Page 67 of Inkpot Gods

“We can call David,” says Judy. “They’re old enough not to need a babysitter, even if no one feels safe leaving them alone, and they like him. He’ll eat pizza and play video games with them, and maybe they won’t worry too much about everyone being out.”

“Or we can get Smita to stay home and keep an eye on them,” says Erin.

“Oh, so my girlfriend gets to walk into danger because you say she has to, but your girlfriend gets to have a pizza party? How is that fair?” asks Artemis.

“First off, Smita isn’t my girlfriend,” says Erin. “I am, sadly, irredeemably straight. Smita is my … Roger, I need a word.”

“Expiation,” says Roger. “Piaculum. Atonement.”

“Atonement,” says Erin, seizing on the first word she can actually recognize. “Smita is my atonement for everything I did, especially to her, while I was still trying to force the Doctrine to become manifest. I killed her so many times that the reality around the event started to get thin, and she started to remember what I’d done. She still has nightmares, because there’s no reaching back and wringing that out of her timeline. She’s not a Lunar. She’s not an alchemist. She’s a biologist. She’s a perfectly normal human woman who became aware of the alchemical world because it killed her so many times that awareness became a survival strategy.”

“I still don’t like it,” says Artemis.

“I still don’t care,” counters Erin. “I have been through so much bullshit for you people, and the least you can do is not threaten Smita. She’s one of the only good things I’ve ever done, and if you want me to risk her when I know a reset isn’t an option anymore, you can go fuck yourself.”

“All right, all right,” says Roger. “We shouldn’t fight. We’ll ask Smita what she wants to do, and whatever her answer is, that’s what we’ll go with, okay?”

Erin doesn’t look happy. Neither does Artemis. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Roger turns to Judy.

“I know he just left, but can you please call David?” he asks, stressing the “please” so that it will remain a request, rather than becoming a commandment. “We’re going to need him if this is going to work.”

“All right,” says Judy obligingly. “When did you want to go?”

“Tonight, if we can,” he says. “I don’t like the idea of leaving this thing lingering out there any longer than we already have. Once you’ve cracked the seal on the ancient evil, it’s best to get it dealt with as quickly as you can.”

“Is Asphodel really an ancient evil?” asks Judy, sounding half-amused.

Roger looks at her gravely. “I would put a stake through her heart myself if I knew where it was hidden,” he says. “She’s the root of everything that’s happened in my lifetime, and I’ve repeated this life a lot of times. We need her to stop threatening our family.”

“All right,” says Judy, and heads for the back door, already pulling out her phone.

The guest room is large enough to be confusing, with two large windows looking out on the backyard and a bed big enough to get lost in. Lilianne looks around herself in bewilderment, eyebrows lifted high, before snapping her attention back to Smita. “How big is this house?” she asks.

“As big as Roger and Dodger need it to be,” says Smita. “This whole place is sort of negotiable, in terms of its relationship to physical space. There’s a house here, even if most people can’t see it half the time, and I think it’s two stories, maybe three bedrooms?”

“That’s ridiculous,” says Lilianne. “This house is much larger than you’re describing.”

“Yes, it is,” agrees Smita. “We all have our own bedrooms, even Kim and Tim, and you’ve seen the library. Roger and Dodger have offices, too. There’s no way this whole house fits inside the footprint of the house you’d see if you went outside. You get used to it, living with the manifest Doctrine. They do what pleases them, first and always, and they don’t like being cramped.”

Lilianne sits down on the edge of the bed. “This isn’t supposed to be happening,” she says.

“I know this isn’t how you were expecting to spend your day, but I promise, they’re not bad people. They’re not malicious or vindictive. You’ll be fine when this is over.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Smita frowns. “So what did you mean?”

“Reed was following Asphodel’s blueprint to reach the Doctrine, to call it down in human flesh and convince it to stay, because he wanted humanity to have access to its power. It wasn’t supposed to be … to be two people hiding in their house and doing whatever the hell they wanted to do! It was supposed to be for everyone!”

“You mean it was supposed to be for the alchemists.” Smita’s voice is cold: for the first time since they got back to the house, she sounds like she and Lilianne might not be on the same side.

“Well, no … it was for everyone, but the alchemists would be the ones to interface directly with the Doctrine, yes. If we tried pushing the manifest Doctrine in front of the whole world, they’d rip the host apart.”

“You don’t think very highly of humanity, do you?”

“I—”

“Think we need to be protected from all the secret dangers that we can’t quite see, that no one’s bothered to tell us about.”