It seemed to Xan that theyâd asked the right questionâor used the right nudge, as the case had beenâand Isaiah opened up, in a wayâless like a blossom and more like a book dropping naturally open to an oft-read passage. They couldnât be still, for all that their childhood had ingrained in them that fidgeting was rude, so they kept working. They carefully pulled wires free, trailed skilled fingers carefully over them as each new one was untangled, and deftly taped over missing links in the circuit. Mostly, though, they listened, leaning forward with interest, nodding and smiling and offering encouraging âuh huhâs when they felt right.
And oh, was it worth their while.
It was like a fantastic story told to children to help them sleepâwhat did they call them in the Solids? Ohâfairy tales. The brave prince or knight vanquishes the wicked enemy king and goes on to rule in kindness and peace until, presumably, the universe gets so goody-goody positive that it implodes in on itself. Ezekiel as the⊠whatever he was, ascending to the role of Teapot King, was much less nauseatingly fuzzy, thoughâand more downright hilarious. They bent with laughter, head tucked against their knee in an attempt to muffle the cackles of delight that poured out of their slight frame. âThatâsâŠthatâs fucking glorious,â they finally said, wiping at their watery eyes with a fist. âIâm sorry, go on, Iâm listening.â
The other stories werenât as amusingâat least not in the same way. Emotions that could control the weather were interestingâbut the real takeaway from that tale was Isaiahâs apparent ability to inject peace into the situation. Xan was good at talking themself out of problems, of course, but they also talked themself into problems as often, and peace just sort ofâŠwasnât their strength, period. They watched the tiny warden for a few brief seconds, head tilted to the side curiously.
Yes, Isaiah was a baby, but that clearly didnât mean he wasnât skilled or capableâthe same way it didnât mean Sebbers, or even Luke, werenât skilled and capableâand as they slid the last loop out of the last string of lights, a soft tug in their chest reminded them that capability didnât exempt them from the need to be protected.
That tug was really annoying, now that they thought about it. How much trouble had that gotten them into over the years?
Their gaze slid briefly toward Will in answer, but before their thoughts could slip too far down that particular slope, Isaiah had started another storyâsomething about Zeke and his favorite knife that was only a bit less funny than it was likely meant to be, because in all honesty, Xan was just sentimental enough to be able to relateâand went on to one that had their eyebrows raising in curiosity.
Rolling the Jeep sounded fun. Very fun. Probably too fun to be one hundred percent safe, and they desperately wanted in. They waited until Isaiah had finished the tale, then rose, brushing some of the dust off their pants and holding a hand out to help the warden stand. âOkay, I realize weâre about to cover your car in very pretty and breakable twinkly lights, so making the car roll is very ill-advised right now, but if youâd like a change of copilot sometime, please let me come. That sounds amazing,â they said brightly, holding out the first length of lights, ready for hanging. âLetâs do this.â
Setting the lights was easy enough to take very little coordination, and Xan was happy to let Isaiah drape most of them himselfâhis jeep, his call, after all! They followed his lead, keeping the tangles from forming again and checking the connections one last time. When Isaiah seemed satisfied with their placement, Xan settled once more under the hood, twisting and taping wires together and into devices of their own invention. One more brush of their fingers over their handiwork, and they turned to Isaiah, beaming. It felt right. âThere you go! She should be ready for you, if you wanna start her up!â
After a quick, surreptitious glance at Will and Ezekiel, they pulled down the hood carefully enough to ensure that no fingers or bulbs got trapped in the works, then slid their taser from their sock. âIâll watch from over there,â they said, scurrying to put the car between them and their brother.
It wasnât time yet, but it would be, soon enough.
Will, meanwhile, considered Zekeâs question for several seconds, and with more solemnity than it probably meritedâas if they had all the time in the world. There wasnât, really, anything else he needed to knowânot right now, at least. But it didnât seem that Isaiah and Xan were quite finished yet, and as much as he, personally, found comfort in silence, he also didnât want to make things unnecessarily awkward with their new sort-of partner. The usual process of things would count, right?
âItâs pretty straightforward,â Will said, nodding indicatively toward his sibling. âXan will give you a card with one of five possible burner numbers. You send a message from your numberâeven if itâs also a temporary oneâand Xan will save it in the database.â No need to mention that the database was a note in Xanâs phone. "If we need to get in touch with you, we will. Weâll also check in from time to time to make sure the number is still good.â
âŠadmittedly, though, it was Xan he was talking about, so the check-in message would probably read something along the lines of âstl u?â, but it counted.
âYouâre welcome to antagonize Xan as much as youâd like on any number youâre givenâbut be aware we may dump the number at any time with no warning. Since your particular contract involves being able to contact us at any time, weâll also put you in touch with a third party who can always reach Xan. His nameâs Plutoâheâs a tattoo artist north of here. I think the two of you would get along.â
An image of the other man in question formed in Willâs mind, thenâof Pluto poking at Xanâs waist while the latter, flustered and warbling, tried to shove him off. ââŠ..probably too well, now that I think about it.â Will didnât often think of his sibling as pitiable, but in this rare instance, the âPoor Xanâ, accompanied by a muted chuckle, was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
"Heâll relay your requests as well as any messages you need sent. Once we receive them, Xan will get back to you.â Alright, so it was all slightly less than straightforward, but Will had no doubt that Ezekiel had been able to follow it all.
