Note: I apologize if my chapters are very long. Thanks for sticking with me!
As Larten was stepping inside the hot spray of the shower, Erin had a small flash: he didn't know what to make of his new situation, he didn't want anything to happen to his cloak, yet even in his bewilderment, he was deep down very grateful.
Erin had had a flash yesterday during her shift at the hospital that wasn't patient involved which was the norm; no, this one concerned Larten specifically, although that wasn't really out of the norm either now that he was a part of their lives: He was very proud. He was going to need some coercion to remain with them until...well, she didn't know when. But in her flash she saw that there would be a very crucial moment between the two of them. The prominence of that moment in her mind indicated it would be very important; but she didn't know when that crossroads would be either.
Brigid had a few more variables pop into her head that she added as a new sequence as a derivitive of the current situation. The other derivitive was shady but very involved and convoluted. Brigid would tap her teeth with her pencil staring intently at each placement of the sequences and equations searching for the pattern and outcome.
Brigid closed her current notebook she was using and tossed it onto the bar. She turned around chewing on her lip. Erin looked over at her.
"Hey. Carrots. Cut." She said nodding towards the cutting board.
Brigid haphazardly started cutting them. Erin poked her in the side with the hand not stirring the stew.
"Try to focus. I don't want to have to stitch a severed thumb tonight."
Brigid gave her head a good couple of shakes and grunted in frustration.
"It'll be okay. We've been able to complete quite a few sequencing outcomes."
" Only small ones though. My variables are weird now and there's getting to be a stronger demarcation of this..." Brigid waved a carrot around in a circle indicating their present situation, "But nothing has been chosen yet or decided and nothing is making much sense. I feel like I'm grasping at straws." She scraped the carrot slices into the pot.
"I know but we've been in situations like this before where probability fields are out of whack and everything feels chaotic. But eventually everything will settle like it always does and reason returns. And as far as only small sequences being completed, what do we know to be true?" Erin asked like asking a 5 year-old 'what do you say to the nice man?'
Brigid let out an exasperated sigh. "No solution is insignificant and it is the small that makes up the large, blah blah blah."
"Just like what flashes in my head or I feel or perceive psychometrically; nothing, not even the smallest of blips, should be ignored. Like how I knew we were being followed all those months ago. If I had ignored the blips, I wouldn't have been able to see the pattern that told me in my gut that we were being followed. Except for that stupid..." Erin tapped the wooden spoon against the edge of the pot a little more forceful than necessary. Now it was Brigid's turn to sense the frustration in Erin.
"Erin, you know none of that was your fault. We're alive. And we're prepared as much as possible in case he does come after us again." Brigid hopped herself up onto the kitchen island, legs dangling. "And seriously, if people didn't understand what this "creature" is exactly that's very keen on us, they'd say we were mad and some sort of doomsday preppers." Brigid laughed. "Thank the universe, you have a conceal and carry license or I'm sure three guns in the car would come off as very suspicious; not including the fact that our linen closet is quite the armory now. And I'm a way better shot than I used to be. We would blow that son-of-a-bitch straight back to hell!"
Brigid swung her legs, her toes tapping the small of Erin's back playfully. "Loosen up. You knew Larten was going to show up and Murlough was not and you knew we were going to be safe. And you still know that we're safe. And, if you think about it, it helps we have Mr. Spider-Guy here. Everything worked out. You're alive and that's all I care about. We're okay and we're going to be okay."
Erin angled her body to look at Brigid, tears in her eyes as she choked out, "I will never let anything happen to you."
Brigid met hear teary gaze with one of her own. "I know, but I'm also not going to let anything happen to you either."
Erin gave a weak smile before her features turned unfriendly and dark, no more tears in her black-brown eyes. "And if Murlough does ever show his face, or any of his vampaneze friends come around, I will rain down a hell storm and scorch every last one of them. I will lobotomize them and keep them alive and look into their eyes every day as they scream on the inside. I will use their own worse fear against them: being weak and useless and unable to face death honorably, on their own terms. No, they'll live and won't be able to do a single goddamn thing about it." She hissed.
"Damn, sis." Brigid said wide-eyed. "That's pretty twisted and I am living for it!" She threw her head back and laughed.
Erin laughed, too, a weight lifted off her shoulders. The stew was ready, every ingredient cooked properly. She was going to have to watch Larten and make sure he didn't wolf down too much at once thus making himself sick. She had a very tiny blip that that was exactly what he was planning to do.
Erin turned the stove down to just a simmer and pulled out plates and utensils.
"Go set the table."
"Oooh, fancy."
Erin gave her younger sister the side look. "We eat at the table regularly."
"Ah, but not with the fancy plates and utensils. They're for special occasions. Is this a special occasion, Erin?" Brigid asked pseudo-innocently.
"He's saved us and he is a guest. Let's try to make it seem like we're worth the trouble." Erin pulled out wine glasses and a bottle of red pinot noir.
Brigid had a slight dazed look in her eyes and as they cleared she slowly broke into a sly grin as Erin walked into the dining room.
"What? New variable...sequence...why are you smiling like that?"
"Yeah, something new. Nudity."
Inhaling and exhaling slowly, Ering gave the blank-stare look. "I will throw you out the broken screen door."
There was an immediate last minute flash: tall, pale, somewhat scarred, muscular man quickly rubbing his orange hair with a towel before wrapping it around his waist, scratching his long facial scar, peering at his clothes on the bed.
Erin shook her head. She set the glasses out and uncorked the wine trying to not betray herself.
"Ah-ha! Was that perhaps a last minute flash? You saw something, you saw something!" Brigid said in a sing-song voice. "Gosh, you're face is really red, sis. Want to tell me why, hmm?" Brigid pointed at Erin's flushed face, relishing in the malicious teasing of her older sister.
"I will pull out one of the t.v. dinner tables and make you sit at it like a kid if you can't behave like a grown-up. Do you want to sit at the kids' table? Go get the stew and bring it in here." Erin said trying very hard to get rid of her blush and regain her poker face before he came down the stairs.
Brigid smiled knowingly as she re-entered the room. "I think I heard him open the door. Try not to picture him-"
Erin shot her the "I-will-beat-you" look. Brigid pursed her lips in a hidden smile.
"No worries, no worries." She said.
Erin traipsed back into the kitchen quickly to grab the plates of warm bread. She heard her bedroom door open, the clearing of a man's throat, and a slow descent down the stairs. Erin waited.