A/N: Like chapter 27, there's some blood in this one, too; to avoid it, after Rose borrows Jonathan's coat, skip ahead till they get to the restaurant ('neither of them speaks until they reach the restaurant'; the name Maria starts the following paragraph).
When Jonathan realizes what time it is, he tries suggesting again that Rose sleep, but the most he gets her to do is close her eyes while he phones the restaurant with their order. She's left that entirely up to him, which he takes to mean she's a lot less picky than Haley. He hopes that's the truth of it, at least, and not that she's trying to ferret out more information on him to use later.
She's alarmingly good at that.
He's not sure how food preferences could be useful to her, but then again, she still hasn't told him why she knows with unerring certainty that he's not a dragon despite seeming to finally believe he really is Jake's father.
Regardless, between the little he knows of what she's been through today and the effects of Susan's healing remedy, he's not surprised when he returns to the living room and finds her asleep—genuinely asleep—on the couch.
Perhaps it's just as well it's near enough to closing time that he'd decided to pick up the food rather than eat in.
He'd thought they'd be safe enough from prying eyes in the back room—assuming it wasn't already being used—but Rose might be more comfortable with this. For all that she had wanted to go out, he doubts she would appreciate sitting and eating where she could be spotted.
Or, worse, cornered.
Familio Festevedro isn't far, though it's closer to the electronics shop than it is to here. It might be a quick enough trip that he could let Rose sleep through it and leave her a note on the off chance she wakes in the meantime. Even if he swings by the shop on the way there to see if there's been any obvious activity (though admittedly that's easier said than done, as it's much simpler to take Canal Street than it is to spot activity less obvious than a broken window or smoke from a fire), he wouldn't be long.
She would be safe here.
Granted, if she did wake, she could take advantage of his absence in the meantime, but even if she acted with the worst of intentions, he doesn't think there's anything in the house that would lead her to Haley's current whereabouts.
What he told Rose was true—he doesn't know where Haley is—but he has his suspicions.
Those suspicions would do absolutely nothing to help him get to her if the circumstances demanded that.
He'd have to call up Susan's relatives one by one, and he's not even sure if she's told her extended family that the family secret isn't a secret anymore. He's gotten the impression that the news isn't the kind that would go over well, and he's not convinced that's simply bias from his father-in-law's questionably subtle displeasure.
There might be more to it than he knows, of course. There always seems to be. As much as he's told, it rarely seems to be the whole story.
Some day, he might prove to Susan's family that their marriage wasn't a mistake.
Given that he brought someone from the Huntsclan home with him, however, he doubts that day will be remotely soon.
Jonathan slips on his coat and reaches back to pat his back pocket to make sure he still has his wallet, and by the time he turns around, Rose is standing in the hallway, watching him with solemn eyes.
Somehow, she's already been to the kitchen to retrieve Susan's old jacket, and he never heard the telltale squeak of that one floorboard by the entrance.
Every little bit he learns about the childhood she and his son must have had seems to make his stomach turn.
"You should still be asleep," he says, futilely trying to figure out if there's any accusation in her expression.
"We're going together."
"You'll heal faster if you get more rest."
"I'm already healing faster after that potion." She closes the distance between them. "Let's go. I shouldn't stay here."
He doesn't try to argue with her. Instead, he grabs the last of his things—including the travel mug, just in case, despite having the other portion of the potion safely in the flask in his breast pocket—and hesitates over the car keys, looking over for her opinion. It might be dark out, but they're leaving early enough that they'll arrive before they need to either way. Still, the food may not be hot by the time they get back if they go on foot.
Rose shakes her head, but since she prefers to walk, Jonathan decides to run back to the utility room to grab two more things: the unlabelled bottle of healing potion and the (labelled) bottle of painkillers. He's not wholly clear on the dosage of the potion, admittedly, but he doesn't trust Rose to be half as healthy as she pretends. If they're walking, he wants to have something in case she needs it.
She spends as much time looking behind them as she does looking ahead of them—and everywhere else, for that matter. He talks to her about small, inconsequential things. She never answers, but no one they pass on the street gives them a second look.
