The Lowing

The problem was not getting to the airport or onto a plane.

The problem was getting to the same airport and then onto the same plane as Captain America.

Cap looked just about ready to swim to Ireland.

The TSA appeared to be doing the best they could to keep folks from swarming him as he and Sergeant Barnes and Mr. Wilson dutifully handed over their passports as ID in the line right before security, but it wasn’t enough. Phones and cameras were out everywhere, shuttering away.

“Travel a lot, Cap?” the TSA officer behind Peter said.

Cap was not in the mood for conversation making.

Sergeant Barnes couldn’t go through the metal detectors, like, period, which added another layer of stress to Cap’s already very stressful day. Instead, he was led away from everyone else by a TSA officer. He waved as he went and promised Mr. Wilson that he’d be on his best behavior.

Mr. Wilson scoffed and yanked his sweatshirt over his head. His shirt rode up a little and Peter actually saw people swoon a bit in the line behind them all.

Cap set off the metal detector.

He was very confused.

He held out his arms and let himself be wanded down and then wanded up and the thing beeped obnoxiously over his ribs.

He remained very confused.

One shirt later, he was still very confused, as was every TSA officer in the area.

The crowd in the security line, on the other hand, was having a great time. Just watching them was enough to make Peter’s day.

Matt asked Peter what was happening. Peter wasn’t sure what was actually happening beyond the hub-bub. Matt asked Foggy and Foggy said that Cap’s side was getting tested for illicit material. He had none on him, but everything kept beeping.

The TSA officer nearest him finally hesitantly asked, “You been shot lately, Cap?” And it was like the sky had opened over the guy’s head.

“Oh my god, Sam. They found it,” he called.

Mr. Wilson very patiently told Peter while Cap was dragged off to join his best guy Bucky in the examination room that this was why he never traveled with these lugs.

“They’re human pin cushions,” he said.

“Or just pin cushions,” Foggy noted.

There was a pause.

“That’s fair,” Sam said.

Sister Maggie joined them all in their claimed corner about half an hour later. She seemed deeply unsettled and kept smoothing a hand over the top of her travel bag. Foggy asked her if there was anything he could do for her and she said that anything that would make her unconscious for the next ten hours would be welcome.

Peter noticed that she had a small box under her arm.

“Is that Matt’s dad?” he asked her when everyone had settled back into waiting for Cap and the Sergeant to be released from TSA jail.

May’s hand miraculously appeared over Peter’s mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” May said over his head. “He wasn’t thinking.”

Sister Maggie lifted an eyebrow and smiled a little.

“No, that’s alright. He’s fine,” she said. Peter ducked out of May’s grip and glared at her. She stared at him fiercely back.

“My mate is sleeping,” Sister Maggie told him when he looked back. “He doesn’t like flying.”

“Where’s he sleeping?” Peter asked.

Sister Maggie tapped at the top of  her bag.

“In the flute,” she said.

“That’s cruel,” Matt interjected.

“Hush you,” Sister Maggie snapped at him.

“He hates that thing,” Matt huffed.

“No, you hate it. Jonathan is indifferent to it,” Sister Maggie sniffed.

Matt grumbled.

“How does he come out?” Peter asked the Sister. She flicked her eyes back to him and hummed.

“He’ll wake when I call for him,” she said. “Until then, so as to save us all from his anxiety, he will sleep. Matthew.”

Matt took Foggy’s travel pillow and buried himself in it. Sister Maggie narrowed her eyes at him, then turned to Mr. Wilson and frowned.

“Where is your hound?” she asked.

Peter almost laughed. She said the word like it was an insult.

“Getting tagged,” Mr. Wilson said. “I’m actually surprised they didn’t give you a harder time with the habit.”

Sister Maggie considered this. Then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth any more of her time and effort.

“Have you properly met Matthew, then?” she asked.

Mr. Wilson looked coolly over to where Matt was still drowning in travel pillow.

“Turns out we’ve met more than a couple times,” he said diplomatically.

Matt said something that was muffled into the pillow.

