Chapter 61: It’s All a Mystery

Let it Be; Blackmill Ft Veela

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If anyone asked, and so far she’d been asked by at least five people a total of around twelve times, she was fine. Liberty Lee was not depressed. Or at least, she wasn’t depressed for the reasons everyone seemed to think she was.

It was a little more complicated than having a crush on Morgyn, but it wasn’t like Liberty wanted to talk about it.

For the most part, she’d much rather pretend it hadn’t happened at all. That wasn’t working in her favour so well, but she supposed that was to be expected, too. She had physics homework to do, a term paper to write, toilets to clean, and nightmares to pretend weren’t upsetting her sleep patterns.

Listen, she was really tempted to get super drunk and pass out just to get some rest already. It was like Morgyn was here, and her subconscious knew she had to stay functional to take care of the brunet. And then when Morgyn was gone, all the demons reared their heads at once. She’d be pissed off if she wasn’t exasperated.

Conveniently, too, she’d lost Morgyn’s number.

In the meantime, the one was still trying to press assault with a weapon charges against her and was having precisely no luck at all. He was going to do something stupid, she just knew it. Well, he’d better hope his stupidity didn’t clue Ezio in to what happened while he was gone when he got back, or from what she heard, not even god could save him.

Frankly, Libs would pay to see that.

Liberty sat completely silent at the breakfast bar, picking at her rice-oatmeal. It was just white rice, but she coated it in sugar, butter, and a bit of milk like one would oatmeal. It worked out. Summer and Travis were having a rather animated discussion in the living room about something, but Liberty hadn’t been paying enough attention to know what they were talking about.

It was inevitable, when Summer eventually sat down at the bar next to her. “Hey,” she said, leaning over and bumping into Liberty’s shoulder with her own. “You doing okay?”

Not really. “Just fine,” she said. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Summer answered. “You seem a bit too quiet anymore.”

Liberty snorted. “I was never very loud to begin with,” she said. “That was always your job.”

“Not really,” Summer said.

“You got even louder after you joined the cheer squad,” Liberty said. “Gimme an L-O-U-D!”

Summer rolled her eyes. “Alright, I get it,” she said. “You know, if you need to talk, I’ll always listen.”

Yeah, Liberty knew that. It didn’t make it easy to talk about, and really, this whole thing seemed a little messed up. It wasn’t her trauma to have. Then again, the most violent thing she’d ever seen in her life was that one time Charity had crashed into a fence on a bicycle. And then Liberty had stabbed one of them.

Maybe this was excusable.

If she’d just not lost track of Morgyn in the first place, then none of this would’ve happened. There was no sense in thinking that way, because it wouldn’t change anything. She couldn’t help feeling that way, though.

“There’s nothing to say,” Liberty said. “Things happened. Now they’re over.”

Summer made a face at her. “But are they over in your head?”

Of course they were. What kind of question was that? She wasn’t constantly thinking about it over and over and over, she wasn’t replaying it in her mind trying to find some better thing she could’ve done, she didn’t wake up to the sound of Morgyn’s screaming ringing in her ears every other night or so, she didn’t randomly jerk awake at 3am for no reason, and she didn’t spook at nothing constantly.

“I just don’t understand why it won’t go away,” Liberty said.

Summer released a sigh, reaching over and taking Liberty’s hand. “Because that’s not how these things work, necessarily,” she said. “It’s okay not to be okay, you know?”

“I have other things to do,” Liberty said. “I can’t spend the time on being upset over something that didn’t even happen to me.”

“It happened to someone you care about,” Summer said. “That’s close enough. And it’s okay to need some time to yourself, to take care of you. You take care of everyone else, Libs, why not yourself?”

Yeah, being honest about it, Liberty didn’t know. Except that she wasn’t accustomed to anyone really giving a damn how she felt, and had never really bothered caring about what she felt either. Her parents cared, maybe. But they always seemed to care more about carrying on the family name and all that.

Honour and prestige, right?

She didn’t understand it. That was probably why she wasn’t a doctor.