When he turns to walk past the shop, however, she catches his arm and pulls him back around the corner. "Let me."
"I'm not sure—"
"I am. Wait here."
Jonathan has no idea how long she'll be and doesn't ask; he doubts she knows the answer right now. He pulls out his cell phone and holds it to his ear before leaning against the brick of the building behind him. It's an excuse. It may not be a very good excuse, but it's an excuse, and even the act of holding something he can't fiddle with gives him something to do.
He never used to know how hard waiting could be.
Well, no, that's not quite true.
He'd always tried to turn waiting into an opportunity, time that he was free to do something else that consequentially distracted him from whatever he was waiting for, but there were a few times in his life that had never worked.
The breathless eon between his proposal and Susan's acceptance, for one, even though he'd known she'd say yes because they'd talked about it long before he'd offered her a ring.
The birth of his children, for another, and the first few months of Haley's life, despite her being healthy and not giving them any more reason to worry over her than any other new parents.
Now, he isn't waiting for his family's safe return, for all of this to be over. He is finally privy to what had once been whispered conversations that had dropped off the moment he'd entered the room, and he has his own part to play.
It's hard not to feel like an imposter, though.
He's pretending that he can help. He's pretending that he knows enough of what he's doing to make well-informed decisions. He's pretending that he isn't terrified of making a mistake from which he cannot recover, from doing something that will cost him everything.
He feels caught in a balancing act between doing what feels right and what he knows the others—particularly his father-in-law—would expect of him. He wants to protect his family and to help those who are in his power to help. He wants to ask more questions—about Jake, about Rose, about the Huntsclan and the magical world—but he doesn't want to push too hard, too fast, or pry into secrets he hasn't any right to know.
It very much feels like if he says the wrong thing, asks the wrong questions, or makes the wrong choice—
It feels like that would be enough to tip the balance.
Lao Shi's potion won't erase his mistakes; it'll just help to prevent future ones if he uses it before it's too late.
What if he doesn't recognize the point of no return because he's too aware of the risk and afraid that taking that step, making that choice, will take away his family forever?
What if he loses them for good because he didn't act instead of losing them temporarily because he did?
What if Rose isn't coming back? If he's wrong about her, if it was all an act, she could be heading for the Huntsclan right now.
No.
She wouldn't.
For Jake's sake, if no one else's, she wouldn't.
But just because he doesn't think he's wrong about her loyalties, it doesn't mean he's not wrong about anything else or won't make other mistakes.
He's still lost in his thoughts by the time Rose returns, and he doesn't protest when she insists they backtrack two blocks and start taking a more convoluted route towards Little Italy.
He can't hold his tongue forever, though. "Is it bad?"
She glances at him. "The pain?"
Right. She's not limping, but she should be, which means she's faking it well. He doubts Susan's remedy would have fixed her up that quickly. "Well, yes." It hadn't been what he'd meant, but it should have been. "I brought more painkillers if you want them."
"Not now. Besides, I've had worse," she says, which is hardly comforting if it's true.
"What's the state of the shop?"
"I've seen worse." That offers no comfort, either. "I think someone has been in there since, but I couldn't tell you what they found." She bites her lip. "It might not be safe for you to go home even if I don't go with you."
Is this why she hadn't wanted to take the car? Because she thought it would be harder for them to slip away if they had to sneak off?
"Let's worry about that after we have the food in our hands," he suggests, but she simply hums in response.
They might be able to eat in after all. Jonathan's been there often enough in the last year to know the family who runs it, and Maria isn't likely to object to the change. For all that she runs a tight ship, she has a soft heart.
It's funny. Jonathan can still remember the day Haley came home and announced that she wanted to go to this specific restaurant for her birthday the next week. At the time, she'd spun a tale of colliding with a teenager on her way to the shop—a teenager who'd been on his way to the skate park, apparently—and striking up a conversation, but now, looking back on it, Jonathan wonders if the recommendation had come from a more magical source.
