Viv squeezed them back. Deep down she held the knowledge of an impending ache, imperfectly disguised. But there was no getting around that, not really.
Maylee knew it was coming too. By silent agreement, they’d both pretend it wasn’t for a while longer.
* * *
“And then I said, ‘Of course I can’t put it away, it’s my fucking tail!’ ” hollered Fern, banging one paw on the table.
Maylee tried to swallow her beer, but a laugh met it going the other direction, with predictable results. Viv pounded her on the back—gently—while finishing off her own mug. After, it was easy enough to leave her hand there.
At Maylee’s insistence, they’d moved on from dinner to a low-ceilinged tavern tucked into an alley, and they were the only three patrons. Several drinks in, they more than made up for the lack of customers with their own volume. At this point, the tavernkeep dodged in and out to refill their beverages like they were a nest of angry snakes, and every time he did so, Maylee only laughed louder.
“So then,” continued Fern, slurring a little and waving her glass, “he says, ‘I don’t care what it is, but if you grab my ass one more time’ ”—she puffed herself up and deepened her voice—“ ‘there’s going to be trouble.’ ”
Maylee was wheezing for breath now.
Viv leaned back in her chair and regarded the rattkin over the top of her empty mug. “Well. Were you grabbing his ass?”
“Of course not,” said Fern. “It was not. Worth. Grabbing,” she declared, punctuating each word with a stab of her claw. “He had a … a whatsit. A … a lantern. Banging into his butt.”
“He was a Gatewarden?” Maylee said.
“An assless Gatewarden,” declared Fern.
And then they were all laughing.
When that wound its way down to relative quiet, Fern looked at the both of them, teary-eyed, and raised her glass again. “To you two. You’re …” She searched for the word. “Cute. And I’m drunk.”
“Cute, huh? You’re definitely drunk,” said Viv, hoisting her refilled mug.
“Speak for yourself.” Maylee clinked her own mug against Fern’s glass. “I’m cute as hells.”
Viv saw the challenging look on Maylee’s face and decided she’d definitely answered too hastily. In fact, the pleasant flush in her cheeks and the bloom in her chest made her want to lean in close, brush her thumb across Maylee’s lower lip, and—
She suddenly noticed Fern watching them avidly, with her cheek on one paw, swirling her glass with the other.
Viv cleared her throat, but her words were in earnest. “Can’t argue with that.”
30
“Gods, it looks pretty grim, doesn’t it?” said Fern. She massaged her forehead, still a little the worse for wear after the prior night’s adventure.
She, Viv, and Satchel stood together near the center of the shop. The front door was latched, supplies piled in the middle of the floor, the tops of the wall shelves draped with old sailcloth weighted in place with stones. The table, chairs, and carpet they’d purchased were arrayed on the boardwalk out front, along with any other freestanding furniture that could be moved there. The gull bookends sat together on the countertop like a humorous afterthought.
Somehow, their addition made the flaking paint more obvious, and every worn corner of the room looked shabbier than normal.
“At last,” said Satchel, his tone gleefully anticipatory. “If I may, m’lady?”
He didn’t even wait for permission, cracking open the urn of paint. Viv thought he might actually have chuckled.
“It doesn’t seem like I could stop you,” said Fern.
Satchel and Viv handled most of the initial work. They used trowels to scrape the walls down and peel away flaking paint, which shed onto the sailcloth and floor like the bark of an aspen. Fern tidied it into piles as it fell. Viv had expected to do a lot of the work herself, given how high much of the exposed wood was, but the homunculus had impeccable balance and certainly wouldn’t be injured by a fall. He climbed the shelves with alacrity, even draped in the sailcloth as they were, crouching atop them in impossibly contorted positions no fleshly creature would be able to endure.
Fern filled small pots from the urn and passed them up. Over a series of industrious and companionable hours, they painted the entire front room. Viv could even reach the ceiling, and though it put an awful crick in her neck and abused back muscles that no amount of swordplay ever strained, she managed.
When it was done, Viv removed the stones from the sailcloth and carefully folded it, hauling it to the boardwalk. They threw open the side windows, and Fern swung wide the back door to let the air pass through. Then they gathered and surveyed their handiwork together.
“It’s … definitely an improvement,” admitted Fern.
“Hang on,” said Viv, stepping over to the hurricane lantern and removing the cracked chimney. Carefully unwrapping the one she’d purchased, she settled it onto the lamp’s base. “Now it’s better.”
“It is indeed,” agreed Satchel, the blue flames of his orbits pulsing lazily. “A very creditable transformation.” He sighed a long, hollow breath of satisfaction, and although Viv never would have guessed a skeleton could look relaxed, he somehow achieved it.
The rattkin rolled her eyes. “It’s just some paint.” But Viv could tell by the curve of her tail and the way her whiskers twitched that she was pleased.
Over the following hours, Viv muscled the furniture into the shop, and they fussed over rearranging it. Eventually, they repositioned several of the freestanding shelves, or rather, Viv did, by carefully lifting one end and then another, walking them ever so gently into new locations.
They placed Fern’s new table at the end of two back-to-back shelves and arranged a small seating nook with the additional chairs near the front windows. The still-empty vases they positioned in the corners. The reconfigured interior allowed more space for the original padded chairs and side table as well, and when they finally unfurled the new carpet, its deep burgundy added surprising warmth to the room.
By then, the paint had dried enough for Viv to bang a nail into the wall behind the counter, where she carefully hung the painting Maylee had chosen.
It did indeed look very nice.
“What was the plan with this table then?” asked Viv, rapping it with her knuckles.
“I guess we’ll see,” said Fern. She went about the shop, selecting a few different books, studying their covers and nibbling at a paw as she did. Viv and Satchel watched, nonplussed, as she traveled back and forth to the table, arranging the volumes upright or angled, with other books as backing or stacking them just so. Sometimes, she’d take one back and reshelve it, only to replace it with another.
Eventually, she snatched the gull—or rabbit—bookends from the counter and positioned them strategically, sandwiching a series of volumes between them in a few different arrangements until she was satisfied.
Viv didn’t know what invisible signal indicated that she was done, but Fern stepped back with a satisfied nod.
And she had to admit, it looked nice.
The rattkin appeared to awaken from a daze.