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The low murmur of voices washed over Cosmo, gently coaxing him back to consciousness. There were two of them, both females, and it took his muddled mind a moment to recognize that they belonged to Elsie and to Miss Glask. The air smelled faintly of perfume and cigarette smoke, not the familiar mustiness of old books that permeated his shop and their chapter house. The last thing Cosmo remembered was entering Grayslate with Elsie and Cordelia, to investigate the strange disappearances at the sanitorium. Had there been an attack of some kind? How badly had he been injured? Was Oscar alright? He shifted slightly, only to groan in pain as the movement tugged at stitches and bandages.
“Cosmo?” There was a rustle of movement nearby, then Cosmo felt a gentle hand on his arm. “Cosmo, can you hear me? Get Oscar; I think he’s waking up.” Cosmo heard an affirmative answer from Cordelia as he opened his eyes. He blinked a few times to clear his vision and found Elsie looking down at him anxiously.
“Elsie?” he murmured. As his gaze darted around the room, Cosmo realized that he didn’t recognize his surroundings. “What- what happened? Where are we?”
“The Glass Cat,” Elsie responded in reverse order. “Nokari sent us back here temporarily, after we completed our mission at Grayslate.”
Cosmo inhaled sharply as the fog finally cleared from his mind and his memory returned: entering the Oldfairen ruins underneath the asylum...seeing the Serious Man for the first time since he was a child...attacking and being attacked by the Great Maw…a great swarm of insects attacking the Serious Man, nearly killing him...hearing Oscar beg for the man to be spared, in the hopes of finally obtaining answers…revealing to Elsie and Miss Glask the truth about his relationship to Oscar. “That man…from the ruins,” he said urgently, looking at Elsie. “Where is he? Is he still alive?”
“He’s at the Antiquarian; Nokari and others from Candela are stabilizing him there, which is why we were sent away,” she answered. Cosmo stared at Elsie as it took his brain a moment to process what she had said. Then he pushed himself upright, grimacing as his wounds twinged sharply in pain again. “Cosmo, no! You need to stay in bed; you're still injured!” Elsie reached out, trying to keep him from getting out of bed. Cosmo struggled against her but found himself tiring quickly.
Then the door to Cosmo’s sickroom flew open and Oscar strode in. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Are you trying to kill yourself?” Stunned at his father’s sharp tone and exhausted from his brief tussle with Elsie, Cosmo fell back onto the pillow.
“Oscar…the Serious Man…” Cosmo managed to gasp as he struggled to catch his breath. He barely paid attention to Elsie taking his pulse, or when she stacked some pillows behind him so that he could sit up and breathe a little easier. “Can’t let…Candela take him to the…Pharos. Not before we…”
“We’ll get our chance,” Oscar told him. “Nokari’s promised to let us know when he’s strong enough, then we’ll be able to interrogate him. But he’s not the only one that needs to recover,” he added with a pointed Look at his son. Lowering his voice, Oscar sat down on the edge of Cosmo’s bed. “Damnit, you scared the hell out of me, Cosmo. I thought I told you to stay behind me if there was any danger. I’d already lost enough that night; I didn’t need to lose you, too.”
Cosmo closed his eyes and breathed deeply, expression contrite at the reminder that Oscar had died again, had lost yet another piece of himself. How many more times, Cosmo wondered, before he was a complete stranger to his father? Would he live to see it? Did he want to? “I had the best chance at…harming that foul creature,” he answered quietly.
“I know you did,” Oscar sighed “but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“That we have to like it,” Elsie chimed in, shooting Cosmo a reprimanding Look of her own.
“I will not apologize for doing my duty as a Candela agent,” Cosmo said. “However, I will say that I am sorry for the worry that I caused both of you; that I caused all of you,” he amended, looking up to acknowledge Cordelia, who had been watching silently from the doorway.