Or if the restaurant itself has connections to the magical world he doesn't know about.
Maybe going to Haley's favourite restaurant hadn't been a good idea.
"It looks the same," Rose says, and Jonathan starts at the unexpected conversation. "The shop. Everything seems to be in its place, and everything seems to be there. It's not torn apart like I'd expect it to be if it had been thoroughly searched. It's just…. It feels different. I don't know what it is, but something's changed since we were there." She glances at him. "Do you know what kind of warding they use? If that's been dispelled as opposed to just being inactive, that might be the difference."
"I'm afraid I don't."
She frowns. "If the Huntsclan set up a proximity trigger, it would be for magic. Not something I'd set off, I mean. If it's something your people set up, it might not have activated until you left the shop, so in that case my going back there should have set it off. That might've been the difference I felt, but I can't imagine what benefit letting me leave unharmed would give unless they've managed to tag me with a magical tracker…."
Jonathan cannot begin to guess what magical security measures Lao Shi might have on the shop. He knows about none of them, if they even exist, but if they're somehow set to recognize him as friend rather than foe, that's no surprise. "I'm less worried about the shop than I am about others using it to find my family, but if that's already happening, I can't prevent it now. What I can do is stay with you. If we work together, we might be able to figure something out."
He's watching her face from the corner of his eye as he speaks, and she looks like she wants to say something, but in the end, she keeps her silence.
He keeps waiting for her to break it. She doesn't. He finally touches her arm to catch her attention before pointing towards the next cross street. "We're going that way."
Rose stops in her tracks. "I can't."
"I'm sorry?"
"I can't," she repeats, but she doesn't explain. When he asks if there's some kind of magical barrier, she simply shakes her head.
"Can we circle around? Is that a problem?" She looks uneasy, but he doesn't know why she'd have a problem with the restaurant now. Sure, he hadn't told her the exact address, but she'd known it was in Little Italy, and they'd crossed into that a few blocks ago, so—
Her eyes are darting everywhere, her hands are fists, and he can see her trembling.
"We can just go back," he offers instead. "The order is already paid for; I can phone and let them know they can give it away or—"
"No. No, I— I don't think anyone is watching. It'll already be too late if they are."
He blinks. "I beg your pardon?"
"Can I have your coat? Yours has a hood I can pull up."
He shrugs it off and hands it over to her without comment, and she immediately puts it on and pulls the hood as far forward as it will go.
"Should I ask—?"
"No."
"All right, but if you decide you want to talk later—"
"Just promise me you'll keep walking if anything happens."
He really doesn't like the sound of that. "Why are you suddenly expecting more immediate trouble than you were before?" She's been expecting trouble all along. He knows that. But if she were going to have a change of heart, he would have expected it after she'd scoped out the shop, not right now.
"Please promise me?"
"I don't want to promise that. I'd rather turn around if you don't feel safe."
"No, it's better to know. We should keep going."
Know what?
He doesn't ask, though.
He knows she won't answer.
"Then let's keep going," he says instead. She purses her lips at the lack of promise but doesn't protest again, letting him lead.
He's around the corner and a block away by the time he realizes she's not following him, and he has no idea when she stopped.
He doesn't want to call out her name—any of her names—in case she's right and they are being watched, but he's not willing to keep going without at least looking for her, so he starts to backtrack. He looks high and low for some sign of her—surely she'd find some way to give him a sign if someone had jumped out to nab her?—and quickly comes to the conclusion that if there are signs to be found, he doesn't know what to look for.
He's almost panicked to the point that he misses the faint sound from the alley.
Almost, but not quite.
Once he's past the dumpster, he can see her kneeling by the fire escape. It's dark, but it's not dark enough that he can't see her fingers reaching out to touch a discoloured blotch on the cement, and he swallows.
You should see the other girl, she'd said.
Well.
The other girl might not be here anymore, but he can guess where she'd been.
A quick look tells him that isn't the only bloodstain here, but it's certainly the biggest. "Rose?"