“I have to say, Murdock,” Mr. Wilson said, turning around in his uncomfortable chair, “You’ve got the best cover in the world.”

Matt muffled something that sounded somewhat like ‘thanks, pal.’

Sister Maggie scolded him to be nicer.

He emerged from the pillow to say, “I’m sorry that she’s done this to you.”

Sister Maggie’s anxiety vanished nearly immediately. She asked him if he’d been born in a barn in the kind of tone that made the hair on the back of Peter’s neck raise.

Foggy took the opportunity to announce that he was going to go ward Karen away from the true crime and myths and legends sections of the bookstore. May told Peter that they were going to go get snacks for the flight.

Peter got a box of lemon heads.

He and May got back and had a seat on the other side of the row, right behind Matt and Sister Maggie’s mutual silent fuming. The tension was broken, thankfully, by the reappearance of Karen. She had that effect on people. And while she was unhappy to be pried from her new obsession, but upon seeing and meeting Mr. Wilson, who it appeared, Matt had been forcibly shoved into acquaintanceship with, she lit up.

“We’re going to meet a leprechaun,” she told Mr. Wilson seriously.

“Over my dead body,” Foggy said.

Matt pressed into him as soon as he came over to sit on his left.

“Where’s the Star-Spangled Man and his plan?” Foggy asked.

Mr. Wilson cupped his chin with a palm.

“Just out of the exam room,” he said. “Steve dug out his own bullet again.”

Oh god.

Those poor TSA officers.

Foggy pressed a balled hand to his nose to contain himself.

“His fame is the only thing that keeps him from being sectioned,” he said.

“Correct. And lucky for us, we’ve got a couple of lawyers at the ready when he and JB inevitably break international law,” Mr. Wilson said amiably.

“You’re already breaking international law,” May pointed out. “Your dog has no shots.”

“Sh,” Karen said. “None of the seals do either.”

Matt squawked.

“I’ve had all my fuckin’ shots, thank you,” he said. “I’ve had all my shots and then some.”

Karen cooed at him.

Sergeant Barnes found them before Cap did. He said that he’d lost him buying a new shirt.

“Couldn’t find one that said ‘Piece of Ass’ on it, so I left him to it,” Sergeant Barnes said.

“Tell him not to get anything with a flag on it,” Foggy said.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” Sergeant Barnes promised. “Steve would rather—oh, hey you.”

Cap seemed totally fine. He was wearing gray now instead of the blue he’d walked in with, but you know what? Perfectly fine.

“You traumatize enough state agents?” Mr. Wilson asked him.

“It was only half a shell,” Cap said. “Came out pretty easy.”

Cap was nuts.

Peter hoped he was sitting next to him. He asked to see his bordering pass. Cap gave it to him and did a quick double take at Matt.

“Oh,” he said after a moment.

Matt went all tense.

“So how does this work?” Cap asked him. “Do you just jump off a pier while the rest of us are on standby?”

Peter tried to imagine Cap wearing a puffy orange lifejacket. He stuffed his face into his balled-up jacket to contain himself.

“In the best case scenario, I fight a giant and win,” Matt told him, dead serious.

Cap took a long moment before saying, “Okay? What’s the worst?”

“I just fucking drown upon touchdown,” Matt said.

“We got a likelihood of that here?” Sergeant Barnes asked.

Matt hummed. Foggy frowned.

“I’m sayin’ a 30% both ways,” Matt said. “With a 40% in the middle there for some creativity.”

Sergeant Barnes drummed fingers on his nose.

“Not the worst odds,” he said.

Mr. Wilson set his forehead into his palm.

Cap and his guys were sitting in the emergency exit row for every possible good reason in the world. Peter had never felt so prepared for an emergency. He was pretty damn sure that everyone on their part of the plane felt the exact same way.

The flight attendant asked the three guys if they were willing to open the hatch in the case of an emergency.

“Honey, you leave Steve on his own for long enough and he’ll open it for fun,” Sergeant Barnes said.

