand clenched on the button panel. She stepped closer. For a wild and uncontrollable second that seemed to spin out into eternity, Ernest imagined she was going to kill him.

“The elevator is going to start again,” she said lowly. “We’re going to walk out into the lobby. You’re not going to make a sound. We’re going to go to headquarters.”

Ernest didn’t like what he was going to do next. But he was always going to have the upper hand for one distinct reason.

He swallowed and straightened the edge of his sleeve. “Who’s going to believe you, Kit?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Regrettably for you, I am at a distinct advantage,” Ernest said. “You and I are the only two people in this elevator. You did think I was Frank. Who will be able to figure out who was who when you try and tell on me? Who can really know for sure?” He hesitated, but it was true. “Why, I could be Dewey, even.”

Kit slapped him across the face, her cheeks flushed a fierce red. The force of it stung hard, knocking Ernest’s head to the side. She removed her hand from the wall and stepped back.

“Does it help if I’m sorry?” he asked, gingerly rubbing the side of his face.

“You aren’t,” Kit said.

Ultimately, it was true. He wasn’t. He was sorry he’d been caught more than that he’d done it. Ernest regretted nothing about what he’d decided to do. Not in his line of work; and Kit was the same, too. But he was sorry he was going to lose a friend.

Kit didn’t have friends, though. You were with or against Kit Snicket, and she always made that abundantly clear. Ernest touched his cheek again, and then lowered his hand.

“I’m not,” he said. He took the elevator key out of his pocket and put it into the lock on the button panel, watching Kit the whole time. She watched him back. The elevator slid into motion, settling down on the third floor.

The doors opened.

11:00 PM—The Ballroom—East Drink Table

“Who?” Jacques asked.

Kit turned slowly back to the dance floor. Was one of them still here? Had she been followed out of the elevator? She locked eyes with a Denouement across the room. Which one? Was it Frank? Was it Ernest, again? Was it Dewey? The clock was still rumbling under her feet. The glass trembled in her hand and she felt almost sick, anger and shame and fear churning through her. She was in a nightmare and she couldn’t shake it off. The triplet held her eyes for a long moment and then walked away.

“Kit.” Jacques had a hand on her arm; he must’ve gotten out of the boxwood. “Who?”

But she couldn’t get the words out, not here. Ernest was right. She was at a disadvantage when she couldn’t prove it. If she pointed the finger now, what would be done? What could be done? How could he do that to Dewey and Frank? To put them in the position where they’d unknowingly cover for him merely by existing? Did they know at all?

What would she do if her own brothers—no. She couldn’t even think it. Kit couldn’t fathom the idea of her brothers doing anything like this.

“We have to find Lemony,” Kit said.

11:02 PM—The Ballroom—Main Doors

Frank still couldn’t find Ernest. He did not have the time for him to be hiding like a child; where was he? Frank had looked everywhere over and over and was back in the same ballroom again, scanning through the associates for what had to be the hundredth time. He caught Kit’s eye—and stopped.

There was cold and intense fear looking back at him. It was unbearable to have it directed at him, and Frank turned away after a few seconds.

Ernest. A thousand possibilities ran through Frank’s head, each of them worse than the last. He had had enough. Frank strode towards the main doors, just as he saw Ernest making his way out of them as fast as possible. Finally. Frank followed him out into the hallway and grabbed onto Ernest’s arm, whirling him around.

“I asked one thing of you tonight,” Frank said.

“Don’t do anything rash,” Ernest repeated. He wrenched his arm out of Frank’s grasp and put his hands in his pockets. “And I didn’t, thank you.”

“Apparently I wasn’t specific enough,” Frank said. “When I said that, I clearly meant, don’t do anything stupid that’s going to compromise the family and our position in it. What information have you been giving Olaf?”

“Who said I was?”

“Olaf.”

“You know, that hurts a little, that you’d believe Olaf over me.”

Frank’s jaw clenched. Fine. Olaf was less important, anyway. “Then what did you do to Kit?”

Ernest raised an eyebrow. “Did I do anything?”