“You really like Morgyn, don’t you?” Summer asked.

Liberty looked over at her, and then back down to her rice-oatmeal. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Morgyn’s got a boyfriend, and I’d just be in the way.”

It was more complicated than that, Liberty knew, but Summer didn’t need to. Everything was difficult and Liberty didn’t know how she felt about anything anymore. And most of the time, she just told herself it didn’t matter, anyway, and then her feelings flared up, totally as a fuck you, and proved her wrong.

But there were a lot of reasons why Liberty had no intention of ever saying anything to Morgyn about liking him. However, if anyone ever fucked with Morgyn again, she may turn into a violent psycho. And maybe keeping a decent distance was a good idea, in that case.

Or maybe she was using it as an excuse to pretend she didn’t feel anything at all. She sure wished she didn’t.

“I’m sorry, Liberty,” Summer said.

Liberty shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Even if he didn’t, it’d never work out.”

“What makes you say that?” Summer asked.

“He’s way out of my league,” Liberty answered with a snort. “And sometimes just being around him is painful. He’s got scars in him, hurts that run so deep they’ve become a part of him. Morgyn needs things I don’t think I can give him, that’s all.”

* * *

“Charity, enough,” Trinity said, shuffling around the kitchen as she made dinner. “We’re not missing your cousin’s wedding because you don’t want to wear a dress.”

“Liberty doesn’t have to go, why do I?” Charity said, crossing her arms and sliding down in her seat on the couch.

Liberty just raised an eyebrow, drinking some of her tea.

“Because Liberty is twenty two,” Trinity answered. “When you’re twenty two, you can skip your cousins’ weddings. Until then, you’re going.”

“It’s not fair,” Charity said under her breath. “I didn’t ask to be born second.”

Sometimes, Charity was awfully spoiled, and in other ways, she was very much not spoiled at all. Their mother was a little more lenient with Charity in some ways than she had been raising Liberty, but there were still lines that neither of them were allowed to cross.

Skipping important family functions, those were on the list.

Liberty had spent her entire life hating that she was Chinese. Hating that her family was so different. She had the one friend that was also Chinese, and then never made another Chinese friend again. When that friend was gone, and the other Asian kids in school tried to make friends with her, she’d push them away, because she didn’t want to be that stuck up Asian that only hung out with other Asians.

Maybe that was why she ended up with the whitest best friends known to man. Blond hair, blue eyes. Okay Travis’s eyes were brown, but close enough.

Sure, she’d learnt Mandarin, but that was only for the job opportunities. She still ate rice with every meal because she didn’t know how else to cook, but she used to yell at her mother for making things that had rice included. Demanded to know why they couldn’t eat chicken nuggets and burgers for dinner like every other family did. For a while there, she’d barely ever gone home.

She wouldn’t be going to the wedding, because she had no interest in seeing that side of the family. The side of the family that only ever called her by her Chinese name. She didn’t answer to it anymore, and when they called her by that name and she didn’t answer, you know someone’s grandma was going to get pissed.

But slowly, a little at a time, she found the pride in who and what she was again. And now, she seemed to be trying to reclaim everything she’d never wanted to be at a far more rapid pace. Maybe it was because unbinding her magic, it’d made her start remembering things she’d tried to forget.

Her grandfather’s guidance, her grandmother’s wisdom, the little things they’d tell her about the natural world and how things were all connected together in ways you’d never expect. How they’d tell her that, no matter how much she wanted to be someone else, the only person she could ever be was her.

She hated being Chinese so much at one time she’d even been the first one in her family to start spelling it Lee. It was supposed to be Li.

Charity stood up, stomping off somewhere to sulk.

Trinity released a sigh. “Sometimes, I wish your sister was more like you,” she said.

Liberty snorted. “No you don’t,” she said. “I was a terror at her age.” What with the complaining about being too Chinese thing, and all.

“I don’t know,” Trinity said, “you came around.”

“She will, too, mom,” Liberty answered. She set her teacup down on the table, her hands resting on either side of it.