She doesn't jump, but she doesn't turn her head to look at him, either. "I think 23's been here. Maybe with 42, but he's usually reworking things from behind a computer and a stack of books, so if this is his work, he's further behind in his formulation than I'd expect."
"Is that a good thing?" It's not really the question he wants to ask, but it'll do.
She turns to look at him. "I'm not sure. This is still noticeably fresh, and I've seen potions wash more of the colour out of a bloodstain than this."
He's not sure why she's calling it a potion and not an industrial cleaner, but he suspects the answer lies with a questionable home brew and an utter lack of health and safety regulations. He doesn't want to call her on that when she's talking to him, though. He shouldn't ask for more than that.
"I've seen 23 come up with something better, too," Rose says softly, "which makes me think they only partially cleaned this scene on purpose."
"Why?" Jonathan asks before he remembers he wasn't going to ask for details.
Rose's mouth twists. "If 18 doesn't make it, it'll be easier to deal with me."
Jonathan looks at the bloodstain again and very deliberately does not say what he's thinking, which is that it might be less a question of 'if 18 doesn't make it' and more a statement of 'when 18 doesn't make it' or 'since 18 didn't make it'.
He's not well-versed on crime scenes. He doesn't even watch much of that sort of show on TV, and he couldn't begin to say how much those sorts of shows get wrong.
He does know how he feels after donating a mere pint of blood.
He also remembers the time he'd gone to donate plasma and the girl two chairs down from him had showered her attendant in blood. Not that it was the girl's fault in the slightest—she'd had the misfortune of having tricky veins and someone who was new to this entire process, if Jonathan had to guess—but after playing the unexpected game of horror movie special effects, they'd patched her up and had to let her go without taking anything. As donating plasma isn't half as quick as donating blood, Jonathan had watched the entire clean up process.
Some of the blood had gone astonishingly far.
Looking at this here, now—
The bloodstain is not tiny, and its breadth is not a matter of a smattered fan of droplets.
Still.
He doesn't know what means—both magical and mundane—the Huntsclan has when it comes to dealing with this sort of thing (be it on the healing side or the clean up side), and he isn't going to ask. He doesn't need to know. He isn't sure he wants to know.
"Come on. I can't stay here. I didn't see anyone stuck with surveillance duty, but someone found 18 and helped her, so even if she didn't tell them what happened, they'll be able to guess."
Rose shoos him out of the alley before he can think of what he should say to that.
His mind keeps circling back to the bloodstain and the realization of what had happened—or nearly happened, if 18's lucky. It's suddenly a lot easier to think of Rose as the Huntsgirl in the stories he's heard about the Huntsclan from the others as opposed to the Huntsgirl who traded his daughter for his son and is desperate enough to find Jake now that she's trusting a stranger.
Neither of them speaks until they reach the restaurant, and then he simply touches her arm and gestures towards it with a quiet, "In here."
Maria's dealing with a customer when they arrive, so he and Rose wait to the side as she finishes up. He holds the door open for the woman to wheel by when she's finished, receiving a small nod in acknowledgement and murmur of thanks before Maria turns her attention them. "Welcome to Familio Festevedro's, where we'll never let you frown." Her smile grows as she recognizes him. "Jonathan, you're becoming a stranger. Little Haley find a new place she fancies?"
Haley hasn't, which is just as well. Only a handful of tables are occupied, though that could be due to the late hour. There's a group of six in one corner, a couple of teenagers in the other, and a boy he suspects is Maria's son slaving over homework at the table nearest the register—the one overlooked by an animatronic giraffe. Susan has never been particularly fond of those things, but Jonathan's inner child has always appreciated them.
"Your place is still her favourite," Jonathan assures Maria. "We've just haven't been eating out lately." He sees Maria's gaze flit behind him and then linger on Rose, so he adds, "Haley's with her grandfather tonight, but this is Rose. She's, ah—"
"An exchange student," Rose interrupts. She's tugged down her hood, so while she doesn't offer her hand, he can see her smile. Maria returns it with a bright one of her own.