It was agonizing, seeing such a carefully blank mask on your own face staring back at you. Frank didn’t hate him, but he came close. “What have you done, Ernest? Do not lie to me.”

Something fractured through Ernest’s expression. “I just—miscalculated,” he muttered. “She found out.”

“She found out?” Frank echoed, his heart skittering in his chest. It had finally happened, and Frank couldn’t protect Ernest this time. Kit wouldn’t keep this a secret, not by a long shot. By morning—by midnight, because nearly the whole organization was already here—everyone would know. And Ernest didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it. “Ernest—”

“It’s fine,” Ernest said coolly. “Considering she can’t prove it.”

The world detached from Frank’s consciousness. Kit’s fear made a sudden, terrible sense. Ernest had used him as a shield between himself and the organization, on purpose, he’d positioned Frank and Dewey as pawns whose only use was whatever Ernest wanted. Frank could feel his hands shaking. They didn’t feel like his hands.

Ernest sighed. “Don’t look like that,” he said. “You’ve pretended to be me, that’s the only way you would’ve found out about Olaf. Don’t act like you didn’t use our face as an advantage too. That’s what we do. That’s what this family does.”

Anger burned through Frank, hot behind his eyes. That had been different. A sharp fury that had been building somewhere inside him all night snapped apart. “You are not a part of this family.”

He regretted saying it the second the words were out. Of course Ernest was still his brother. That was an immutable fact. But Frank was so tired of trying to hold onto Ernest when Ernest so blatantly didn’t care. He wasn’t looking at family, he was looking at a stranger, who stole his face, who used his name, who threw it around like it meant nothing, who denied everything noble and proper and real. It wasn’t how a brother was supposed to act. But it was how Ernest acted, and now Ernest was staring at him with an open, wounded expression, something Frank hadn’t seen since they were children.

Frank ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t—”

“No.” Ernest’s jaw trembled for a second, his mouth pressing into a thin, flat line. “I don’t think I am.” He took one step back, a hard glare in his eyes, and then walked away from Frank.

11:20 PM—The Rooftop Sunbathing Salon

Ernest hadn’t figured on Frank being angry, because, primarily, he hadn’t figured on Frank finding out at all. He hadn’t figured on Kit realizing what he was doing, either. Well, that was on him, but Frank didn’t need to be so—he didn’t have to say—

Shit, Ernest thought, breathing hard. He came to a stop in the dark, empty hallway some floors up from the ballroom and let himself think it, pressing his palms into his eyes. Shit, shit, shit. He’d have a brother after this, sure, a family member who stood by him and ran a hotel with him and played nice, but he didn’t know if he’d have his brother. He would have an associate, like everyone else, a found family of people who loved on conditions, not a family. Not his family.

He had to find Lemony. Just because he’d been hiding all night didn’t mean he was exempt from this.

Lemony disliked heights, open spaces, and decently-sized bodies of water, which was why Ernest found him on the roof, sitting on one of the pool chairs, his mask discarded beside him. He was studiously avoiding looking at the pool or the ocean or the night sky, dark and enormous above him. The rooftop salon was never used at night, but there were small lights along the edge of the pool and the railing, giving off slivers of stark white light. The brief anger Ernest felt downstairs evaporated the longer he watched Lemony not-watching the world around him. He wanted to say a million and one things to him, but the one that came out was, “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”

“What do you know about exposure therapy?” Lemony offered as a response.

“Enough to know you probably shouldn’t use it for heights,” Ernest said. “Among other things.”

“Point taken,” Lemony said. “What would you say if I told you I was now too frightened to move?”

“That you brought it on yourself,” Ernest said, but he didn’t mean it. He walked over and sat next to Lemony on the pool chair. Ernest stole a quick glance at him again, brief and fleeting. To look consistently was dangerous; Ernest always had to make a distinct effort not to touch.

“Your sister found out,” he said. “Not about you, but about me. She also hit me.”

Lemony’s head shot up. “What?” He reached out, his fingertips lightly brushing Ernest’s jaw as he turned his face towards him. They trailed warm over his right cheek, where his skin still smarted from Kit’s hand. Here in the dark, Lemony’s eyes were so bright again, full of concern, directed right at him. Ernest held himself so still, barely breathing.