“Well, just promise not to do it again,” she replied as she walked into the room, stopping at the foot of the bed. “After all, I don’t want to lose one of my favorite customers, do I?” Cosmo bowed his head with a weak chuckle. “Now, if you’re feeling up to it, I can arrange to have a late breakfast brought up – for all of you.”
Oscar and Elsie looked at each other, then back at Cordelia. “I could eat,” the elder Grimm said.
“That would be nice, thank you,” Elsie replied. There was a tense pause before she offered, “Would you care to join us?”
Madame Glask smiled thinly. “Thank you, but I need to get back to work, check up on my girls; you understand. I’ll stop by to see you later, Cosmo.” He acknowledged her comment with a nod, and then Cordelia swept out the door.
Cosmo looked over at Elsie. “Is there something the matter between you two?” he asked curiously.
“She’s been...uneasy around me, since she saw the Beast,” the doctor of their Circle replied. “I’m not sure if she trusts me very much at the moment...not that I blame her.”
“Don’t worry; she’ll come around,” Oscar said. “Last night was just…a lot. Give her time to process.” Elsie nodded, still looking uncertain.
Looking around the room, Cosmo realized that their Circle was still one member short. “Where is Rajan?” he asked.
“His Highness decided to go back to his place, rather than slumming it here in Red Lamp with the rest of us,” replied Oscar. At Cosmo’s Look he added, “He thought his appearance might disturb some of the workers and the patrons here.”
“What do you mean?”
Oscar and Elsie exchanged glances. “Do you remember how he...subdued...the Serious Man?” she asked. Cosmo’s brow furrowed in thought as he nodded; he’d been semiconscious from blood loss, but he’d still been aware enough to notice that the insects that had attacked the Serious Man had come from Savarimuthu himself. “Raj's body was- altered by what he did. His eye looks more like an insect’s eye now.”
“Oh, dear,” Cosmo murmured. “Yes, I can see how some people might find that disquieting. But, aside from that, the young man is alright?”
“As far as we know,” said Oscar. “He didn’t really say much before he left.” Cracking a grin and popping a hard candy into his mouth he remarked, “Maybe we should change our name to the Circle of Tide and Secrets?”
“I doubt that will be necessary,” Cosmo retorted. “However, I do believe that there needs to be a discussion among all of us in our Circle, and soon, if we are going to continue forward. We need to be able to trust one another.”
“This Circle is not broken, but it is most certainly bent.” Dr. Savarimuthu’s assessment of their Circle had been correct. Cosmo couldn’t do anything to repair the damage already done, but he would at least try to make sure that the Circle of Tide and Bone did not bend any further or break entirely.
The next few days passed quietly for the members of Tide and Bone as they recovered from what had happened at Grayslate. Since they weren't allowed to return to the Antiquarian while the Serious Man was there, Glask allowed Elsie and Cosmo to stay for free at the Glass Cat as long as they needed to. Despite the uneasiness that lingered between her and Elsie Cordelia was a gracious host to her guests. Oscar visited his son as often as he could, almost as if he was trying to reassure himself that Cosmo was still there, was still alive. Several of Cordelia's girls paid visits as well, once they heard that Cosmo was there and that he had been hurt. Elsie had been more than a little amused to walk into Cosmo's room one evening to find him in the middle of a heated gin rummy game with Quinni.
It was nearly a week after the assignment at Grayslate when the members of Tide and Bone gathered in Cosmo's room in the Glass Cat, including Rajan who was sporting a new accessory in the form of an elegant eyepatch over his insectoid eye. The group sat around the small table, drinks in front of them. "Normally," Cosmo began "it is customary for a Circle to debrief after a completed assignment: to go over any evidence that was collected, to discuss their missteps and see if there are any lessons that can be learned for future assignments. However, I believe that we first need to clear the air between all of us. There are too many secrets in our Circle, and while I have said that I trust all of you, I now realize that it is equally important that you be able to trust each other."