The next time the jeep went rolling across the sand would have to be a time when the very breakable lights were no longer present, Isaiah knew (and was just a little bit glad that Xan also acknowledged it), but a change in copilots might not be the worst thing. Rather, he reasoned silently, starting to wind the lights around a front bar of the car's roll cage, having someone along in the passenger's seat who was less likely to take a death grip on the nearest thing to hand and be a more terrified than giddy screaming coming from his right could make for a much better time than the last one. "Last time, we almost got stuck upside-down in loose sand," the warden muttered. "and Zeke got smacked in the nose with his phone because he didn't secure it before we went over."
He paused, silently passing the strand of lights from hand to hand, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the bulbs in front of him. "I probably should've warned him," he added thoughtfully, almost more to himself than to Xan. "Hm."
Shaking his head, the warden continued setting the lights around the car, as though he was decorating a Christmas tree rather than a vehicle he'd once careened around the streets barely a foot in front of a pursuing tea set as a getaway car. He talked as he did so, not quite chattering and not quite musing.
Xan got more snippets of the Sly family, whether that was stories of the target on Leah's wall, across from the door to her room ("She's the only one who can land a knife from the other end of the hall. We're pretty sure she uses them for more than chopping carrots, when she disappears into the kitchen."), or Micah's tattoos ("He asked Jacoby to give him something related to a protector god, and I guess he had Badb or ThĂĄnh GiĂłng in mind, but what he got was a cat for Bastet, instead. She's been good for him, I think."), or Moses' ugly holiday sweaters ("He makes them that way on purpose, but Miriam was excited last year because hers had a big horned skull across the front in festive colors."), or the time when, growing up, a very small Miriam and Ezekiel had taken their uncle's crossbow, designed and built to be proportionate to the near-giant of a man, and decided that the garage was the perfect place to test out whether, with one of them holding the barrel and the other drawing back the bolt and string, they could feasibly fire the weapon ("They could, but they were also inside. So the bolt punched a hole through the garage door and nearly took my mom's ear off when she was bringing groceries over.").
His little tales, longer this time than the last and requiring slightly more explanation of the cast of very real characters, didn't end when the lights were placed. Isaiah perched himself in the glassless window of the driver's door, heels braced against the drab green siding, and finished the last story as Xan disappeared under the jeep's hood. He was a little awed by the inventor, sometimes. Maybe by the way their mind worked, but that wasn't right. With his warden-cousins, it could be boiled down to singular things: the way they defended their assigned tears in the fabric of the universe, the way they approached their assignment with singular focus. It wasn't just the shadow's ability to create.
He didn't have the ability to put it into words or coherent, cohesive thought by the time Xan reappeared from the depths of the car, though, and the thought was stored somewhere in the back of his mind for later. For now, it took very little effort to lean backwards into the jeep, unhook the keys from a belt loop, and start up the engine.
Rather than blazing forth in a blinding, blazing visual cacophony, the jeep glowed. Light reflected softly off mirrors, off the paint, while the dark interior seemed to swallow it down. The warden was silhouetted in his seat for a moment before he hopped lightly down, took a few steps over to the shadow and turned to survey their joint handiwork, hands propping themselves on his hips. "Not too bad, huh?" His smile was almost a query, something about the expression lending itself to the question mark at the end of his sentence.
On the other side of the car, before it lit itself up like a small beacon, 'slightly less than straightforward' was an understatement. Ezekiel's eyebrows crawled up towards his hairline as Will expounded on what would happened when the hunter was needed (or wanted, since the two shadows seemed to have things covered most of the time). Cards, burner phones, check-ins, numbers that might not be in play at any given time, third parties, middlemen--if he didn't know it was all necessary to guard against things like the more uncompromising members of his own family, he would have thought the two a little paranoid. But was it really paranoia if they were out to get you?
"Sure." Sarcasm provided a thick cushion for the words to fall on. "Not complicated at all. I'm shocked you have such a simple system." He understood it, though, he really did: both the reason for the process and the process itself. Shaking his head and drumming one heel idly against the tire to his right, he started to ask, "So tell me about thi-" and never got to finish.
The jeep, which had begun to fade into the darkness as though it was a forgotten prop meant only to give the barest sense of setting to the scene, lit up without warning--or without warning to anyone who hadn't been keeping an eye on Xan and Isaiah, a group whose number included (and may have been limited to) Zeke. His body moved almost without prompting, feet bracing against the ATV on which he was still sitting sideways, one hand reaching towards what was undoubtedly weaponry stored at the small of his back. It never made it there.
Good sense and the recognition of what it was he was looking at stopped the hunter before he could draw a blade or a gun and the whole thing ended in a shake of his head, shoulders slumping out of their attentive tightening and into their usual, more relaxed slouch. "This is what we get for leaving them alone together, huh?" A little warning voice, the kind that reminded him to stay alert and not stare mindlessly and sightlessly at the passing flat scenery when he drove across the midwest, reminded him that a light-up car was probably not the only thing Xan and Isaiah could churn out, given the chance, and while his shoulders didn't show it, that was worth worrying about.