Falling in love, if you could call it that, with Lemony was what Ernest personally considered the most ill-advised thing he’d ever done, even after lying to Kit. Lemony loved other people, and it was clear in everything he did, in the way he looked when they weren’t there. But Lemony understood what Ernest wanted, and Ernest craved that with a destructive ache.

Really, who else were they supposed to fall in love with but each other? They didn’t know anyone else. No one was going to get this life but them. It was probably why half of VFD had a crush on Beatrice, honestly. It was terrible, but none of them seemed to be able to stop doing it. Ernest included.

“You—” Lemony’s hand jerked back, shrinking down between them onto the chair. “What happened?”

“She knew I lied,” Ernest said. “About the information and about being Frank. I got out of it, but—she won’t trust us again, I think. And Frank—probably won’t trust me either.”

“I’m sorry,” Lemony said. “I didn’t mean for—”

Ernest shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. It wasn’t. He and Lemony had both just wanted something, desperately. Ultimately, they’d still succeeded, in the end. They had. Change he could hold in his hands had happened. He still felt hollow about it all, everything drained out of him, but he didn’t regret doing it. Not at all. The hurt would go away and he’d do it again. “What we did—that mattered.”

“It did,” Lemony whispered. “But I never like the cost.”

“Why did you do it?” Ernest asked softly.

Lemony smiled ruefully. “I guess I didn’t want to stop trying.”

The real, noble answer, Ernest thought. Why the “firestarters” and Ernest would never get him. He raised his hand. Slowly, without looking, he put it on top of Lemony’s. Lemony turned his hand over and gripped Ernest’s tightly. He knew that the way Lemony would try from this moment forward would be different than the way Ernest would, and he wanted to have this moment while it lasted.

Ernest stood, tugging Lemony up with him, and let go of his hand. “You should go back downstairs,” he said.

11:30 PM—The Ballroom—South Drink Table

The party would be over soon, but you’d never know it, the ballroom still thronging with people. But most of the dancing had died down, and Dewey was taking mental stock of how clean up would start. He found one of the attendant’s silver trays and picked it up, estimating how many glasses he could fit on it.

Frank came back into the ballroom and made a beeline for him, pale. Dewey’s shoulders tensed up yet again. What had happened now?

“I can’t believe it,” Frank muttered, grabbing a wineglass.

“Whoa, hey, hold on.” Dewey took the wineglass back and set it off to the side. “What happened?”

“He—” Which meant it was Ernest. Again. Dewey’s patience with both his brothers tonight was wearing extraordinarily thin. “He’s been passing information to Olaf this whole time.”

“To Olaf?” That was not what Dewey had been expecting. A flare of worry burned through him and curled his hands around the tray. “But—”

“No,” Frank said. “This time, I’ve had enough. I’m tired of covering up for him, and he’s going to have to deal with this mess himself.”

Olaf was certainly a threat in one way or another, but it seemed a disproportionately vicious answer for Frank. Dewey frowned. “Did something else happen?”

Frank looked so—frantic, was maybe the word, a terrifying energy breaking out of him in quick bursts of anger on his face. He looked at Dewey, and the emotion seemed to cage itself back in.

“He was found out,” Frank said quietly. “About being a firestarter.”

Dewey had counted on it happening. It seemed unlikely that it would be able to remain a secret forever. It still hurt to hear. Things wouldn’t be the same as they had been, if people knew about Ernest. Dewey imagined the division between the three of them only growing larger, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to do anything about it if it got too wide.

Something broke in Frank’s expression again, and Dewey startled—it looked like guilt. “Don’t defend him,” Frank hissed. “Dewey, he’s going to get away with it. He’s going to ruin what we’ve worked for, what you’ve worked for in the archives—do you want all of that information in the hands of the enemy?”

Dewey clutched the tray. “Ernest isn’t the enemy,” he said, darkly. The agitation from earlier at the hors d’oeuvres table shot back into him.