"Exchange student?" the boy at the table asks as he gets to his feet and starts towards them. "Where are you going? Millard Fillmore? That's where I go. Maybe we'll be in some classes together if it is. I mean, you look about my age. You might not be. But—"
"Arthur," Maria cuts in, her smile sharper than before, "don't bother our customers. Sit and finish your Spanish homework so I know you've done it."
"But Ma—"
"Sit."
He sits, and Maria turns back to Jonathan and Rose. "Sorry about that; Arthur's been spending far too much time watching videos on the internet and not enough of it doing his schoolwork, so now that the rush is over, I've had him working here where I can keep an eye on him."
Before Jonathan can reassure her that it's fine, Rose laughs. "It's okay." Turning in Arthur's direction, she adds, "I've heard about that mythobiology class."
Arthur, who hasn't even begun the pretense of ignoring their conversation and concentrating on his homework, makes a face. "You mean you've heard about Rotwood."
Rose clearly has, since in four quick steps she's sitting at the table and joking with Arthur about him. Jonathan would be surprised, but he doubts mythobiology is a common class. Even if Rose is wrong and it's just mythology, Jonathan's surprised it's being taught at—whatever level Arthur's at. Is he in high school yet? Middle school? Jonathan's not looked into any of that, and he can't remember which one Millard Fillmore is, but maybe, if Jake decides to come home once this is all over—
"We'll let them be," Maria says before gesturing to one of the empty tables. "Please, sit. I'm afraid your order isn't quite ready, but I'll check on its progress for you."
She bustles off even as Jonathan tells her that's not necessary, but he steps into the dining area and pulls out a chair at the table behind Rose and Arthur.
For all that Rose is carrying on a conversation with Arthur—not that hard; it appears he's happy to talk—she seems distracted. Jonathan catches her glancing towards the back corner more than once, so he's not entirely surprised when she excuses herself and gets up.
Jonathan doesn't have a chance to say anything encouraging to Arthur before Maria returns, order in hand. "Here you are with your usual. Susan out, too?"
It's really just as well Rose has gone off or she'd have learned everyone's names from Maria. "It's a busy night for her," he says by way of agreement, "so it's just Rose and I. I was trying to get her settled, so we were talking, and time ran away on us. I thought I should give her something more substantial to eat than carrot sticks, and you know I'm not the cook in the family, so I figured we'd pick something up." He hesitates, glancing towards the back table where Rose is speaking with the teens he'd noticed earlier. "It's late enough that I didn't think we should stay in."
"If you change your mind, just stay right there and I'll bring you what you need," Maria says. "We're not closed yet." She follows his gaze. "Those two will be here till the end if I don't miss my guess."
"Classmates of Arthur's doing a group project?" he guesses, but she shakes her head.
"Arthur doesn't know them, but they've got some kind of uniform on, so I'm sure they attend a special academy somewhere. I'll have to see if they need another basket of breadsticks. Please excuse me."
Rose doesn't return even after Maria checks in on the table, so Jonathan gets to his feet and goes over himself. "You about ready to go, Rosebud, or did you want to stay and eat here?"
The nickname slips past his lips before he can think about it, but she goes still in an instant, and he's sure he made a mistake.
The two boys she's with stare open-mouthed at him. Finally, the shorter one turns to her and repeats, "Rosebud?"
Rose purses her lips. "Think about what I said, okay?"
"Yeah," says the taller one. "Okay. We'll think about it." He gives her a smile even as his friend crosses his arms and fixes them both with a look that clearly conveys he doesn't intend to think about it at all.
Jonathan swallows as he studies the two—and Rose with them. She knows them, that much is obvious, but more than that—
Tall, lean, bit of a bucktooth? His number is 89, not 99.
Jonathan's eyes slip down to the circular patch on the taller boy's arm. 89. The boy beside him bears a similar patch with a different number. Neither uniform—for Maria's right; those are uniforms—bears the name of a school or a crest he recognizes, but they're the same colour as that of the jacket Rose had been wearing when Jonathan had first met her.
Whatever their true names, these two are part of the Huntsclan.