Cap told him to shove it where the sun don’t shine. Then he told the attendant very politely that yes, they were entirely prepared to take emergency action.

“Don’t you sweat it. We even brought the team medic,” Sergeant Barnes tacked on to that statement.

“Ma’am, I’m really sorry, but this man is disruptive, is there a chance we could have him moved?” Cap asked, approaching new heights of violent politeness.

Peter was positive that the whole flight consist of people watching those two squabble.

Peter was tucked in next to May in the middle row because he was not yet tall enough to petition for an end seat. Matt, Foggy, and Karen were on the other side. Wade hadn’t shown up at the airport. He claimed he wasn’t welcome there anymore and would be taking an ‘alternate route.’ Peter didn’t know what that meant exactly, but he did know that Sister Maggie was praying quietly next to him with a rosary in between her hands. Matt cocked his head their way and batted at Karen to get her attention. Karen dutifully reached over the guy on the end seat and caught Sister Maggie’s attention with a similar motion.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Mum,” Matt said gently across the aisle.

Sister Maggie considered him.

She said nothing.

Foggy chased Karen out of the way and got up to rustle through the bags overhead before the seatbelt sign came on. He shut the overhead bin and then leaned over the offending aisle man to hand Sister Maggie a cloth bundle before stumbling back into his seat.

Sister Maggie’s lip flickered and she thanked Foggy who waved it off and went back to arguing with Matt over nothing.

The bundle was wrapped with green and blue plaid. It looked like old plaid. Kinda faded. It had been wrapped tightly into an oval shape and was smooth on top. Sister Maggie ran a thumb over it before setting it into her lap and returning to her praying.

It was just as they took off that Peter realized that that was her flute.

Matt’s dad was sleeping in there.

Aw. That was kind of cute. It was like he was sitting with them.

Peter got tired of watching tv after one movie. He looked between the seats at the Caps and saw that Sergeant Barnes had strapped on headphones and knocked out on Mr. Wilson’s shoulder. Cap had never seemed more tense. The veins in his knuckles were visible from where Peter was sitting, two rows behind.

“Doesn’t like to fly?” he asked May quietly when she noticed him looking.

“Maybe bad memories,” she told him gently.

She nudged him back into better posture and put a hand on his pocket over Johnny.

Johnny was sleeping in there as a fire. An ember, technically. Trapped in an airtight headphones case. He wasn’t super safe to fly otherwise. That sucked because things were boring without him and his happy chatter.

“Take a nap, Pete,” May said. “It’ll make things seem shorter.”

And like, fine.

He startled awake and blinked blearily around the cabin. May petted his head and told him he was okay. She just wanted to know what he wanted to eat.

The flight attendant smiled at him indulgently.

He picked pasta and then checked on the Daredevil crew who were all variously passed out on each other.

Sister Maggie was reading. To Peter’s surprise, she wasn’t reading a Bible. The book was heavy, though, and it was written in a language Peter had never seen before. It looked more like Hebrew than English. The bundle in her lap, he realized, seemed greener than it had been before.

It was lightest in the middle, almost like it was glowing while she read.

May tapped at his arm and told him to eat.

The rest of the trip was not super exciting. The pilot thanked Cap on the way out. It made him awkward. So yeah, he took a selfie with them. And then with the group of tourists who waited outside the arrival area for him.

It was then that Sergeant Barnes announced it was ‘Elsa time,’ which Sam translated for the rest of them as time for him and Cap to go layer up and make themselves less recognizable.

Peter asked if this mandated a ball cap.

It did not.

He was kind of disappointed. Mr. Stark always told him that everyone on Cap’s usual team wore sunglasses and ballcaps when they were pretending to be normal.

This time, ‘normal’ was Steve adopting a high-necked aran sweater and a blue scarf while Sergeant Barnes loosely French braided his hair.

“Are we sufficiently hipster?” Cap asked with zero inflection.

Sergeant Barnes tossed his mane.

“I am glamorous, sir,” he said to top off his huge cream infinity scarf and holey black hoodie.