Trinity released a breath, setting the dishtowel in her hand down, and shuffling over to sit down next to Liberty. One of her hands rested on Liberty’s wrist.

“You seem like something’s bothering you,” Trinity said.

Yeah, she was sure she did. “Out of curiosity,” Liberty said, “has anyone in our family been… you know… a little weird?”

Trinity laughed. “Of course,” she answered. “Most of our family’s a little weird, Liberty.”

“Like, random electrical shorts kind of weird?” Liberty asked.

Trinity’s laughed quieted down. She gave Liberty a strange look, but then stood up, and took Liberty’s hand, tugging her off somewhere. They went down into the basement, and Trinity let her hand go, turning on the light. “Now let’s see here… where did I put it…”

Liberty raised an eyebrow, watching her mother rummage around in the boxes. It seemed like several minutes, before she sat up straight, one hand raising to her head, and then turned around and went after a box under the stairs.

“Aha!” she exclaimed. And when she returned, Trinity handed Liberty a leather-bound book, and a very long box. Liberty took the book, sitting down on the stairs to flip open the cover. It smelled and sounded old, with the crinkling the pages were doing, but the pages were somehow in decent shape.

It was all written in Chinese, though. She may need to remember how to read and write in Chinese to make any sense of this.

Trinity knelt down at the base of the stairs with the long box, wiggling the lid off. Inside it was a velvet wrapped something. Trinity took it out, unwrapping it to reveal a sword hilt.

“These have been passed down through the Li family for generations,” Trinity said. “That is our family’s spell book. In it, you’ll find recipes for tonics and potions that no magic user now can teach you, the semantics of ancient Chinese magic and how to tap into it in your spell work, varying spells, and the basics of how to use sky magic, whether you’re near a sky nexus or not. Our family tends to specialise in it.”

Liberty looked up at her from the pages, and then nodded at the sword hilt. “And what’s that?” she asked.

“This, is Longjian, the dragon sword,” Trinity answered. “It was forged in the Tang Dynasty for our family, to one of our ancestors’ specifications. I don’t know what it does, but I’ve heard its power is quite great, and it’s said that only a Li can figure out how to tap into its power and use it. But be warned, as these things often go, you’re not supposed to do bad things with it or it’ll kill you.”

Of course.

“It’s pretty boring looking for a fancy magic sword,” Liberty said. It had a plain silver blade, and a simple blue handle wrap.

“The sword is the treasure,” Trinity answered. “And I think it can afford to be a little plain.”

Liberty released a sigh, closing the spell book and resting her arms on it in her lap. “You knew,” she said.

Trinity shrugged, wrapping the sword back up in its velveteen cover and sliding it back into the box. “I knew it was a possibility,” she said. “But I didn’t know for sure whether you’d inherited the ability to use magic, any more than I know if Charity did or not. Your grandfather might’ve known. He gave me both of these, to pass onto you when the time was right. I suspect by the time is right, he means you’ve started having trouble with your electricity.”

Liberty looked down at the book. “You know,” she said, “I said something about how nothing really changes, just my own perception of things, how I’ve always been like this and it’s just that now I’m aware of it, but it feels like everything changed, mom.”

Trinity released a breath, shuffling around the sword’s box and sitting down next to Liberty. She rested her head against her shoulder. “Everything did change,” she said. “You’re never the same person you were yesterday, and sometimes the difference between yesterday-Liberty and today-Liberty is massive. But you were never meant to stay yesterday-Liberty. Every day, you become a stronger, wiser Liberty, so keep chasing tomorrow-Liberty.”

* * *

So, what exactly was she supposed to even do with a sword? Chinese lady-knights weren’t really a thing, and besides, the world didn’t have any use for those. Unless this fancy sword could turn into a steak knife, or maybe a magic wand, she had very little use for it. It’d be better off as a hairpin, even.

