"This is your house?" Ezekiel asked as Cassandra walked up to arguably the biggest house on the block.

"Yep," she replied, pulling a key from a long chain around her neck and unlocking the gate; the kid whistled through his teeth.

Jacob shared the sentiment, though he lacked the will to express it. The house was huge, a tasteful mix of Queen Anne and Colonial architecture, with a good stretch of lawn, surrounded by iron-wrought fence. There were no lights on that he could see, and the driveway was empty, too. Which was good, because he didn't feel up to seeing another adult right now. He was shivering again, all over the place, and his clothes, whilst no longer dripping, were still sodden and clinging to his skin uncomfortably.

Cassandra pushed open the gates; they didn't squeak or creak a bit on well-oiled hinges. "C'mon, the carriage house is around back, nobody goes back there but me," she invited, and they followed her as she went around the house into the backyard, leading up to another small, dark building, too big to be called a shed but not exactly a barn either. She slid back the latch on the door, an actual latch, not a doorknob, and pushed the door open with a squeak.

"Wow," Jacob rasped out when his eyes had adjusted to the dimness.

It was a long, narrow room so crowded with junk—furniture, boxes, crates, books, more boxes, odds and ends of all kinds, even pieces of machines and engines—that it was impossible to walk in a straight line to the back wall, which was so far away that it was no more than a foggy grey haze in the low darkness. There were a few stalls where horses had once been kept, though they probably hadn't housed an animal in fifty years or more. He inhaled through his nose and it smelled just like the barn back on the ranch house, a perfume of stale hay, gasoline, turned dirt, and wood baked and aged for eighty summers. If he was still a kid, he'd have lived in this place, climbed over everything he could, made himself the coolest fort ever out of pieces of furniture, and spent hours in the rafters with the pigeons and sugar gliders, presuming they even had sugar gliders in Portland. He didn't think so.

Cassandra plucked at his sleeve, and they followed after her, single-file, through a narrow path that'd been cleared through the junk to one of the horse stalls, where most of the crap had been cleared out. There was an overstuffed chair and chaise lounge wedged in there, along with a sofa that actually had all of its legs and cushions. She'd obviously gone to some effort to clean out at least this one little corner, and it was easy to imagine her sitting out here by herself, reading with Mel.

He sat down on the chaise, and Cassandra produced a clean, fluffy towel from somewhere, tossing it around his shoulders. "Jacob?" she asked softly as he pulled the towel around his shoulders, drawing the terrycloth over his head a cowl, trying to dry his hair off before he ended up with a cold. "What happened?"

He sighed softly, pushing the towel back off his head. The others were all looking at him expectantly, but not demanding. He didn't have to tell them. If he said right now that he didn't want to talk about it, they'd let it go. "I…uhm, when I was a kid, I got in a car wreck. It wasn't that bad, really, ain't nobody got hurt but…I had nightmares for a while after," he said quietly. Laghu was shaking again, and he cupped one hand around the tiny soul. "Last year, though, my mama…" The words burred in his throat, he had to swallow hard before they loosened up enough to come out. "She was driving home, and another car…another car hit her, and drove her off a bridge into the river under it."

Cassandra had slid closer to him while he spoke, and now she curled one arm over his shoulders, and he leant into her side. Mel was pressed as close to them as she could be without breaking the taboo, and he could feel the other dæmon's breathing on his arm.

"But she didn't…" He had to stop, swallowing again. His chest was getting tight again; that pain that'd slowly faded into a dull, low ache that he was almost used to carrying around with him was slowly becoming sharper and sharper, cutting into him anew. "The impact didn't…didn't kill her. The car sank, and…she couldn't get the doors open, they were banged up in the crash. So when it filled up with water, she—she—"

Laghu let out a wrenching sob, the noise that Jacob refused to make himself, and he shuddered, pulling his knees up towards his chest as if to stop those broken pieces of himself from falling out.

Cassandra pulled him closer, hugging him tight against her, and he turned his face into her shoulder as he forced himself to breathe deeply and not break apart. She smelled like strawberries. Another arm went around his back, and he turned his head slightly to see Eve sitting on his other side, rubbing one hand up and down his spine, the other draped over Paznic's broad, bristly shoulders.

Jacob took a slow, shuddering breath and looked over at Ezekiel and Flynn. Both were holding their respective dæmons just as tightly to themselves, and they both met his eyes, holding for a moment before nodding. They were guys, they didn't do the huggy, touchy-feely stuff, but that didn't mean they didn't sympathize or understand. "I have nightmares again," he said, voice thicker and rougher but still his, "About the wreck, but now I'm underwater, an' I can't get outta the car, an' I'm drowning, I'm always drowning."

He could've found the words, if he tried, to explain how terrified he was when those college kids threw him in the pool and ducked him under, how it was suddenly like being in the middle of his nightmare all over again, stuck under the water with no way out, just like his mama had died. He was shaking again, though he hadn't noticed it, hard enough that his teeth were chattering.

After a moment, Cassandra removed her arm from his back, smoothed his damp hair back, and stood up. Picking her way through the clutter, she started opening and peeking into a few boxes, then reached in one, drawing out a couple of winter coats, big, ugly, fluffy things of varying, garish colours. She tossed a few at him, and his arms moved on instinct to catch them. "Cass?" he mumbled.

"Get some sleep, dummy," Mel growled at him as Cassandra dug more coats from the box and unearthed a patched quilt from another, handing them out.