Silence reigned over the table for several moments as the other four looked at each other awkwardly, all of them waiting for someone else to begin. Finally, Oscar sighed and said, "Well, somebody's gotta go first; might as well be me." He looked over at Cordelia with an apologetic look on his face. "I feel guilty about not telling you about what I knew and about the dangers," he said, his gaze darting over at Elsie. "You hired me to protect you and to protect your business. I just didn't think it was my place to share other people's business, that's all."
"Of all people, I think I would understand that the most, so you're not entirely to blame," Cordelia responded kindly. "However, from now on, no more." Oscar nodded.
"I mean, I have no more secrets," he said with a lopsided shrug.
"Would you care to explain the one that was revealed a week ago?" Elsie asked quietly, not looking at either of the Grimms.
Oscar blinked in surprise. "Oh. I mean, I can try. But honestly, I don't understand it myself."
"I may be able to fill in any gaps," Cosmo assured him.
"Yeah. That would help." Oscar flashed his son a brief smile. He paused a moment to collect his thoughts, then began his tale. "A while ago; a long while ago..."
"Eighty-seven years ago," Cosmo interjected.
The elder Grimm sighed in resignation, ignoring the surprised reactions from the younger members of their Circle. "It was a different life, and a different time. We were on a trip, returning from... I don't remember anymore, but I do know that we were on a ship, at sea."
"You had been performing, with the circus," prompted Cosmo.
"That's right." Oscar blinked, as though some memory had been shaken loose. "That's right, I was something of a performer; I was the Great Grimm. Our family name had been something different, but I had changed it to be onstage. And I was traveling with my family - my wife, my son...maybe some others."
Cosmo nodded in encouragement. "Yes; your daughter, Iris, and your brother, Quentin."
"...I guess so." Oscar smiled thinly, the expression not hiding the fact that he didn't remember those people at all.
"And me," the younger Grimm murmured as he looked down at his hands. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see that it was his father.
"You, I remember," Oscar reassured him. He smiled, the expression not quite reaching his eyes.
"Your son..." whispered Elsie, her gaze darting between the two men that she had been friends with for several years now. She thought back on the glimpses that she'd had of their relationship over the years: the arguments, all the affectionate gestures, Oscar's worry for Cosmo whenever he put himself in danger. All of it was meant to be construed as a grandson trying to care for his elderly grandfather, but now she realized that it was really a father still trying to protect and care for his son.
"Cosmo," Cordelia murmured. She looked at her old friend for a moment before looking over at Oscar, studying him. Ever since the reveal of Oscar's immortality she had suspected that his condition had been caused by one of her gods. So far everything she was hearing appeared to be evidence that she was correct.
Oscar nodded absently. "My son, Cosmo," he echoed absentmindedly.
"How is this possible?" Cordelia asked.
"I was a boy that day; I had not been ten for very long." Cosmo's eyes unfocused a little as he took up the thread of the story, as though he was looking back through time itself. "It was nice, traveling with my father and our family. I liked to watch all the performers - you, the jugglers, the tumblers, and the magicians. It was a good life. Another one; another life."
"Something happened, something with that man." Oscar shook his head, as though he was trying to shake more memories loose. It felt like he was searching around in his mouth for a loose tooth, something that he could feel but he couldn't find. "It was late, and it was dark. He looked the same age as he did at the sanitorium. His face was...pulled tight. His skin looked too- too clean, too healthy; like a mask, not like a real face. He did something, some of that magick that Candela's always talking about."
Cosmo nodded in confirmation. "Yes; he appeared on the ship out of nowhere while we were at sea; it wasn't a very large boat, and we knew everyone who was supposed to be on board. He performed some sort of ritual that day."
"That's right; you were there, right?" Oscar asked, looking at his son uncertainly.
Cosmo's eyes widened imperceptibly. "Do you really not remember?" he asked in surprise. Oscar shook his head.