Liberty trudged home with it and the book anyway. The book would be useful. Translating it might be difficult, there were over 50,000 Hanzi in existence, but only around 20,000 in use. You needed to know around 1,500-2,000 to be fluent, but Liberty only knew about 500 of them. And this had been written by ancestors that were probably using characters no one had seen in use for centuries.

Well, the universe loved to make her life difficult. Why not?

Liberty didn’t really know if she wanted this. If she wanted to be this special right now, when really, she’d rather stuff herself under the bed in her room, and read until she turned thirty. There was pain, and confusion, and she wanted to go find Morgyn and never leave the brunet’s side again and also never see Morgyn again for the rest of her life at the same time.

It was pretty hard to figure out what you wanted, when you felt like you wanted two completely opposing things at once.

On the way, she stopped by a flower vendor stall not far from home. There were bunches of flowers, a good selection of which were roses, but the ones that caught her attention were the carnations. There were red ones and gold ones, and for some reason, the combination reminded her of Morgyn.

Then, just about everything reminded her of Morgyn anymore.

Against her better judgement, Liberty bought one red carnation, and one gold, slipped them into the box with the sword, and then went the rest of the way home. When she got herself in the door, she headed to her room, setting the spell book down on her desk, and taking the flowers out of the box before sliding the sword under her bed.

Then, she headed out into the kitchen, getting a vase of water together. Before she set the carnations in it, she snipped the stem ends with the kitchen shears, then popped off the shoots on the sides of the stems. Then, she found a smaller glass, a shot glass technically, and filled it with water, setting the shoots in the water.

It seemed silly, didn’t it, to find flowers that reminded her of someone she simultaneously never wanted to let go of, and also wanted to completely forget, and decide to root them and plant them in the yard.

Since she was there, Liberty got another shot glass out of the cabinet, filled it with vodka, and sat down at the bar, watching the bubbles in the flowers’ water come up.

It wasn’t long before Summer came in, settling down in the seat next to Liberty.

“How’s your mom?” Summer asked.

“She’s doing okay,” Liberty answered. “My cousin’s getting married soon, and apparently Charity doesn’t want to go, so I got to listen to them argue about it.”

“That’s no fun,” Summer said. “How are you?”

Liberty shrugged, taking a drink of her vodka. She didn’t drink a lot, so it was no wonder that a shot glass of it was enough. “I’m flipping wildly and uncontrollably between I hate everything and I need a hug.”

“Do you actually want a hug?” Summer asked.

“Presently I’m in I don’t know what I want stage,” Liberty answered. “But thanks for asking.”

“Morgyn came by while you were gone,” Summer said. “Him and Caleb.”

Liberty looked over at her, then drank some more vodka, and turned back to the flowers. “What for?”

“He wanted to know if you’re okay,” Summer said. “And also gave us some money to cover the bills, because he was here so long.”

Liberty loosed a snort. “Sounds just like him,” she said, and drank a little more of her vodka.

“You know,” Summer said, “I think maybe you and Morgyn are the only ones that can really understand each other right now. You both went through the same thing. Only you two understand what happened, and maybe only you two understand how you feel.”

“I’m fine,” Liberty said.

“You’re drinking,” Summer answered. “I don’t think you’re fine at all.”

I’m fine, Liberty would’ve said, yet again, but there was no point in it anyway. Summer didn’t believe it, and most of the time, neither did Liberty. She wasn’t young and naive enough to believe that if she said it enough, eventually, it’d be true.

But it would be nice.

“I’m not drinking because of any particular reason,” she said instead. “I just, felt like it because life is hard.”

“Are you lying to me, or you?” Summer asked.

“Yes,” Liberty answered.

Summer released a sigh. “It’s okay to be upset you know,” she said. “And I meant it when I said I’d listen, if you wanted to talk.”

Liberty snorted. She’d get over this in a bit. It was all stupid anyway. She knocked back the last of her drink, and stood up. “I don’t have time to be upset,” she said, and then shuffled down the hallway to her room.

* * *

The only real cure to depression, Liberty thought, was going to the bookstore.