“I feel like a sheep,” Cap said.

“Onward, Stíofan,” Sergeant Barnes said, blazing past him. “We’ve returned to the home of your people. Don’t disgrace me in front of your Nan.”

“I never even met my Nan,” Cap sighed, allowing himself to be dragged away.

Mr. Wilson beamed after them.

They were taking a bus up north from Dublin, but first, apparently they all needed a quick breather. Sister Maggie wanted to touch the water. What water? Didn’t matter. Any water.

She and Foggy found a fountain filled with rainwater and plunged their hands into it immediately.

Karen was captivated.

“Go on,” she told Matt.

Matt cocked his head.

“Go on, what?” he asked.

“Go do seal things,” Karen encouraged. “Here, I’ll hold your bag.”

Matt remained confused.

“What seal things?” he asked.

Karen looked between him and the other selkies, both of who Peter was pretty sure would climb into the fountain if they weren’t in public.

“Matt,” Karen said seriously. “Seal things. Go touch the homeland water. You have to do seal things to be a seal.”

Matt frowned hard, then touched his chest.

“I don’t…” he said. “I don’t feel anything different?”

There was a pause.

“Is that bad?” Karen asked.

Matt lifted his face. His face said it was.

“No idea,” he said nervously.

Matt was panicking as quietly as anyone could panic and Peter admired him for it as they all piled onto the bus. The driver stopped Cap and said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“Did some modelling,” Steve deadpanned. “H&M.”

“Ah. Thought so. Come on board, son.”

Mr. Wilson was dying in the very back of the bus. Peter was glad he was having a good time.

It was three hours north to Foggy and Sister Maggie’s home, but already, their accents had started veering into unintelligible. Matt didn’t appear to notice anything until Karen asked him what the fuck his people were saying. Only then did he snap out of his internal panicking to listen to the world around him.

“Going through the glens,” he told Karen.

“What’s a glen?” Karen asked him.

Matt had clearly, not once in his life, ever been asked to define this word.

Peter grinned at him.

“Eugh. Um. Valley? I think it’s a—Mum. Glen? Valley?” Matt asked the other two. They shut up and stared at him.

“Yes,” Sister Maggie said slowly, like he was an idiot.

“Karen’s asking,” Matt said.

“Why’re you pale, boy?” Sister Maggie accused.

“Am I?”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Matt got even paler.

“What’s the matter with you?” Sister Maggie demanded.

“Nothing,” Matt said.

“Are you nervous?”

“What? No.”

She didn’t believe him for a second.

“Here,” she said, shoving her green bundle into his arms. “Don’t be nervous. You’re back where you’re meant to be.”

Matt accepted the bundle and after a moment tucked it up against his chest. He didn’t say anything. Karen’s forehead wrinkled watching him.

They got off in a region called Donegal. It was more green than anywhere Peter had ever seen. From that bus station, they caught yet another ancient bus going into town.

“Man, you grew up in the sticks, Nelson,” Mr. Wilson noted over the seats of this new bus.

Foggy shrugged.

“Small town, big spirit,” he said.

“There’s another hound here.”

They all looked back to see Sergeant Barnes staring dreamily out the foggy window. There was something strange going on with his eyes. It was like they were changing color with each bump in the road.

“There is,” Foggy said. “There are a number of them on the island.”

Sergeant Barnes stayed quiet. Cap snapped next to his ear and a hand slammed closed over his fist in the blink of an eye; lo and behold, the Sergeant was back to earth.

“Wha?” he said.

“You’re dreaming,” Cap said.

“Wha?” Sergeant Barnes looked up at him as if he hadn’t hear him. Cap lifted an eyebrow.

“Thousand-yard-stare,” he repeated.

Mr. Wilson leaned over to see the Sergeant around Cap.

“You alright, JB?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sergeant Barnes said softly. “Yeah, I think I am.”

