Under the dim cloak of night, music slipped under Ella’s door like a dream. It wove through the soft ebb of light edging around the cracks, dancing through the room in a tinkling honey of lo-fi and piano. Ella tapped out the notes with her toes. It was warm, bundled up here in the duvet with Jack sleeping on her shoulder, and the bite of cold kissing the tip of her nose only made it more lovely.

He snored, but after hours and hours of crying, he sounded so peaceful now that it was almost as sweet as the music.

Another snore tore through the room, interrupting her in the middle of replying to Cain, and ended in a rattling snort as Jack flung one of his legs over hers. Ella trapped her laughter in the back of her throat, and nose scrunching up, she pressed a kiss to his hair. The bleached strands were still damp, tickling her nose with the sweet, fruity scent of her shampoo.

Almost as sweet. Almost.

The phone buzzed under her palm, a different message from someone else, and Ella gave Jack’s hair one more nuzzle before glancing back at the screen. Cain, and Ella smiled seeing the message hovering there beneath her pastel pink. You too, it read. I’ll try to brainstorm some ideas for tomorrow. Goodnight, Ella.

Ella shook her head and went back to the message, although each time Jack gave a sleepy murmur or snort, Ella broke off, giggling, to give him a kiss and scratch his hair. Cain really was trying to pretend he hadn’t sent all those doped up texts, wasn’t he? She could practically see the way he would’ve sat on the sofa, pinching the bridge of his nose as he berated himself. Idiot.

I can’t wait, and I will. Sleep well, Cain, sweet dreams.

And she tacked a little red heart on the end, because it’d either make him groan or smile, and both options lifted something giddy and bright in her chest.

It ticked read as soon as she sent it, and a moment later, the green active dot flickered out.

More laughter burst from Ella’s lips, and she must look so stupid if anyone was watching her, grinning at her phone and practically wriggling with this happy gust of warmth filling up her lungs. The covers tickled her chin, and for a moment, she just pressed her face and body fully into Jack’s, laughing into his hair and squeezing against the solid warmth.

How did she get so lucky with all of them?

Cain was such a sweetheart.

Once she’d got all the little burst of happy out, Ella went back to her phone and flicked down to Bunny, hitting facetime. Sleep lingered too far out of grasp, her mind perky and dancing with music and little stars, but Bunny would be awake too. Ella had rolled out of bed at two today, glitter still smeared across her cheeks, but Bunny had only replied to Ella’s message at four with a picture of herself still swaddled by covers.

Sure enough, Bunny answered on the second ring. The soft lights cast warm golden highlights across her tall cheeks and through into the black silk of her bonnet. Shadows muted the corners of her flat except for where the lamps caught the dull, dusty green of a dented old army helmet on the wall.

Honestly, how did she look so lovely ready for bed? Bunny looked like a goddess with the silk robe slipping off her muscular shoulders, but Ella would look like a goblin in a potato sack. Yeesh.

“Hey, girl.” Bunny brought the camera closer, her voice low and soft. “He asleep?”

Smiling, Ella nodded and shifted the camera to Jack, his face squished against her shoulder and his arm thick and heavy over her chest. The dim light scratched the image, but Jack looked adorable anyway, the electronic glow casting a vivid splash over his pale skin and bleached hair.

“He’s so cute while he sleeps.” while Bunny cooed down the line, her low laughter crackling out the speaker.

“I’m glad he’s with you tonight,” Bunny said once Ella shifted the camera back to her face. “That bar he hangs out at – did you hear? It got hit bad.”

A hard jolt went through Ella’s chest, her hand flying up to press against Jack’s arm. The heat seared the tips of her chill-touched fingers.

“Shit, are you kidding?” She took a deep, shaking breath, pressing down the volume of her voice. Jack’s fingers tightened on her arm, and it was like they closed on her heart. “I caught him halfway out the building on his way there!”

Bunny dragged a sharp breath in through her teeth, rubbing her thumb underneath her thick brows. “Shit. Cas rang me to check – said he walked by and the entire front was just a burnt shell.”

The weight deepened, and for a moment, Ella squeezed her eyes shut. God, that was so awful. That bar was packed most nights.

“I thought it’d go back to normal. I mean now—”

“You mean now Cain’s happy playing house instead of systematically bringing the world to its knees, right?”