Books, at least, weren’t quite as traumatic as life. And people. People were quite terrible. And she was fairly sure there were police tailing her, but that was probably to be expected. There were a few extra policemen around when she wandered into the bookstore, but she didn’t pay it any mind.

Instead, she wandered through the aisles of books, her fingers gently running over the spines. The books that were bound and designed like older books, those were the ones that she loved the most. There was something about the scent of old paper and ink that made her awfully happy, but one didn’t normally find those scents in newer books.

Darn technology improving things that didn’t even really need to be improved.

Still, there were a number of good books that were bound the newer way, so she never passed up new ones either. One of her favourite things to do as a kid used to be going to second-hand bookstores and looking at all of the books they had. Sometimes she found some real gems. A couple times, she found copies of books that were signed by their author.

Sometimes, she caught herself reaching for her phone, intending to message Morgyn. Maybe Summer was right, and being apart from each other right now, when they had a shared trauma like this, wasn’t good for either of them. And a big part of her was worried about the dork anyway, so it was a good excuse.

But, then she remembered, she’d deleted Morgyn’s number from her phone. She couldn’t message Morgyn if she wanted to. There were times when she thanked past-her for having such foresight. There were other times when she cussed past-her up one side and down the other for being such a bleeding idiot.

As she passed by the journals and stationery section of the store, she remembered the journal Morgyn had gotten her, the first time they’d gone out together. Liberty had honestly forgotten all about it, but maybe she should dig it out of her closet, and start using it.

Supposedly, keeping a journal helped deal with things like this, with stress, and anxiety, depression, and presumably it’d help deal with events that you just didn’t quite know what to do with. In hindsight, she had to wonder if Morgyn had gotten it knowing that her life was eventually going to get hard.

She didn’t know what was the worst part of that potential thing, the idea that Morgyn knew this might be coming, or that Morgyn cared enough to try helping even back then, and now here she was, avoiding contact with Morgyn.

Liberty shook her head, taking a breath in, and went up to pay for the books she’d gotten. The cashier bagged them for her, and Liberty took her receipt and headed out the door. It was a cloudy day, like it was thinking a bit too hard about raining, but it was warm and breezy all the same.

Maybe she’d go for a walk later, head to a park or something. It’d probably be a little less depressing than hanging around her room anyway, and sometimes taking a walk helped clear the mind and such. Ah, she wondered if she could remember any of the meditation techniques and tips her grandfather had tried to teach her. She’d remembered the breathing exercises, maybe she’d be able to remember some other ones.

Else, it was worth looking through the spell book, to see if any of her ancestors had similar knowledge to pass on.

Liberty’s eyes were up at the sky, and when she turned a corner, she nearly smacked into something. Liberty came to an immediate stop, loosing a loud shriek, and dropping her books.

“I am so sorry,” she said, reaching down to pick the bag back up. “I didn’t hit you, did I?”

As Liberty looked at the person she’d almost smacked into, somehow, the woman’s appearance filled her with dread. She was wearing a hooded shirt, but black hair cascaded out from under it, and she had dark skin and a lot of tattoos.

Some of them were quite cool. The woman smiled, and Liberty thought she saw fangs poke out from her lips.

“You didn’t hit us at all,” the woman answered. “What is your name, dear?”

“Oh, um, I’m Liberty,” she answered. “It’s nice to meet you? What’s yours?”

“Liberty Lee?” the woman asked.

Something in the back of Liberty’s head told her to run, but she had no idea what or why. Instead, she stayed put. “Um, yeah, Lee is right,” she said.

The woman giggled. It sounded like she was just a little bit out of touch with reality, being honest about it, and the more time went on, the more Liberty thought maybe she should just go about her business now.

“Um, I was going home,” Liberty said. “Have a nice day.”

Liberty went around her. The woman turned as she passed by.

“Oh, but our dearest Miss Lee,” she said, “we need your blood.”

Liberty glanced over her shoulder. The woman threw an arm out, firing off a blur of something that felt powerful, and instinctively, Liberty fell to her knees and raised her arms. A sudden fwoosh noise and a crackling sounded, and a slightly-electrical, barely visible barrier blocked whatever the woman had thrown at her.

