Disclaimer: I do not own the His Dark Materials Series.

A/N: First off: sorry (again) for the couple month delay! I've been more active with some other stories over on ao3 these days, as well as busy with my day work on my doctorate. But this story holds such a special place in my heart, and I had part of this chapter drafted and came back to it as I grow increasingly excited gearing up for season 2 of His Dark Materials!

So, please forgive my hiatus and accept chapter 54, where we get closer to learning more about all these strange new forces occurring around Lyra's new town of Lavia and how, exactly, her mother is caught up in all of it. :) Thank you for reading, and I hope you are safe and healthy during these times.

Luxurious Lies

54.

Lying Low

"Lyra?"

Everything was utterly still as Lyra stared up at her mother, her face only just illuminated in the faint glow of the moon. The woman's expression was perplexed as her grip on the silver pistol slacked. Pan, in the discrete form of a moth, fluttered in place as his beady bug eyes bore in the golden monkey's, which gazed back completely unfazed and unreadable.

This was most unexpected. Of all things Lyra expected when she'd climbed out of her bedroom window and ran to the house she'd recently learned was Mrs. Coulter's, this wasn't it. Why, Lyra immediately wondered, would Mrs. Coulter open the door with a gun? It was as if she were expecting danger, which seemed strange given how utterly boring and safe this place had proven to be. Who had she been expecting to come to her house this early in the morning? Was she worried about something? Was she being followed? Or maybe she was in danger?

Mrs. Coulter, it seemed, was just as mysterious and lethal as ever.

"Who'd you think it was?" Lyra finally piped up, her curiosity overcoming the utter fear at having a door open with a gun pointed directly at you. Pan flicked his wings at them slightly, moving his antennae quickly back and forth. It still bothered him, as it should.

All Mrs. Coulter did was sigh as she lowered the gun and put her free hand on her temple, applying light pressure. The golden monkey jumped from her shoulder to greet Pan, his tail up as Pan changed into a pole cat to walk over to them. Something about him seemed off. Something about both of them seemed off that Lyra and her daemon were still trying to figure out.

"What are you doing here?" her mother finally asked, eyes now rounded with concern as she gazed at her, as if she had only arrived. "Are you alright? Are you…are you hurt?"

"Here to see you," Lyra said simply, as if it weren't 4am and it was the most perfectly reasonable thing in the world to do at this hour and under these circumstances. Mrs. Coulter didn't find it funny.

"It's the middle of the night, Lyra," she said instead, face hardening now. "How did you even get here? Where is—"

"I snuck out of my window. I asked one of Madame Bisset's friends where you lived a few days ago, and I wanted to come see you, so I walked."

Lyra heard the words spill from her mother's lips without her even having to voice them: but at 4 o'clock in the morning?

"Well, you may as well come in," Mrs. Coulter finally sighed, putting the gun behind her back and stepping to the side of the door. "It's awfully cold out, and your night robe looks so thin." Lyra noticed that she peered around outside before she closed the door again, turning the lock and securing the deadbolt. It looked as if she had been expecting someone, and as if she wasn't entirely convinced that they were safe.

Mrs. Coulter's house was smaller than Lyra might have expected but still quite comfortable. The front door opened to the living room, which had two gray sofas with teal pillows spaced apart from one another with a glass coffee table at the center. A white bookshelf decorated the wall, filled with numerous volumes of brightly-colored books and magazines. There was a hallway to the right and then the kitchen straight ahead, where Mrs. Coulter led her now.

"Can I make you some tea?" Mrs. Coulter offered, reaching for the kettle.

"I drink coffee now," Lyra said, watching her mother's eyebrows raise.

"Is that so," Mrs. Coulter mused, setting the kettle down and reaching instead for a percolator. "It is awfully early, though. Aren't you too tired for the caffeine?"

"No." Lyra said it too quickly, which gave her away. The truth was she had been exhausted, since she wasn't able to sleep at Madame Bisset's and then trekked on foot in the dark all the way here. Pan was sitting lazily on her lap as a cat, his eyes drooping shut as he purred. Not helping, she snapped over to him, and he opened his eyes again with a little effort. Mrs. Coulter considered her another moment before filling the appliance with water, scooping in coffee grounds, and then setting it on the stove top.

"Lyra, why are you here?" Mrs. Coulter handed Lyra a cup of coffee a few minutes later before sitting down at the kitchen table with her, reaching to move the hair out of Lyra's face. She looked concerned as she searched Lyra's eyes. "This is too spontaneous, even for you. What's the matter?"