All of the fae in their party were having some kind of moment, Peter decided. Johnny was stirring awake in his pocket and pulsing out of time with his heart. He’d never done that before. When he wasn’t pulsing in time with his own heart, he was pulsing in time with Peter’s, but this was different than that. His heat seemed to be increasing too. Not hot enough to burn, but warm enough that it felt like a heatpack now instead of your typical animal warmth.

Peter laid his hand over the little vessel in his pocket to steady him and while the pulsing settled, the heat stayed right where it was.

Mr. Wilson and Cap kept murmuring to each other. They’d swapped seats so that Mr. Wilson could smooth a hand through the hair at the base of Sergeant Barnes’s neck.

Sergeant Barnes had faded out.

He’d been drifting before, but now it was as though he was sleeping sitting up, rocking slightly every so often with the bus. His eyes were paler than Peter had ever seen them. One of them had a yellow ring around its iris. May pressed Peter a little closer when she noticed it.

The selkies had gone quiet, too. Both Sister Maggie and Foggy stared out the window in absolute silence. Karen was uncomfortable with it. Matt didn’t stare out the window. Instead, he’d lifted his head towards the roof of the bus. He closed his eyes in long blinks and held the bundle in his hands looser and looser. Karen was keeping an eye on it.

It was pretty surreal.

“Are they okay?” Peter whispered to May. She wasn’t sure. She deferred to Cap and Mr. Wilson.

Cap had dealt with this sort of thing for longer than he was willing to admit, but even he wasn’t so sure.

“Bucky used to do this a long, long time ago,” he said. “Only by the beach. Only on cloudy days. We were pretty small then, maybe eight? Nine? He used to tell me he was listening for music.”

Music?

“A song of the sea,” Cap said.

“What’s it sound like?” Peter asked, wriggling around to face him over the back of his seat.

Cap brought a shoulder up lightly.

“I don’t have that much of the Sense,” he said.

Peter tipped his head.

“What’s the Sense?” he asked.

May touched his arm.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Cap said. “It’s like sometimes, I see and hear things that aren’t there. Fae things. I’ve had it since I was small.”

Oh.

So that’s how Cap had gotten involved with this mess.

Foggy pulled the cord at what felt like a random bus station not far from the shoreline. Peter could see the sea from there. A huge expanse of blue crashing up against towering, speckled cliffs that were dusted at the top with white before a blanket of green rolled over them. It was cloudy and windy and cold and it smelled like salt and kelp when they all stepped out of the bus.

Matt went from being in a daze to being on high alert. The highest alert. Daredevil levels of alertness. Sister Maggie placed a hand on his elbow and he stopped moving around so jerkily.

She told him something too quietly for Peter to hear.

“Alright, so my sister’s offered to give you all a ride to your B&B,” Foggy told the others. “And May, you said you’re staying with Mrs. Doyle?”

“Do you know her?” May asked.

Foggy winced.

“Not the way you do,” he said. “We keep clear of her, honestly.”

Peter snickered.

“The good news is she lives not too far,” Foggy said. “I can walk you there from my folks’ place.”

Peter was excited again.

“Sister are you--?” Foggy asked.

“I’ll be leaving you,” Sister Maggie said. “The convent has sent a car.”

She pulled Matt in and made him bend over so she could talk to him before breaking away. He did a lot of nodding and what seemed to Peter to be some promising before she let him go.

“Well, okay then,” Foggy said in her wake. “Cand will be here any—”

He didn’t get that far because a shrill scream broke out across the station. Peter dropped into being battle-ready without meaning to. He heard the rapid clicking of the Sergeant’s arm.

“FOGGY.”

Karen pulled Matt out of the line of fire as a woman threw herself into Foggy.

He stumbled back.

The lady screamed again, even though she’d already latched onto him.

“Jesus, Cand,” Foggy swore. “You’re makin’ me deaf. Ease off, ya menace.”

The lady pulled back to look at him, then slammed herself forward to shriek a third time.

“You’re! So! Red!” she jittered, jumping up and down without letting go of Foggy.

Foggy was done. He’d only endured this for seconds at the most, but he’d gone all slack with irritation.