Liberty, breathing hard and rapidly, decided not to question it and look a gift horse in the mouth. Immediately, she stood up, whirled around, and just ran.

* * *

This woman, whoever she was, was very fast. Of course, after she’d attacked, she’d eventually lowered her hood and her eyes were purple. This was a purple-eyed, black haired, dusky-skinned vampire. Liberty was fairly sure she was dealing with Sarnai.

The fact she hadn’t immediately gotten killed was probably some sort of a miracle. As it was, Liberty just kept running and prayed that she managed to hold her off long enough to figure out what to do, or brilliance struck her, or something.

Liberty occasionally turned around and fired off bolts of lightning, but these weren’t very focused ones. She hadn’t yet mastered firing off lightning bolts while also being a frantic, panicked mess in the middle of a fight with a psychotic ancient vampire. (She was getting there.)

Once in a while, Sarnai would throw a burst of something Liberty couldn’t see, and she’d manage to recreate that sparky barrier. Liberty had no idea what she was doing or how with it, but she wasn’t going to complain too much, considering it kept probably saving her butt.

Unfortunately, since her attacks weren’t very focused ones, they barely seemed to dent Sarnai at all. That wasn’t surprising. It was just unfortunate as hell, because she had no idea what to do. It wasn’t like she had an ice cube’s chance in hell of overpowering her, and she probably wasn’t going to be able to outsmart her, either. To be frank about it, Liberty wasn’t terribly smart, and this woman was centuries old.

Liberty was taking a good bit of damage in this, though, and had crashed into a few things already. Her arm felt like it was broken, but it was probably just bruised fairly badly. She needed to figure something out or she was going to die here.

The best thing she could do, probably, would be confusing her enough to escape somehow. Of course, no matter where she went, the woman would likely be able to find her again. First of all, she was a vampire, and running from a vampire seemed like an impossible task, unless Liberty wanted to move to Hangzhou, and not really.

With that thought in mind, though, the next time Liberty scurried out of the way of a psychic bolt, she turned around and threw a lightning bolt. But she wasn’t aiming to hurt Sarnai; instead, the bolt crashed into the ground at Sarnai’s feet, unleashing a violently bright flash of light along the way.

Sarnai shrieked, and blinked very rapidly. Liberty took the opportunity to run off, and scoot herself under a car. Okay. Okay what now. Well, it’d be nice about now if she still knew Morgyn’s number, but she didn’t, so, next best thing. Did she still have Cassandra’s number, or did she do something stupid and delete all of their numbers?

Liberty pulled her phone out and started to go through it. Then, she went silent, as Sarnai came around the corner, and began looking for her. Liberty shoved the phone back into her pocket, scooting around under the car so that Sarnai wouldn’t catch sight of her.

Wait, her arm was bleeding-

The car flipped off of her. Liberty squealed, and then ran after it, scooting around behind it when it’d stopped rolling. And when Sarnai threw another attack at her, Liberty used the car frame as the basis for a barrier. (Whatever kind of barrier this was.)

Sarnai hammered it almost relentlessly, but the thing held decently well. Maybe Liberty should figure out how to make this thing stronger later. You know, if she survived and all that.

But, as was inevitable, it began to weaken, and soon enough, it shattered. The last blast hit the car. It bent around her, trapping her between it and the building behind her. Shit. She made a face, as Sarnai walked towards her.

Then, a sudden wall of fire shot up from the ground between them. Liberty looked over in time to catch sight of a blur of brown and red shoot past, firing more flames off.

“YOU! DON’T! GET! HER! TOO!” Morgyn’s voice yelled, throwing a burst of fire with every syllable. Liberty breathed and watched the sage go absolutely ballistic at Sarnai, unleashing streams and bursts of fire so rapidly Liberty could barely keep up with it, and Sarnai was forced onto the defensive.

And she wouldn’t admit, even in her head, what a relief it was to hear Morgyn was talking now.

