Chapter 127 Debrief

Chapter 127 Debrief
POV: Carly

Katy was sitting on her bed eating crackers when Carly walked in.

She looked up.

She looked at Carly's face.

She put the crackers down.

"Sit." She said.

Carly sat on her own bed and dropped her bag by the door and looked at the ceiling for a moment and felt the specific relief of being back in a room that was hers, small and familiar and accumulated with her own things.

"Well." Katy said. "You're alive."

"I'm alive." Carly confirmed.

"And in one piece."

"Mostly." Carly said.

Katy looked at her. "That's not reassuring."

"I'm fine." Carly said. "Good fine. Not bad fine."

Katy relaxed slightly. "Okay. Start from the beginning. I want everything."

Carly looked at the ceiling.

She thought about where the beginning was.

"The house is enormous." She said. "Like, actually enormous. Portrait corridor, four floors, studio cottage on the grounds, rose garden that is apparently extraordinary in June."

"June." Katy said. "You're going back."

"Apparently." Carly said.

"Interesting." Katy said.

"That's not even the interesting part." Carly said.

Katy pulled her knees up. "Then get to it."

Carly told her.

She told her in the order it happened, which was how she processed things, and she did not leave out any of the significant parts. The portrait on the landing and the painting of the rose garden before the day was properly up. Freida pulling her into the morning room within two hours of arrival. Victor's question at dinner and what she had said back. The garden conversation with Isabel. Harrison in the library and the Edinburgh thing and the architecture secret. The wedding. The dagger.

At the dagger, Katy sat very still.

"Tell me again." Katy said.

Carly told her again.

Katy stared at her.

"They let you see it." She said.

"The whole family." Carly said. "Knowing what it is."

Katy was quiet for a moment.

She was doing the thing she did when she was running calculations behind her face, the specific quality of stillness that meant significant processing was happening underneath a neutral expression.

"What." Carly said.

"Nothing." Katy said.

"Kat."

"It's nothing yet." Katy said. "Tell me the rest."

Carly told her the rest. Deacon dropping his performance in the garden and the thing about Victor playing things long. Isabel's apology to Niko. The dance at the reception. The last morning in the kitchen and the goodbyes.

June said three times.

When she finished Katy was quiet for a long moment.

"Are you okay." Katy said finally.

"Yes." Carly said. And meant it.

"Actually okay or performing okay."

"Actually." Carly said. "Which is strange because a week ago I was dreading it and now I'm." She stopped. She thought about what the right word was. "Settled." She said. "I feel settled."

Katy looked at her.

"That's a good word." She said.

"He said home." Carly said. "Driving back into Black River Falls. He said home and let both meanings sit there."

Katy was very still.

"Both meanings." She said.

"Both meanings." Carly confirmed.

Katy looked at her crackers.

She looked at the wall.

She looked back at Carly.

"Good." She said simply. The warm version, the one she did not produce for general consumption.

Carly smiled.

She lay back on her bed and looked at the ceiling and let the familiar smell and sound of Degrassi Hall settle around her.

"Katy." She said.

"Mm." Katy said.

"Thank you. For the whole semester. For everything you did and didn't do and for being exactly who you are when I needed it."

Katy was quiet for a moment.

"Don't get sentimental on me McPherson." She said. "We still have a month of this semester left and I'm not done being annoyed by you."

Carly laughed.

She closed her eyes.

She was home too.

POV: Katy

She waited until Carly fell asleep before she got up.

It did not take long. Carly was back from a week that had clearly taken a lot even in the good version of it, and the specific quality of her breathing shifted into sleep almost immediately once she stopped talking.

Katy went to the window.

She looked out at the Black River Falls campus. The fog on the grounds. Silas Hall visible at the far side, the specific lights of the building she had been watching all semester with the particular attention of someone who had not yet decided what they were going to do with what they were seeing.

The dagger.

She had known about the Monroeson dagger in the abstract sense that anyone who had been in this supernatural community long enough knew about it. She had not known it would be presented at the wedding. She had not known Carly would be there when it was.

And the whole family had allowed it.

She pressed her lips together.

She thought about all the threads she had been carrying.

The dagger.

The covenant.

The faction review notice that had been on the headmistress's board for three weeks and had disappeared.

Whitney Salem feeling a witch's call differently than she should have.

Zdravei Katerina in a corridor and the look on Niko's face when he said it.

Leona McPherson arriving at the banquet the same night as Isabel Monroeson.

Isabel's plan for a binding of bloodlines.

She laid all of it out in her head the way she laid out everything that mattered. In order. In relation to each other. Looking at the shape they made when they were all present simultaneously.

She had a picture now.

Not complete. There were still pieces she did not have and things she could not know yet. But the shape of it was clear enough that she could see where it was going and what it was going to require from each of them.

She was going to have to say something.

Not tonight.

But soon.

She thought about one more thing.

The thing she had been not examining for months.

The specific warmth she had felt watching Niko cross the room to Carly in the Hole all those months ago. The quality of it. What it had told her about herself that she had been carefully not hearing since.

She was going to have to examine that too.

Not tonight.

Soon.

She looked at the campus in the fog.

She went back to bed.