"There were symbols, runes, drawn on the deck with salt and sand," the elder Grimm described. "I don't remember it all, but what I do I... I don't understand."
"Whatever he did sundered the ship. It split down the middle and began to sink," said Cosmo. Looking over at Oscar he added, "You tumbled down toward the center of whatever he was doing and pushed me back. Something happened to you, and we lost Mother, and Iris, and your brother."
"What was her name?" Oscar asked in a small voice.
"Cora. Your wife was Cora," Cosmo replied gently.
"You don't remember," Rajan remarked, speaking up for the first time.
Oscar looked over at him. "There's a lot of me that I don't remember anymore, or has been taken from me," he confessed.
"Is this the reason why you came...back...after what Elsie did?" Madame Glask asked.
Oscar shrugged. "Ever since that day...that event, whatever he did..." He paused, trying to put his thoughts in order. "It filled me with a great feeling of...I don't know what it was. But it felt wrong, and it felt good."
Rajan nodded in understanding. "Yes; a great power. When my sister was thralled to Maw, I found her digging. Maw tried to use my twin sister and I to open a gate," he explained to the ladies and Cosmo, who hadn't been present when he had shared part of his story with Oscar. "The Serious Man saved my mother after she had fallen ill. She was on death's door, and he brought her Oldfaire artifacts that saved her life, but at great cost. It sounds like you have also paid a terrible price for his meddling," he said to Oscar.
"I don't think what he did to me was intentional; maybe I was just in the wrong place at the right time," the elder Grimm responded. "But ever since then, whenever I die, I keep coming back and I never...change."
"I have spent many decades studying antiquity," Cosmo spoke again. "And the pages of history are riddled, if you look hard enough, with stories that suggest the existence of people like you, like you, and even like you." His gaze moved from Oscar, to Rajan, and then to Elsie. "I do not believe in coincidence. Take that for what you will."
"I know I don't have any right to be angry," Elsie said, her tone a little hurt "but why didn't you tell me? Why didn't either of you tell me?" How many times, Elsie wondered to herself, had she killed her friend and not realized or remembered it? How would their assignment have gone differently if she had known that Oscar would come back to life after she'd killed him?
Oscar sighed. "To be honest, and the boy doesn't like to hear this, I'm done. I've given up."
Elsie's eyes widened "What do you mean?"
"We've been trying for nearly a century to fix me, and it's just not going to happen." Oscar looked away from Cosmo, not wanting to see the expression on his son's face. He had seen it over a hundred times before: hurt, sadness, anger, and beneath those layers a spark of defiance and determination that would not allow him to give up. Oscar hated that expression.
"You don't know that!" the doctor protested.
"I'm convinced that there are others like him," Cosmo said quietly. "Obviously there is the gentleman at the Antiquarian who looks not a day older than when we first saw him, but there must be others in history as well."
But Oscar was shaking his head. "I should have... When you have a son, you should not outlive them. I've been a burden to my boy, and I just- I want this burden to end. But at the same time, he's the only part of myself that I remember anymore."
Cosmo looked over at the women that had witnessed Oscar's death and resurrection the previous night. "Elsie, Miss Glask. A very large reason why I never shared this because I am all but positive that Candela will lock him away. It is only because of my years of service that they have...tolerated...his freedom as long as they have, and I have used these decades trying to find something, anything to help him. And though I am not afflicted with his condition, I too feel...stretched, and also tired." He looked down at the ground, and the wheelchair that he had spent the last decade and a half in, avoiding the guilt in his father's face at this admission. "Perhaps that is foolish, perhaps; a fool's errand."
"Well, one thing's for certain: if the Ascendency or the Periphery were to learn about your gifts..." Rajan let the sentence taper off; there was no need for him to finish. Being imprisoned in the Vault in Fourth Pharos was a kinder fate than winding up in the hands of the city's religious leaders, or the OUP.
"And Oscar, if life is your curse, then perhaps living is the cure," Cordelia suggested.
