In his room, Jim laid Excalibur atop his study desk.
He didn't take the bag off.
The sword wasn't the only thing he'd not touched since Toby died. His new amulet stubbornly kept appearing in his pocket whenever he changed clothes—though he never put it there. The amulet interpreted his actions as rejection—maybe rightly so—and acted accordingly.
Using it felt too much like admitting he could do something about what happened.
"Jim, honey, I'm starting rounds," his mom called from downstairs.
He hurried down before she got out the door. "Remember to grab breakfast before you start. You'll crash before lunch if you don't."
His mom's smile was less forced today, but she hadn't taken off her ring. "I won't forget." She hugged him and left a peck on his cheek. "Sleep all right? You seem tired. Your note said you went out earlier."
"I'm okay. Just… needed to take a walk." He didn't mention his trip to Trollmarket. Before coming inside, he'd scraped dirt off his shoes from the hike home. "Have a good day."
Once his mom was out of the house, Jim retreated to his room. The window was open to keep the air from getting stale. He had a battery-powered fan, but the noise kept him awake at night.
He plunked onto the bed.
The sun was up now, hovering over Arcadia Oaks as if promising better days ahead.
Jim didn't believe in that right now. It hurt too much, thinking about things that would never happen. Once Arcadia Oaks was rebuilt, he'd have to finish high school, maybe get into college—live a normal life. Somehow. Without everyone he'd lost.
The next night
Jim lay in bed after another day of feeling useless at the shelter.
His watch read 9PM. The follow-up meeting at Camelot should be starting now.
He should be there, and though his ribs ached a little less, getting up was harder than ever. His mom had gotten better about hiding her grief, and last night he hadn't heard her crying, but he'd caught her covering the evidence with makeup this morning.
She hugged him more often now—if that was possible.
He covered his eyes with a hand.
Silence filled the room, and a soft breeze fluttered through the window.
Jim drifted in and out of fitful dreams as Claire's voice called to him, then Toby's. After a few hours, the voices stopped, but the dreams continued. They were typically nonsensical, like most other dreams, but if he listened hard, he could hear something. It was faint, no more than a whisper.
But he knew that voice.
"Nari!" Jim started awake, gasping as if he'd just run all the way from Trollmarket. He grabbed his weak side and gritted his teeth against a jolt of pain from sitting up too abruptly.
With a cry of frustration, he bunched both fists in his uncombed hair. "Just stop! Please… stop…" The Chronosphere was locked away in Trollmarket. It shouldn't be talking to him.
A quiet murmur rattled the top of his desk, like a phone with its ringer off, but his phone was on a bookshelf across the room, and cell towers weren't repaired yet. Maybe his mom had left her phone in his room and forgot to turn off an old alarm.
He eased out of bed, careful not to further irritate his injury.
Excalibur still lay atop his desk, exactly where he'd set it after Blinky gave it back.
It wasn't a stray phone, and there was nothing else on the desk that could cause the sound.
Another rattle, this time more of a low hum, and it was accompanied by a whisper.
Jim took the sword hilt in one freshly healed hand just before a third tremor jolted up his arm.
The remaining gem in Excalibur's hilt shook as if to rip itself from the sword.
Dictatious wasn't lying about this thing.
If this stone was behaving strangely… was his amulet doing the same? He had put one of Excalibur's stones in it.
Jim kept hold of Excalibur while he pulled the amulet from the jeans he hadn't bothered to get out of before going to bed.
It lay in his hand quietly. No rattling, no whispering, not even a glow.
He wanted to hurl them both out the window, but the amulet would only come straight back to him, and the sword was too valuable to throw away, so he wrapped the sword in a coat and set it on a bean bag chair to absorb the sound. The amulet he put back in his pocket.
It was 1AM. His mom should be home.
Instead of going back to bed, he went to her room to check on her.
The door was ajar, the bed empty. She must have gotten held up at one of the shelters.
Both closets stood open, and his mom's clothes occupied half of one. Mr. Strickler's filled the other half. But why use one closet when they had two?
It was strange walking into his mother's bedroom, especially when someone else's things shared space with hers. Most of his life, it had been just him and his mom. She hadn't had time to meet anyone because of med school, and then because of her career. When Jim left for New Jersey with Blinky, Nomura, and a band of other trolls, Jim had been glad Mr. Strickler stayed with his mother.
A changeling and a human… Jim shook his head. It shouldn't have worked. But it did.
He nudged the second closet open a little more to let in light from the room's single window.
The closet floor was covered in blankets surrounded by a circle of stones, each the size of a guinea pig. Stone shavings—pieces of troll skin—tucked between two blankets, and a stray dark hair stuck through a third.
A collection of knives hung on the closet wall within easy reach, and the head of the troll bed lay in direct line of sight of the door. Anyone coming in here would have precisely half a second to prove they belonged.
Turns out the monster in the closet wants to protect you. He would have laughed under other circumstances.
A bare patch in the middle of the bed gave him pause. Not that he knew much about trolls' sleeping habits, but it seemed odd to have lined the whole bed except for one spot.
He checked around the closet.
No stray blanket.
It wasn't under his mom's bed either. He gripped the comforter to keep from losing his balance as another twinge in his side warned him to be careful standing up.
He was halfway up when a sharp bang outside made him jump. He tumbled backward, comforter still firmly in one hand.
"Ow!" He let go of the bedding and cradled his side as he used the bedframe to stand. He hurried to the window and discovered three baseball bat wielding boys a few years younger than him whooping as they knocked down the sagging stop sign at the end of a side street one block down. "Idiots," he muttered and turned away.
When he'd fallen, he'd dragged the comforter and cover sheet halfway down the bed. Underneath lay the missing blanket.
Jim quickly remade the bed and rushed back to his room.
I'm sorry, Mom. He sank to the floor beside his bed. His mom would never blame him for Mr. Strickler's death, but that didn't matter. Jim blamed himself, anyway.
Excalibur's stone rattled again, its thrum emanating through the floor.
Jim ignored it.