I gaped at Vergis. “You were homeschooled?”
He glared at me, presumably fondly. “Look at me. No school on Earth I could go to.”
“Poor Muffin. We kept telling you, if you want to go to a school, it would have to be a school on Aër, which would’ve meant a boarding school, and you didn’t want to go away to a boarding school.”
I blinked at him. “People used to board at my old school. They had to share rooms, and you couldn’t really pick. Also, they had a curfew.”
Kinnek nodded. “See? You wouldn’t have liked that at all.”
Vergis crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. “Like I was ever asked.”
I looked at Kinnek. “I guess… I mean, I thought there was the Raiken. Isn’t that like a school?”
Kinnek nodded. “Yes, but a boarding school. Rory, tell me, who tucked the students in at your school?”
I cocked my head. “No one? I mean, they tucked themselves in. Not that I ever asked about that.” It had never occurred to me, seeing as only some of the au pairs had bothered, the really good ones, and even then only until I was maybe ten. I glanced at Vergis. Had Charles and Kinnek read stories to him before bed? The thought made me oddly jealous.
Kinnek nodded. “You see?”
Vergis stood. “I’m going to feed the bunnies now.”
“Aw!” Kinnek elbowed me. “He’s cross with us now, but he knows I’m right about the tucking in.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Vergis walked out, but I could see on Kinnek’s face that he knew all the talk about tucking little Vergis in had made me sullen, and I hadn’t even noticed.
“It’s not so bad about the bunnies, really. It’s how magic is fueled.” He put a hand on my back. “You know, there are chocolate chip cookies in the freezer. Charlie made them, and they’re to die for. How about I make us two with a nice big cup of almond milk?”
It wasn’t so much the bunnies, but I couldn’t tell Kinnek that. Besides, Charles made the almond milk fresh almost every day now that there were so many people around, and it was delicious. I was nodding almost before Kinnek finished speaking.
“Do you want me to help?”
Kinnek chuckled. “Snapdragon, I want you to correct the mistakes I marked on your practice sheet. And try for a neater script, hmm?”
Well. I got a feeling Vergis’s homeschooling had been a lot of this stick and chocolate cookie pedagogy. No wonder Kinnek called him Muffin.
Five days in, on a balmy afternoon, I stepped back into the guest room I shared with Inkiri on the second floor. Kinnek had been making me write Lugarran words in the unfamiliar script for the past two hours, and I was exhausted from concentrating and not taking any breaks. Chocolate chip cookies, as it turned out, were reserved for very special occasions. I was looking for a quiet corner to hide in for a half hour or so before I had to correct my writing.
Inkiri found me moments later, clicked at me, licked my throat, and…handed me my backpack from behind his back. My apocalypse backpack.
My mouth fell open, and my eyes went wide. “How…?”
“I asked Vergis to help me get it back for you, Sadir.” The absolutely bestest of mates sounded smug. As he had every right to.
I took my backpack from him, incredulously running my fingers along the zipper. “You and Vergis went to Ireland while I was doing writing exercises?”
Inkiri tilted his head. “I may have asked Kinnek to make sure you were busy while we were gone.”
With slow reverence, I opened the bag and went through the contents. Everything was still there. Everything I’d barely missed, and the cat socks Inkiri had gotten for me the day—the very hour—he’d found and saved me. When he’d made it so I wasn’t alone anymore.
“It’s… Everything’s still in here.”
Inkiri’s hand smoothed up and down my side while he regarded me, apparently utterly satisfied by my reaction.
“The humans weren’t interested.” He chuckled. “Vergis said they would’ve looked for guns or other weapons, or for magical things maybe, but no one is interested in your pretty cat socks.”
“He’s such a philistine.” My eyes were starting to sting, and I rummaged around in the backpack to hide it. There was my phone, my charger, a candy bar, my clothes. Everything I’d owned since the monsters had come.