"Wh-what?" Jacob looked from the jackets in his hands to Cassandra, then over to Eve, then at Flynn and Ezekiel. They were all making themselves comfortable as they could on the odd assortment of furniture in the stall. "You guys don't have to – to do this, I can – "

"Oi. Shut up," Ezekiel cut him off as he toed off his sneakers and pulled the patchwork quilt around him. Eve clapped him on the shoulder and got up. Flynn jumped up to let her on the sofa, the geek choosing to sprawl out on the floor instead, and Cassandra took up the armchair, taking off her shoes.

Jacob swallowed hard, feeling the pressure in his chest and throat again, and he had to cup a hand around Laghu's small, shaking body so his dæmon didn't fall off his shoulder. "I-I – " he tried to speak, but Cassandra fixed him with a look over the edge of the long jacket that she'd covered herself with; she was small enough that she only needed one.

"Go to sleep, Jacob. We're not going anywhere, and neither are you," she said firmly.

He nodded and sank back into his seat, hands shaking, having to blink quickly to keep his vision was blurring, telling himself that it was just chlorine in his eyes.

The coats smelled like mothballs and dust, but when he arranged them over himself like blankets, they were pretty warm. The chaise wasn't exactly a memory-foam mattress, and he didn't imagine that he would be able to sleep, all kinked up the way he was. But, at some point, he closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, the sky was a long slice of pale pink-gold in the window. Laghu was dry and fluffy and tucked into the crook of his neck, yawning. One of the coats had slid off his legs, the towel was rolled up around his neck and under his ear like an impromptu pillow, and his clothes had almost completely dried, though still somewhat damp. He tilted his wrist to look at his watch – it still ticked, surprisingly. It was quarter to six.

Jacob rolled to his feet stiffly, stretching and feeling his joints pop back into alignment. For a moment, he looked around the cluttered little stall in the carriage house, and his chest felt too small for his lungs and heart, like if he wasn't careful, he might very well suffocate. The others were still asleep, and he stepped over Flynn's long, splayed legs to stand beside the armchair that Cassandra was curled up in. He reached out and touched her shoulder, very lightly, and she shifted slightly, eyes opening slowly. "Hey," he murmured lowly. "I gotta get home before my pop gets up. You tell the others where I went?"

She knuckled her eyes with one hand and nodded. "Okay."

"And tell everyone…thanks. For staying. I…uhm…thanks."

Smiling drowsily, she reached up and patted his hand with hers. "We'll do it again if you need us, Jake. We're your friends. We care about you. You know that…right?" she murmured softly.

He swallowed hard and nodded once, a short, jerky movement. On impulse, he caught her wrist and pressed a kiss to her palm before dropping her hand and straightening up. "See you on Monday?" he asked quietly. "Or…later today, maybe?"

"Probably. I'll text you," she said.

"Alright. Bye." Laghu fluttered down to nip lightly at one of Mel's ears in farewell as he walked towards the door; he paused and glanced back. "Thank you, Cassandra."

She had curled back up in a ball in the armchair, pulling a jacket closer around her, and her voice was drowsy when she answered. "First one's free."


Laghu flew in wide, swooping circles around his head as he walked home, and Jacob smiled as he walked, hands shoved in his pockets. He climbed up the ivy trellis that scaled the side of the house – thank God it wasn't roses – and shimmied open his window with one hand. He inched a little further up the trellis, slung one leg over the sill, and tipped himself towards the window, catching the edges of the frame and ducking inside.

As he was sliding the window shut, Laghu bit his ear sharply, and Jacob whirled around.

Isaac was leaning against the doorframe, Geri crouched at his heels like a sand-coloured shadow, hackles lifting, though she didn't growl. Jacob's heart sank, his stomach knotting over on itself until he had a solid stone in the middle of his gut, and he leant back against the windowsill, gripping the wood tightly with both hands.

"Where you been?" Isaac asked.

"I-I went out with some friends from school, sir," Jacob replied quietly, keeping his head bowed, staring at a point at the floor, away from Geri and away from Isaac. "I fell asleep, it was an accident. I didn't want to wake up the girls coming up the stairs." It wasn't a lie – he knew better than to lie. The stairs and the hallway both creaked, and all three girls were almost freakishly light sleepers. He could drop a pin outside their doors and they'd wake up.

"Nobody said that you could go out anywhere, boy," his old man said in a soft, cold voice, "much less spend the night away from the house. What about your sisters? Who was watching them all night?"

"I thought that was your job," Jacob answered and immediately regretted it.

Isaac's dark eyebrows rose towards his hairline, stubbornly refusing to recede despite it being more salt than pepper nowadays. "My job?" he repeated quietly. Hackles lifting further, Geri pulled her lips back from her teeth, gleaming very white against her dark muzzle. In two long strides, Isaac was across the room, and he closed his hand over the back of Jacob's neck, heavy, callused, and strong from years of working on a rig. "My job, boy, is to provide for this family. You understand that, you ungrateful punk? I don't see you doin' anything like that, huh? Do I? So where the hell do you get off on questioning me? Huh?" Isaac gave him a firm jerk with each question, hard enough to make Jacob's teeth rattle; the smell of whiskey was raw and strong on his breath, pelt of the dog that'd bitten him. "From here on out, you don't go any-damn-where without my say-so, hear me? And that means askin' my goddamned permission before goin' out with whatever sorry-ass friends you got."

"I did ask permission to go out, sir. You weren't sober enough to remember," Jacob answered through gritted teeth, even as Laghu hissed for him to shut the fuck up, don't provoke him.

The hand on the back of his neck tightened until lurid red spots began bursting in the edges of his sight, and his vision began swimming, and the look on Isaac's face made him glad that he got thrown headfirst into the wall right off the bat.