"I've tried that," he replied bitterly "but every joy that I've ever had has been taken from me. Every love that I've ever had, every family member I've ever known, they just... I outlast them I forget them, or they die."
"There's just me, for a little while longer, at least," Cosmo reminded him. Elsie reached over and rubbed a comforting hand on his shoulder, while Oscar nodded.
"But, you know," the former circus performer remarked, looking over at Rajan "turns out I'm not the biggest freak of our group. No offense," he added when Cosmo glared at him in reproach.
"Oh, none taken," Raj replied easily.
Oscar continued, "I mean, you've got all sorts of problems, including supernatural ones."
"Hold on, Raj," Elsie said quietly, not wanting him to rise to Oscar's bait.
"It would appear that most of our secrets are out in the open now," Raj responded evenly, taking the high road.
"Yeah, just buzzing around," Oscar quipped, a ghost of a smirk on his face.
Elsie glared at him before looking over at Rajan. "Was it- were you always...since I've known you?" She stumbled through the question, trying to find a tactful way to ask how long he'd had a hive of insects built into his torso instead of a normal body.
"I didn't know how to broach the subject," the archaeologist explained "and I'm sorry that I kept it from you. But it seems that everyone here had good reasons for keeping their secrets to themselves."
"I don't understand yours," Elsie said.
“I don’t either,” chimed in Oscar. Looking over at their doctor he asked, “You two were together, right?”
“For a time,” she answered stiffly.
“And this never came up?”
“I always asked,” she said. “Everything he shared with me was like a knife in him.”
“What was I going to say? What was I supposed to show you that would make this all right?” Rajan asked her in response. “That wouldn’t send you running away screaming?”
Elsie retorted with a question of her own: “Then why did you get close to me at all? I could’ve...I could’ve helped you.”
“Little bird: a good doctor, always looking to fix the things she loves,” he sighed. “But sometimes your subjects don’t want to be fixed. And that’s just a hard truth that some of us have to live with. I wish it were different, but it’s not.” Unable to come up with a response, Elsie looked down at her lap.
“Miss Glask, you’re awfully quiet,” Cosmo observed, looking over at their host.
“I want to know, Oscar, about this sea god that you came about meeting,” she said, looking over at the elder Grimm.
“Oh, I don’t know anything about that. It was a man, not a god,” Oscar corrected her.
“I do,” Glask said. “Where I’m from, we worship the gods of the sea. This fine establishment that I have was a gift from them.”
“From the gods?” Cosmo asked curiously.
She nodded. “Yes, with a fair trade. And the reason why I’m alone now.”
“What did you trade?” Elsie asked.
“Any sense of home, my family, all of them, with the promise of riches,” Glask answered primly. “So again, I say perhaps living is the cure, because the gods of the sea are fair.”
Oscar stared at her, bewildered. “You gave up your family for this?” he asked, making a vague gesture with his hand to encompass the whole of the Glass Cat. Losing his family involuntarily, one piece at a time, was bad enough; he couldn’t imagine doing it on purpose just to be wealthy.
“Not knowingly,” she assured him. “I prayed for peaceful waters and wealth in a new world. But I didn’t know that that came with a price.”
“And that price seems fair to you?” asked Rajan.
“Who am I to question a god?” she retorted.
Silence settled over the table for a few moments before Cosmo spoke. “Well, here we all are, ripe with secrets and heavy with baggage. We ought to form a circle,” he joked.
“Yeah, it’s a pretty fucked up circle,” Oscar remarked. “You brought us all together, Cosmo, but you must have known. What about us? What about them?”
“Well, you and I both knew about Dr. Roberts,” Cosmo pointed out.
Oscar nodded in agreement. “Yeah.”
“I always knew this lad was a little trouble” Cosmo looked over at Rajan “but you managed to hold your cards close to the vest, son.”
“He’s good at that,” Elsie murmured.