“You know exactly what I mean,” Frank said. “I—”

Dewey slammed the silver plate down on the drink table. A real, genuine slam, like he’d never done before, the glasses around it rattling. Frank stared at him, gaping a little.

“He’s still here,” Dewey said. “That’s enough.”

“Dewey—”

“That is enough.”

12:00 AM—The Lobby

Jacques had never seen Kit so unsettled. Even when she’d been arrested she’d kept her composure. But she stood beside him in the empty lobby, tapping her foot against the floor, her arms crossed over her chest. He still couldn’t get out of her what had happened, but it was obvious from her face in the ballroom that whoever betrayed them had to be one of the Denouements. It was a sobering realization, the worst possible outcome of the schism that had been building for too long. One of three identical triplets being a traitor complicated matters, although it was easy to figure out which one it was that had done it. Things were going to change after tonight.

He took a small, brief moment to appreciate that Kit actually wanted to stand next to him and acknowledge him as her brother. Lately, he’d gotten the impression that she couldn’t stand him. But now she needed him, and it was a relief to Jacques to still be needed by his siblings. He never thought he did that successful a job of managing to keep them all together.

The elevator dinged, and Lemony stepped out, adjusting his jacket. The only evidence he’d been at the costume party was the mask tucked under his arm, because his suit was as plain as ever.

“Finally,” Kit muttered, and she ran over to him, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly, something none of the siblings had done since they were children.

Lemony froze, and then hugged her back. He met Jacques’s eyes across the lobby.

Jacques knew it, immediately. Lemony had played a part in what had happened tonight with Ernest. It shouldn’t have surprised Jacques as much as it did. Lemony had held a perilous position in the organization for years now, and this wasn’t the first time he had wound up disagreeing with Kit about recruitment. But it was the first time it had involved other people. That made it dangerous.

Lemony shook his head a fraction of an inch. Part of Jacques relaxed. The three of them might still be okay. He wondered, with a slight jolt, how the Denouements would fare.

Kit pulled away from Lemony. “Where were you?”

“Did you know the rooftop sunbathing salon has night lights?” Lemony said. Jacques couldn’t help but chuckle as he walked over to his siblings. “Very pleasant. I recommend it.”

Kit rolled her eyes, and she led Jacques and Lemony through the lobby and out of the hotel.

“I’ll drive you both back,” Jacques said. “It’s on my way.”

“You brought the taxi?” Lemony asked.

“Regrettably,” Jacques sighed. “I still seem to have it.” Headquarters refused to take it back for some reason, even after Jacques insisted he didn’t need it. It had been six months since the initial assignment with it and he was still driving it, and probably would be, for the foreseeable future. He took his keys out of his pocket.

“I’ll drive,” Kit said.

“You will not drive,” Jacques said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly,” Kit said, snatching the keys out of his hand and walking briskly out of his reach. “Jacques, did you say something about hives? There aren’t any bees nearby.”

“Trees?” Lemony said. He jogged ahead a little and caught up with Kit’s pace. “They do look particularly lush this time of year, now that you mention it.”

“No one is in a rush, and Kit, give me my keys you are not going to drive—” His siblings raced ahead of him down the front drive, and Jacques ran after them into the night.

1:55 AM—The Ballroom

Olivia and Ramona stayed on to help the Denouements clean up. Ramona had insisted, saying that it was no trouble at all, and she owed them for being so kind to host the party. She was very good at insisting; Olivia had never seen anyone able to resist the charm of Ramona cheerfully demanding she was going to help and they were going to have to deal with it. She hid her smile in the champagne flutes she was stacking on a tray as Ramona talked with one of the triplets on the other side of the ballroom. She picked up the one rimmed with half-rings of Ramona’s deep plum lipstick and giggled.

She’d have to tell Ramona about what Jacques told her, of course. But for once, Olivia wasn’t all that worried about dealing with it. It had been an extraordinarily pleasant night otherwise. Ramona was happy, some of the glow back in her face, so Olivia was happy too.

All the glasses were stacked, the plates piled together, the tablecloths folded up, the lights finally dimmed. There was only one Denouement left in the room, and he stopped Olivia and Ramona on their way out. “Olivia, could I speak with you?”

