Mandy smiled, “The wards will hold. And if they come, we’ll know.”
“Good,” Byron said. “Then we stay alert.”
Night settled deep. Mandy explained to Erin and Davina their tasks and room to room they went and planted the Bloom Bells. Barnaby set up sensors, Corey, Ethan and Damian Rallied the troops and sorted the schedules, Whilst Lucy stepped outside for air. The storm that had darkened their doorstep had passed, but the air still smelled of rain and metal. She looked toward the dark line of the woods, the faint flicker of energy in the distance, wards forming, glowing like threads across the boundary.
Byron joined her quietly, hands in his pockets. “This was bound to happen, I just wish the others could have joined us” Lucy hooped her arm through his, “How many of us are there again?” “five” he responded. “Is there a way to find the others quicker?”
Looking off into the sky Byron sighed “The moment you were turned on” Lucy interrupted quickly, “Turned on? So, every time you arouse me, they feel it too?” Byron burst out laughing “No, sorry My bad, wrong choice of words. The Moment you activated, they would have felt it, just like Mandy and I did!
Lucy pulled him in close. “Hopefully they get here soon, we truly need all the help we can get!”.
The Bell Blooms had chimed so many times that first morning, small, bright, maddening notes, that the whole house was on edge.
“False alarm,” Mandy said for the fourth time before lunch, passing a vase in the hall and touching a petal with her knuckle.
Ethan checked the south perimeter on the monitor. “Movement at the hedgerow. Fox. Again. Should we let him in he is cute?”
“Tell him to show ID,” Barnaby muttered, half-asleep over a laptop.
Erin sat cross-legged on the rug near Davina’s feet with a colouring book, tongue tucked against her molars the way children do when they mean business. “Foxes don’t have pockets, so how would the fox carry ID” she announced without looking up.
Davina smoothed a curl behind Erin’s ear. “Exactly. So, no ID. Which means no entry.”
Erin nodded like that was the final word for all foxes everywhere and went back to colouring a dragon purple.
Byron stood in the doorway. “We have to treat every chime like it matters,” he said.
Lucy caught his eye and nodded. She was already in training clothes; she had been since breakfast. The adrenaline of the past week hadn’t left her body yet; it only found new places to sit.
“Let’s go,” Byron said quietly, and Lucy followed him into the training room.
They rolled up the rug and pushed back the chairs. Byron tapped two fingers against his chest. “Breath first.”
“I know,” Lucy said, slow inhale, measured exhale, until the jitter in her hands turned into focus.
“Again,” he said.
By the end, she could feel the room like a map, where his weight sat, where the air gathered, where the hum at the base of her skull sharpened when he got close.
“You’re getting better,” he said, handing her a glass of water. “Good.”
“I'm not there yet, I still have so far to go,” she said out of breath.
Lucy took the glass and leaned her hip against the desk. The Bloom Bells chimed faintly, and both their heads lifted. Quiet. No one shouted from the hall. A clear sign that it was another false alarm.
The second day dragged its heels. It was the same routine, train- Pause at the bell bloom sounds-Train some more - have we been breached? It was enough to drive anyone insane.
On the third morning, Lucy called it out in the kitchen while she cracked eggs into a bowl. “We are not turning into those people who flinch at cutlery,” she said. “Tonight, we do something nice. Not huge. Just… nice.”
“Define ‘nice,’” Corey said, checking a list on his phone.
“Lights. Music. Food. Laughter. Shit that normal people do” She whisked the eggs hard. “If the bells ring, they ring. We’ll deal with it.”
“Are we inviting the fox?” Sam asked, deadpan.
“Only if he brings ID,” Erin said. Her ‘R’ in ‘brings’ wobbled like a tricycle turning.
Davina caught Lucy’s eye over Erin’s head. “It’s a good idea. Everyone’s feeling the tension right now.”