“I’m not the only one here who kept their fair share of secrets,” Rajan retorted calmly.
“My mind always comes back to fate,” remarked Cosmo, almost absently. “There is no reason, no logical reason, why we should be bound together like this. It’s undeniable.”
Before anyone could respond there was a knock at the door; soft, almost timid. Knowing who it was by the knock, Glask looked up and called, “Enter, Quinni”
The door opened, revealing one of the young women that worked at The Glass Cat. In one hand she held a small white envelope, sealed with a wax stamp depicting a lighthouse and a flame. “This is for- this is for all of you,” she said, setting the letter down on a small table near the door. “I’m just going to...”
“Thank you,” Glask said. Quinni nodded and closed the door. Cordelia got up and walked over to where Quinni had left the letter and opened it. “It’s from Nokari,” she announced to the rest of the group. Clearing her throat, she read the note aloud: “‘I know that it has been less than a week, but I am writing to let you know that Toren Gevni, whom you called ‘The Serious Man’, is awake. I can give you an hour to make your peace with him before he is transported to Fourth Pharos.’”
Oscar let out a stunned breath. “Oh, boy. I mean, we’ve been looking for this guy forever. I trust you have as well,” he said to Rajan.
“Not nearly as long as you,” the other man replied.
“Well, shall we go find out if he’s a magician, or a bug, or a god?” asked Oscar, standing up from his chair.
“Oh, yes.” Rajan also rose to his feet, an almost savage smile on his face. “I think we can learn a lot in an hour.”
As Oscar moved behind Cosmo’s chair to push his son out the door, he looked over at Rajan. “If you’re going to do that...thing...will you give us a warning? Because it’s really fucking creepy.”
“I don't think I’ll need to,” he assured the elder Grimm.
“Strangely beautiful, though,” Cosmo remarked.
“Strangely,” Elsie echoed softly.
Cordelia looked at Oscar in concern as they made their way down the hall. “Oscar, if you don’t get answers or a solution, what will happen to you? To Cosmo?”
“I can only hope whatever happens to me is fast and painless,” Oscar sighed “and that he gets to live some of his life without me.” He wouldn’t allow himself to dwell on the alternative.
“I wouldn’t necessarily call forced retirement ‘living’,” Cosmo grumbled. As much as he was looking forward to getting answers, Cosmo was also dreading the next hour. Once their interrogation of the Serious Man was finished, it would mean the official completion of Tide and Bone’s assignment. And unless Nokari had another assignment for them lined up, it also meant the potential end of the Circle of Tide and Bone – and the end of his time in the field.
Oscar and Cordelia shared a Look over Cosmo’s head. “Well, maybe being a Lightkeeper won’t be so bad,” the casino owner remarked.
“Yeah,” Oscar agreed. “I mean, Nokari makes it look pretty easy. And after dealing with us, wrangling a different Circle should be a piece of cake.” Cosmo harrumphed, recognizing their attempts at cheering him up. A small voice in his head pointed out that it wouldn’t do any good to dwell on possible outcomes, and he sighed in resignation.
“At the very least,” he said, “I am glad to be going home.”
Later that evening, Cosmo sat in his bedroom at the Antiquarian, staring out the window. While his gaze was on the light of the lamps outside his mind was elsewhere, reflecting on the events of the last several hours.
Learning that there was no way to make his father mortal again had been a devastating blow for both of them. His earlier agitation aside, Cosmo did not blame Oscar in the slightest for reacting the way that he did. It also didn’t make his looming retirement any easier to face. Elsie had told him earlier of her conversation with Nokari. Their Lightkeeper was right, though Cosmo was loathe to admit it. He would no longer be able to shield Oscar or Elsie once he wasn't in the field; he wouldn’t be there to calm Elsie so that her control over the Beast didn’t slip, or to redirect his father’s anger or impulsiveness before it got him killed. And the likelihood of him being assigned as a Lightkeeper to any Circles they were in was negligible at best. All it would take was one slip, one misstep, and Cosmo could lose either - or both - of them to the Pharos.