It was completely and entirely comfortable to be with Mrs. Coulter again like this. It was a strange home in a strange new place they were both living, but it somehow felt familiar. Lyra wondered if it was fate, for them to have found each other again. Lyra chose to leave her mother upon arriving back to Brytain more than half a year ago, and her mother chose not to seek her out. Lyra had been hurt at that, but as things progressed and Lyra saw Mrs. Coulter's lack of harmful movements and her seemingly genuine intentions in this place, she was starting to wonder about all of these things she couldn't begin to know and that even the alethiometer wasn't telling her.

"Something is happening," Lyra said after a few more moments of being lost in thought. Pan looked up at her curiously, his amber eyes widening. "I can feel it, Mrs. Coulter."

The woman was passive as she stared at Lyra steadily, her blue eyes completely inscrutable.

"You seem to know it, too," Lyra continued, nodding to the woman. "Greet everyone with a gun, do you?"

"Lyra." Mrs. Coulter sounded tired now, defeated almost. "There are some things happening in this world that you are just better off not knowing."

"No, you don't," Lyra tossed back. She jumped out of her chair at that, Pan forced to the hardwood floor with the sudden motion. "You can't tell me that, after everything we've been through and everything we've done. Don't you dare."

"Lyra." It was a plea—quiet and soft. Mrs. Coulter's eyes glittered over at the girl, and Lyra felt struck by the intensity of them in that moment. "Please, my darling. Listen to me. You can't get caught up in this."

"In what? And why not? Something is happening! The alethiometer won't exactly say what, but something is going on! I know it. It's so obvious. Why won't anyone tell me? I'm not a child anymore!"

"But you are!" Mrs. Coulter's voice shook with a strangled passion as she too rose to her feet, stepping closer to Lyra now. "You've been through so much, Lyra, and no one is here to deny that. We are just trying to save you now from forces of the world we'd much rather you not have to face."

"We?" Lyra repeated, tilting her head at the word. "Who's 'we,' mother? What's going on?"

Mrs. Coulter's face twisted at that word—mother. Lyra had used it before, when they'd gotten closer during their travels to the North, but she supposed it had been a long time since she'd heard it again, and that it must be hard. It felt strange on Lyra's tongue, too, although at the same time natural. It was painful for the both of them, in that way, and something that only thickened the tension swirling in the room around them.

Just as Mrs. Coulter opened her mouth to respond, something else happened. A loud, banging knock happened at the door, stirring both daemons as their heads shot up and their ears trained toward the door. Mrs. Coulter froze, every muscle of her body growing still as her eyes continued to bear into Lyra's.

Don't move, she mouthed to her daughter, her eyes swiveling to her daemon. She nodded her head barely a fraction of an inch and he crept forward, entirely soundless. Not one to stay idle, Lyra nodded to Pan, too, and he entered the air as a moth again, no trace of him at all as he moved toward the door.

This way, Mrs. Coulter breathed about a minute later, after seemingly receiving word from her daemon. All Lyra got from Pan was that there was a man at the door, patiently waiting and standing there even as he knew the monkey was there. Puzzled, Lyra called Pan back to her and followed Mrs. Coulter over to her bedroom, where the bedsheets were strewn from when Mrs. Coulter had jumped out of bed earlier.

"Stay here," Mrs. Coulter whispered, patting the bed and waving for Lyra to come over. Lyra obeyed, climbing into the bed and simply staring as Mrs. Coulter moved to put the covers over here.

"Who's that man?" Lyra pressed, "and what are you doing?"

"You're to pretend to sleep," Mrs. Coulter instructed her, "and you're to wait until I return. If anyone besides me comes in, you must be sleeping. Do you understand?"

"Mrs. Coulter, what's going on?" A myriad of questions blended into that one, and Lyra couldn't help the slight crack of her voice then. She felt scared as Pan came over and jumped into her lap as his favorite ermine form now, pressing close to her breast as they looked over at the woman they'd turned to for so long for answers and guidance. She was older now at thirteen and no longer as helpless as she had been before in the North, but she recognized her own limits of defense and understanding. And as she'd been saying all along, something bad was happening. She could feel it just as she felt the every thought and feeling of her daemon.

For her part, Mrs. Coulter gazed back with intense feeling, moving to stroke Lyra's hair as she used to all that time ago. "I can't explain right now, darling. But I promise you, I will. Please just lie down now and stay silent."