“My sister Candace,” he introduced to the rest of them. Peter felt the tension slip from his shoulders.

Foggy’s sister ripped herself away from him and grinned huge. She looked a whole lot like Foggy, but with a slightly slimmer face and a torrent of freckles that climbed up her forehead and temples into her dirty blond hair.

“Hello!” she said. Then froze. “Oh my god, Matty? Is that you?”

Matt smiled sheepishly, then threw his hands over his ears when Foggy’s sister screeched and flung herself upon him next.

She crushed him in her arms, shaking him from side to side like a bulldog while wailing, “You’re! So! Tall!”

Foggy seemed pleased.

“Oh my god. Look at you, Matty,” his sister gasped, yanking herself back suddenly. “Oh my god. Franklin. You didn’t tell me he got hot.”

Matt’s smile twitched with irritation.

Karen barked out a laugh.

This caught Foggy’s sister’s attention.

“And who’s this?” she demanded. “Wow, look at you Fogs. Makin’ friends with…” she trailed off.

Cap stepped swiftly behind Mr. Wilson.

“Is that?” Foggy’s sister started.

“Client of mine,” Foggy said. “Here for many reasons which will become illuminated in a setting which is not here.”

“Fogs.”

“Not here,” Foggy said. “Did you bring Mom’s car or—”

“Fogs, Mom’s gonna kill you,” Foggy’s sister said seriously to him. “And not just for the tongue piercing.”

Foggy narrowed his eyes at her until they were almost slits.

Foggy’s family lived in a really quaint house that felt like a beach house despite its wood being way too dark for that. The porch was bleached white in places from the sun, but underneath its roof, it was cool and damp. There were rugs and bits and bobs tossed haphazardly over the sides of the railings to dry.

Foggy threatened his sister in a strong, warning tone as she unlocked the front door. Foggy looked apologetically back at the rest of them and mouthed ‘sorry.’ Peter looked over and saw Sergeant Barnes thoughtfully watching a string of dried starfish spin in a lazy circle above them.

The door opened.

A repeat of Candace’s bus-stop greeting occurred, this time performed by a dark-haired woman with tears streaming down her face. She hugged the life out of every single person, whether she knew them or not. When she got to Matt, she gasped.

“Mrs. Nelson,” Matt greeted.

She gasped again.

“Matty,” she said. “You’re so tall, honey.”

Peter was getting the impression that Matt had been a scrawny kid.

“Are you surprised?” Matt asked pleasantly.

Mrs. Nelson stared up at him.

“Baby, your mum’s the size of garden gnome, we were all praying for you, love.”

Mr. Wilson kind of lost it. Matt was no longer flattered.

“I have many excellent qualities,” he said.

“And your father was so handsome, dear. You’re a lucky wain.”

Matt seemed to droop further.

“Look at that hair. My god, Matthew. Who have you become? Where’s my little ginger pup?”

Matt was going to sink into this porch.

“Mrs. Nelson, this is Captain America,” he said.

Foggy gave him a furious look, but it was too late.

“FRANKLIN. NELSON. YOU BRING CAPTAIN. AMERICA. TO THIS HOUSEHOLD WHEN I AIN’T FINISHED CLEANIN’?”

“I hate you,” Foggy whispered Matt’s way.

“Ginger pup,” Matt whispered back.

Peter was left out of the very serious explanation currently being had in the living room of Foggy’s parents’ house. Explanations were going around that required much gasping and at some point, apparently more crying. May told him he didn’t have to sit with them, so he went back out onto the porch.

Johnny was stirring a little again, but not like he had been before. He was pulsing lightly now in time with Peter’s heart.

Sleeping.

Peter hopped down the steps of the house. They felt soft as he went. They smelled like wet wood.

He poked around the garden a little bit. It was full of plants he didn’t recognize. Some with big broad leaves that collected water at their centers. Some delicate, fluffy things that emerged from their raised planter boxes in little puffs.

It had been raining lately. Or so the little pools of water collected in the hollows of the stones around the Nelsons’ yard said.