And then there was the little girl, Mina, and the Circle’s decision to not immediately turn her over to Candela. To be honest, the thought of that sweet child locked up in Fourth Pharos horrified Cosmo as much as the thought of his father being a prisoner there did. Cosmo had seen children, or childlike phenomena, in the Vault before, and they were always treated like specimens instead of children – like they weren’t human. He hoped that, after speaking with Nokari, they could find some way of helping Mina that did not include locking her away. And yet, Cosmo didn’t quite trust Candela to do right by her – by all of them.
A knock on his door pulled Cosmo from his reverie, and he turned to see Oscar standing in the doorway. He looked smaller and more unsure of himself than Cosmo had ever seen him. “Cosmo? It was a weird day. I feel like we got some sort of closure, but I kind of blew it like I always do, and…I don’t know. Would it be very strange…if I were to tuck you in?”
The request tugged at Cosmo’s heart. “You can help me, yes,” he answered. He was tired, and the bite wounds from the Maw were bothering him more than he wanted to admit. “I can do it on my own, but it’s easier with some help, yes.” Oscar’s smile brightened and he entered the room.
As gently as possible Oscar helped Cosmo change out of his clothes and into his pajamas, setting aside the pants, shirt, sweater vest and jacket to be laundered. He tried not to flinch every time Cosmo winced in pain as the simple act of stretching out an arm pulled at his injuries. “So, are you going to become a Lightkeeper?” Oscar asked, fastening the last few buttons of Cosmo’s pajama top for him.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Cosmo murmured tiredly. He'd given the matter a little bit of thought. Maybe Oscar and Miss Glask had been right, and being a Lightkeeper wouldn't be as bad as he thought it would. There would be less stress, less danger. Or perhaps he would follow Eloise’s example, leave Candela entirely and focus on running his shop. There were times when it had been horribly neglected, or Eloise was left to handle things entirely on her own, while he'd been off on some assignment or another. He had a feeling, however, that Candela wouldn’t let him go as easily as that.
“Maybe we could take a trip, up into the mountains or something,” Oscar suggested as he turned down the covers of Cosmo’s bed.
Cosmo chuckled before pushing himself out of his chair; he wobbled a little, and Oscar quickly reached out to steady him and help him transfer to his bed. “I think I’m a little old to be going camping,” he joked as he laid back against the pillows that Oscar had placed behind him. He wrapped his arms around the pillow Oscar laid against his chest. As his father pulled the covers up over him Cosmo asked, “Would you scoop up Godot and put him by my feet?”
“Of course.” Gently Oscar reached down and picked the dachshund up, setting him at the end of the bed. Godot curled up by his master’s feet and settled down.
“Thank you.”
Once both dog and man were settled into bed, Oscar turned out the light on the bedside table. He sat down on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb Godot, listening as Cosmo’s breathing evened out and deepened. He watched his son’s face in the light that filtered in from outside, noticing the lines of pain that still etched it even in sleep. Oscar sighed; he thought he’d feel better once Cosmo finally retired from the field, knowing he wouldn’t need to worry about his son constantly putting himself in danger. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that Cosmo was still in danger, only now the threat was coming from Candela itself.
Once he was sure that Cosmo had fallen asleep, Oscar stood up. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a hard candy, which he laid on the nightstand. Then he turned and headed for the door. He had just placed his hand on the knob when he heard a tired whisper from behind him.
“Oscar… I’m very tired…”
Oscar shut his eyes and bit his lip, forcing back an urge to weep. “I know,” he answered quietly, though he was certain that Cosmo had just been talking in his sleep. “I wish I were too. Goodnight, sweet boy.” With that, Oscar left the bedroom and headed into the store proper to take Madame Glask and her new ward back to the Glass Cat.
Perhaps things would look better in the morning.