Okay, well, Morgyn had it, and now she should probably figure out how to get out from behind this car. Liberty got her arms up, and started to pull her lower half out from between the car and the wall, but almost immediately unleashed a pained yelp. Her arm was injured. Right.

“Hold still,” someone else said, and Liberty looked over to find Caleb eyeing the car. “How did you get here… never mind,” he said, wedging himself between the brick and the car frame, bracing his legs against the brick, and shoving the car away.

Liberty loosed a yelp as it let her go, and she hit the asphalt. Caleb reached down and picked her up.

“We need to go somewhere else,” Caleb said. “Morgyn makes quite the destructive mess when made angry.” Caleb carried her off down the street, a good deal away. Just as they got out of range of it, flames flooded the car.

“I don’t know whose car that is,” Liberty said, watching it catch on fire over Caleb’s shoulder, “but I hope their insurance is good.”

Caleb laughed. “Eh, Morgyn’ll probably fix it before we go,” he said, setting her down on the sidewalk. “Let me see your arm.”

Liberty made a face, but she raised it for him to look at. Caleb gently nudged her sleeve out of the way, looking at the bloody mess underneath the fabric. Just as gently, he pressed down on it slightly. Liberty loosed a yelp.

“Well, it’s not broken,” he said. “But it is fractured, so you’ll have to be careful with it for a while.”

“That’s just what I need,” Liberty said. “Why are you two here anyway?”

“Well, turns out Ezio can sense her when she comes here,” Caleb said. “And we think Morgyn can because Ezio can and they’re connected. Weird twin thing, I don’t know how it works. But anyway, Morgyn sensed her. And you can guess how pissed off at her Morgyn is at the moment. You just, happened to be here.”

Yeah, that made sense. Though it did little to assuage the feeling that she’d just made herself a burden by being a young, inexperienced spell caster with very little control over her magic. But then, everything managed to make her feel like she wasn’t good enough.

Caleb got part of his shirt in his teeth, and ripped it. Liberty blinked a little, but then he wrapped it around her arm. She supposed she was still bleeding a little. Morgyn was still over there unleashing the wrath of god on Sarnai.

And then she was gone and Morgyn unleashed an unearthly shriek of annoyance. Caleb looked bemused. It made Liberty’s heart leap into her throat.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Not a problem,” Caleb answered, tying the bit of shredded shirt. “You’ll want to keep it clean, and avoid putting pressure on it. Could also just go see a proper doctor, I am not actually one of those.”

“So how’d you know?” Liberty asked.

“I am at least an old vampire,” Caleb said, smiling.

“Are you okay?” Morgyn’s voice asked, as the brunet got in range of them.

“Yeah,” Liberty said, standing up and brushing the dirt off her skirt with her not-fractured arm. Then, she looked around a bit, and then winced when she found her books all the way over there. But at least they hadn’t gotten damaged.

Morgyn followed her gaze, finding the bag lying in the street. The brunet went over to it, picked it up, and brought it to her. “I assume it’s yours,” Morgyn said.

“Yeah,” Liberty answered, taking it. “Thank you. You know for that and… saving my butt.”

“Your butt’s kind of nice, I like it saved,” Morgyn said, smirking a little.

Liberty tried not to turn pink. Caleb looked amused.

“Are you mad at me?” Morgyn asked.

“No,” Liberty answered. “No, I’m not.”

“You haven’t really spoken to me in a few days, so I just figured…” Morgyn let that hang.

Liberty sighed. “I’ve just been busy,” she said. Yeah. Busy.

“You’re the one that was there, Libs,” Morgyn said, quietly. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. I don’t want to lose that. Or you.”

Liberty watched Morgyn’s eyes for a moment, and then looked down at the concrete. “I just need some time to think,” she said. “Thank you again.”

She turned, and headed down the street.

Morgyn moved to follow, but Caleb reached out and caught Morgyn’s hand, shaking his head. “You can’t make her come back.” Even if Morgyn really wanted to.

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