The boy looks older than the last time Erath saw him properly. Not by years, but by weight. There's a tension in his shoulders that speaks of things carried for too long, and his face is thinner, sharper at the edges, though his eyes are the same. Dark, serious, too old for someone his age. His hands are steady as he holds the portal, but the light at his fingertips is flickering, which means its cost is not zero. Erath climbs out of the underworld and Newt closes the portal behind him. It seals with a soft exhale, the apartment air rushing to fill the space where the passage had been, and the temperature in the room normalizes.
Malik is standing nearby. One of the demons under Erath's command, though "command" is a stretch these days, given that Malik is voluntarily bound to a human and no longer resides in the underworld and seems content to stay that way. He's leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and he looks like his metaphorical feathers have been ruffled. It's never a good sign when an incubus looks worried. Their concerns tend to center around pleasure and self-preservation, and the fact that Malik looks like he's doing long division in his head suggests that whatever Newt is about to say is more complicated than either of them would like.
"Newt," Erath says, and he realizes as he says it how long it's been since they've truly spoken. Face to face, in a room, with enough time to say the things that need saying. The last time Newt had called for his help there hadn't been time. Mathilde had been there and the portal had been unstable, flickering in and out, and they'd had minutes at best. Erath had done whathe could and then the passage had closed and they'd gone their separate ways and that had been the end of it. He is more than capable of opening his own portals, but it's not easy to get one to stay stable anywhere near the Hargrove manor. They've been dabbling in enough forbidden magic that even death has a hard time taking hold, the wards and counter-wards and blood-soaked protections layered so thick that the boundary between worlds calcifies rather than bends. It speaks to the level of skill Newt has developed that he was capable of holding a portal open at all, let alone one stable enough for Erath to walk through.
"I'm sorry," Newt says immediately, which sounds exactly like him. He's twisting his hands, the afterglow of magic still fading from his fingers, and he looks far too unsure for someone as capable as he is. At least power hasn't gone to his head. He still appears to be the same sweet, kind boy he's always been, the one who used to sit in Penny's room and read to her when she was too small to hold the books herself, turning the pages and doing the voices with a patience that had surprised Erath then and still surprises him now, because patience is not a trait the Hargrove Coven cultivates and Newt has it anyway, stubbornly, defiantly, a quality he grew in himself because no one else was going to plant it.
"I know you've got a lot going on," Newt says, "but this involves Penny."
Of course it involves Penny. Everything involves Penny right now. But the fact that it also involves Newt is a very bad sign, because Newt has spent a lot of effort extracting himself from the Coven's grasp and if they've pulled him back in, then whatever is happening has escalated beyond what Erath had hoped.
"How is she?" Newt asks, before he can say anything. The question comes out fast, and the way Newt says it tells Erath it's been sitting at the front of his mind since before the portalopened. He's not asking how she is in the general sense. He's asking how she is right now, today, given everything that's happening. "Is she safe? Where is she?"
"She's safe," Erath says. "She's in Haven with a friend."
"A friend?" Newt's brow creases and he says, with the innocent bluntness that comes to him so naturally, "You don't have any friends. Not any living ones anyway."
He's not wrong, of course, but it's still a little amusing to hear a tiny redheaded witch call out the literal god of death for being an antisocial recluse. Erath pauses. The pause goes on longer than it should for a simple answer, and he watches Newt register the length of it, watches the crease in his brow deepen. "Penny has… bonded with someone."
Newt stares at him. Malik, behind him, uncrosses his arms.
"Bonded," Newt repeats. The word lands with its full weight because Newt knows what it means. He was there for the Angelica years. He watched the bond form between the three of them, watched what it made possible, watched what happened when it broke. He understands the mechanics of Penny's power better than most people alive, because he grew up inside the belly of it, because his mother's place in the triangle was the scaffolding of his teenage years and when it collapsed he'd been caught in the wreckage along with everyone else. He'd lost Penny. He'd lost Erath. "Bonded the way she bonded with my mother?"
"Yes."
"To who?"
Erath should be able to answer this question easily. It's a factual question with a factual answer. Sidney. A bartender. A human who found Penny in his bar and kept her safe. The words are right there and they should be simple and instead they're stuck somewhere between his chest and his throat because the simple version of the answer is not the whole version and thewhole version requires explaining things that Erath has not said out loud to anyone and is not entirely certain how to articulate.
"A mortal," he says. "A man. He found Penny the night Amelia died. She was alone in his bar and he took care of her and refused to hand her over to the Coven when they came for her. And Penny…" He trails off. Starts again. "Penny decided he was hers."
"Penny decided he was hers," Newt echoes, and there's something careful in his voice now, something that is reading between every line Erath is offering and finding the lines he's leaving out. "And she rebuilt the triangle."
"Yes."
"With a stranger."
"He's not a stranger. Not anymore."
The qualifier comes out before Erath can stop it, and he watches it land in the room the way a dropped glass lands, all at once and impossible to take back. Newt stares at him. Malik makes a sound that is either a cough or a very poorly suppressed laugh, and Erath gives the incubus a look that could freeze the river solid.
Newt's expression shifts through several things in rapid succession. Surprise first, then something calculating, then something softer that he seems to decide not to voice. He looks at Erath with the purposeful tact of someone who is being very careful about what they say next.
"Is he good for her?" Newt asks.
The question is simple and it's the right question and Erath is grateful for it because it gives him something concrete to answer instead of the sprawling, unmanageable thing happening in his chest. "He's made her his entire world and she's happy in a way she hasn't been since…." He pauses. "He's very good for her."
"And to you?"
Erath looks at Newt. Newt looks back at him, steady and unflinching, and the question is not casual. It's the question of someone who watched his mother use Erath, who watched the bond between them curdle into manipulation and betrayal, who knows exactly what it costs Erath to let someone close enough to occupy that position and who is asking, with the quiet fierceness of a person who cares, whether this time is different.
Erath doesn't know how to answer. He doesn't know how to say any of what he feels for Sidney. So he says, haltingly, with the gracelessness of a man who has spent eons dealing with the dead and has no practice talking about the living, "He's… yes. He is."
Malik makes the sound again. Erath gives him the look again. Malik raises his hands in surrender and leans back against the counter and says nothing, but his mouth is doing something that Erath finds deeply objectionable.
Newt, to his credit, doesn't push. He nods, once, and the nod carries acceptance and relief and something that might be the beginning of a smile, and he lets the topic settle and moves on to the reason he called.
He explains that Annabeth came to him last night. He says this carefully, the way someone handles a piece of glass they know is cracked. Annabeth, the other sister, the one who stayed when Angelica left, the one who's been holding the Coven together in Mathilde's absence with nothing but stubbornness and whatever authority her bloodline affords her. She came to Newt's apartment, begrudgingly, and asked for help, which is one of the most surprising things he could say. Annabeth asking anyone for help is remarkable. Annabeth asking Newt, the nephew she's barely spoken to over the years, the defector, the one who walked away, is extraordinary. It means she's desperate.