“Of course,” Olivia said.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Ramona said, squeezing her hand, and she disappeared down the hallway, the hem of her dress sweeping the floor behind her.

Some people expected Olivia to be able to tell the Denouements apart, and some people expected her to be as clueless as most others as to who she was talking to. It wasn’t terribly hard to tell them apart, because Olivia liked to pay attention, but what she could never remember what when she was supposed to know and when she wasn’t. Here, she knew the one in front of her was Frank, most definitely. There was a weight to the way Frank carried himself, not like he assumed he was in control, but like he assumed he had to be.

“What is it, Frank?” Olivia asked.

He hesitated, which was rare for Frank. “When was the last time you saw Miranda?”

Olivia blinked. Had she misheard him? “What?”

“Miranda,” Frank said again. She hadn’t misheard. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Miranda?

“I—I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I—” When was the last time she saw Miranda? Years and years ago, wasn’t it? Shortly after they’d been taken. Olivia hadn’t minded. Miranda was older than her, not by much but by enough, and enough that they weren’t kept together. Miranda had thought it a chore to look after her, and Olivia hadn’t liked being seen as a chore. She wanted a sister, not a babysitter. So she’d been okay when Miranda was gone. They went to different classes, made different friends, passed each other in the hall without saying a word until their apprenticeships, where Olivia was shuffled around from chaperone to chaperone and Miranda—went where? What had become of her?

The questions spun through her head, dizzying, but they kept coming. What did Miranda look like, now that she thought of it? Had she looked like Olivia at all? Would she recognize her own sibling, like she could easily identify the Denouements? Would she know Miranda if she saw her in a meeting, on the street, at one of these parties, if she was an enemy? But what made a person wasn’t appearance—how did Miranda act? What made Miranda, in the way Frank’s quiet made him? How could she not know what made her sister? Miranda was her sister and it hit Olivia, squarely in the chest, that she didn’t know a single thing about her.

She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, her gaze darting across the floor. How had she gone all this time without thinking about her? How could she not know? How much had she forgotten?

“I’m sorry I asked,” Frank was saying. “Olivia. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Olivia whispered. She took one step back, then another, almost hitting the edge of her dress with the point of her heel, and another, then made herself turn around and leave, back downstairs, through the lobby, anywhere else but there.

Olivia hurried out into the night with the front doors banging open after her; the humid air was sticky on her skin, sitting heavy in her lungs as she tried to inhale. She saw Ramona past the front archway, leaned back against her car a way down the front drive, her shoes beside her and her feet in the grass, the shape of her soft and fuzzy in the heat. Olivia tore off her mask and scrubbed her hand over her eyes, wiping the tears on the side of her dress.

There was a weight on her shoulders, more than just the heat. She had the horrible sense that she was going to turn around and see Miranda. Olivia wanted to leave. She wanted to leave the city, she wanted to go somewhere she’d be away from this. She wanted to take Ramona—would Ramona go with her? She had her own things to care about besides the violent anxiety shaking Olivia from the inside out. She had a duchy to take care of. She didn’t deserve to have to deal with Olivia.

We’d like you to take up the outpost at Caligari Carnival. The carnival was miles from the city, out in the hinterlands, flat and desolate blankness. Maybe she should go. Maybe that would be better. She would be away from the city and be one place where no one had to bother her and she couldn’t bother anyone else. Maybe.

Olivia squeezed her eyes shut again, and when she opened them the tears were gone and Ramona came into focus, all of her slender and beautiful in the moonlight. Olivia ached to look at her.

She went over to Ramona and slid her hand into hers, tucking her face into the smooth skin of Ramona’s shoulder. “I want to go somewhere else,” she whispered.

“Hey,” Ramona said, her other arm coming up and folding around Olivia, drawing her close. “We can go anywhere you want.”

Behind her, through the open front doors, Olivia heard the hotel clock starting to chime again.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #lemony snicket #jacques snicket #kit snicket #frank denouement #dewey denouement #ernest denouement

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