The ground was soft.

It was a calming space.

He looked out from the yard and saw the sea off in the distance. There was a lighthouse further out that way, barely visible from the mist that swept in from the curve of the cliff closer inland. Coming in even closer from that was part of a semi-obscured harbor with boats jostling lightly with the tide.

He felt like each breath in was something special.

He got back up to the porch to find Sergeant Barnes looking out from the side of it in the direction where Peter had just been staring.

“It’s really something, huh, kid?” he said.

His whole iris was a light yellow now. Like a soft gold.

“Yeah,” Peter said quietly.

“Feels like home,” Sergeant Barnes said.

“Feels important,” Peter told him.

Sergeant Barnes looked at him. His other eye was a bright grey. It looked like a contact.

“Don’t go wandering off in these parts,” he said. “It’s quieter here than in the city, but that don’t make it safer.”

Peter wondered what he could hear in the distance.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

He came back inside when Mr. Wilson came out and told Sergeant Barnes that Foggy was going to drive them to where they were staying instead of his sister. Candace was going to take May and Peter up to Mrs. Doyle.

Apparently Foggy’s mom didn’t want him near the old witch. Pointing out that May and Peter were witches got them nothing but an “I know, loves. But she’s old. It’s different.”

Candace explained as she put guided them out into the road that it wasn’t that their family didn’t like Mrs. Doyle, it was just that she’d gotten mad at one of the village pups way back when and had cursed it to be afraid of the water for two years.

“Pretty fucked up thing to do to a selkie,” Candace said. “Anyways, we’re so happy to have you all here.”

“We’re very happy to be here,” May said.

Candace smiled at her. Her teeth looked perfectly normal. Not like Foggy’s. Foggy’s teeth always seemed just a hair too sharp.

“It’s honestly such a shock,” Candace said, waving a hand. “We’ve never seen Matty without his coat, you know. He hasn’t been back in so long. Everything’s been through a messenger app.”

“Does he look different?” May asked.

There were streetlights here, but they were rusty and their light was weak in the mist. Peter saw a frog sitting under one.

“Mm, not so much looks,” Candace said. “More like feels.”

Peter adjusted his duffle bag strap and looked ahead at the two ladies.

“You can feel him?” May asked.

“I can,” Candace said. “I can feel you, too. What’s on your wrist there, little witch?”

Peter instinctively hid his bracelet behind his back.

Candace smiled over her shoulder. She looked more like Foggy when she smiled.

“It’s alright,” she said. “You don’t have to show me.”

Good, because he wasn’t going to.

Mrs. Doyle lived in a cave-like house that was surrounded on all sides by grass and a meandering wall made out of piled stones. There was a single streetlamp out in front of it, but its light didn’t illuminate the the gravel road that lead to the wall’s break.

Candace wouldn’t go any further with them.

“You’re welcome to come over tomorrow for breakfast,” she said, in front of the streetlamp. “Any veggies among you?”

Any what?

“Don’t worry about us. Thank you, though, that’s very kind of you,” May said. “And thanks for walking us.”

“Sure thing,” Candace said, “We’re down the hill, one right over, all the way at the end. You’ll know us from the shells.”

The ones hanging from the porch.

“Good night,” May said.

“Good night,” Candace said. “Mind your names.”

“Mind our names?” Peter asked quietly as May started walking up the path to the break in the stone walls.

“Apparently,” May said.

The house in front of them was old. Ages old. The gaps in the stones that made up its face were filled with cement and there was moss growing thickly on the front window’s frame.

The door was painted a teal that was hard to make out with the lack of light.

It creaked open slowly on ancient hinges and there stood Mrs. Doyle, all five feet of her, haloed in orange light. She was plump with a messy bun on top of her head and glasses so thick they made her eyes seem twice their size.

“May Parker?” she asked in a voice choking in smoke.

“And Peter,” May said, smiling.

Mrs. Doyle inspected them both for a long, long time.

“You’ll do,” she said. “Get yourselves in before the hounds start bayin’.”