Ella didn’t open her eyes, digging her fingers deeper into Jack’s arm. Something black welled in her chest, swilling around the bottom of her lungs, and the reflection in that water wore a mask with no face.

It’d been so, so naïve to think that just because closing the rift had spun back time and healed the world, that everything else that had gone before would disappear. No monsters shelled in black chitin and burnt flesh roved the world, but the old ones, the ones that hid beneath human skin – those were still here.

“Ella—"

The sigh thick in Bunny’s voice shook Ella loose, and it all came free in a tight, snapping hiss. “Bunny, you know the only reason we’re back here is because of him! And he deserves a chance because of it! We all agreed that, otherwise Six would’ve killed him as soon as we all woke up.”

Bunny’s voice stayed sharp and unrelenting, same as her eyes. Like they hadn’t had this conversation a hundred times. “Yeah, but you know this is his fault. He did it on purpose, Ella, and it ain’t just gonna fix itself ‘cause he’s signed down as top dog without dealing with his cult of raving lunatics, like—”

“You don’t even know that was them!”

Jack’s snoring faltered, a mutter rumbling in his chest, and with her heart giving a little skip, Ella smoothed his hair, hushing him. The dark wisps of clouds painted across her ceiling carved caverns where ambient light cast the lilac to pale grey.

When Ella glanced back down, little canyons etched between Bunny’s brow, the muscles bracketing her mouth taut and stiff.

“It doesn’t matter if it was or not.” Bunny talked the way she always did talking about Cain. Slow and patronising, like Ella was a child. “Point is, Cain got this going, and he made this—this flesh and blood death machine that’ll keep picking up speed ‘til he tears it apart again. Nothing else is—"

“I know that!” Ella kept her voice low and sharp this time, palm pressed flat to Jack’s arm.

Bunny had gone on the same spiel a thousand times or more, like it was Ella who’d dragged Cain away from some sacred duty to fix the world. Pretty talk for someone who shrugged when they’d all talked about what to do with him.

She would’ve spat it at Bunny if the argument after wouldn’t wake Jack up, but it still bridled on her tongue, so Ella clawed for something else to say as she glowered at Bunny’s smug, tight-lipped grin on the phone screen.

“Why is Casper calling about Jack anyway? What does it matter to him anymore?”

Bunny gave a loud groan, tipping her head back. The silver of her tongue piercing flashed in the lamplight “Don’t give me that, girl. You telling me you wouldn’t give a fuck to check up on him if you two argued?”

“They didn’t argue,” Ella hissed. “Casper slept—”

“Ella.” A warning note lifted Bunny’s voice. The screen wavered back and forth as Bunny sat up on the sofa, planting her legs wide and leaning into them. “Don’t give me that. You damn well know what I think of this.”

“Sure I do.” After all, Bunny had an opinion on everything and didn’t waste a minute making sure everyone else knew. Ella snuggled in closer to Jack, drawing deep breaths through her nose. Maybe it’d loosen this knot at the back of her skull. “And I don’t know how you can seeing Jack like this.”

“Fuck sake, Ella, just ‘cause I think it’s all his own screwed up head making—”

“It’s not—”

Except Bunny steamrolled right over the top of her. “He was screwing you when Cas was out doing whatever he did!”

The bickering back and forth broke on Bunny’s low shout, filling the room with the heavy silence of a thundercrack and the electronic noise crackling from the speaker. Sighing, Bunny rubbed her thumb into the underside of her eyebrow, her jaw clenched with the grinding of her teeth. Ella had to bite her tongue lest she scream back. The edges of her phone case gnawed into her rigid grip, the light dancing across the ceiling in a chaos of fractured stars.

“It ain’t his fault he’s like this, Ella – and you know I got all the empathy in the world for him – but it don’t change that he’s being a fucking hypocrite and—”

“Jack deserves better than someone who’ll lie to his face like that!”

“They’ve been open for years! He wouldn’t give a fuck if he hadn’t convinced himself it was Cain, right? And you’ve told him it ain’t, right? Because—”

The crack of a door ground out of the speaker, and Bunny spun around. She dropped her phone, the camera catching a muddled splash of Bunny’s hand grabbing for the cushion.