They were silent all the way back to their prison cell. Even Junior had little to say -- he couldn't tease them for not cooperating, Daniel guessed. Junior actually appeared to be deep in thought. Presumably some of the exchange had taken him by surprise as well.
Junior checked through the window, then unbolted the door and gestured them in. "We probably won't be back for you until morning," he said with a grin. "After all, we can't be coming here in the dark when we can't see you before we open the door. So get comfortable, and enjoy your stay." Then the door closed behind them, and the deadbolt rattled shut.
Daniel looked around for the girl, but she wasn't in the front room. A small sound came from the back. Kelly looked at Daniel, and said, "Maybe you should get back to work on that cabinet, and I'll go try to talk to her. Woman to woman."
Daniel turned away and nodded quickly. He made his way back around the counter, found the plaque where he had left it deep underneath the counter, and resumed his battle with the cabinet's hinges.
He heard bits of words drifting out from the back room, along with a few things that sounded like sobs from the girl. He tried not to pay too much attention, but he did manage to get a general idea of what was happening. Not least of which was that he was probably right about the blood.
After a while, he heard a door close, probably the bathroom, and the voices were no longer audible. He kept working, though the counter shadowed him from the light at the front window, and in the failing afternoon light it was hard to see what he was doing. Twice the plaque slipped and jammed one of his fingers against the wood of the cabinet. He tried shifting his grip, but that only made the fatigue creep through his hand more quickly.
Finally he had to admit that he couldn't keep working, both because his hands were weary, and because he couldn't see what he was doing anymore. He carefully set the plaque at the corner between the counter and the wall, where it would be out of sight from the door but where he could easily find it in the morning. He rose stiffly to his feet and walked a couple of times around the room, stretching the soreness out of his complaining legs.
Suddenly, there was a beating of wings from outside, and Daniel froze in his tracks. The rays of sunlight had changed to a fading glow, and against this, a hunched shape was silhouetted in the front windows. Daniel was suddenly grateful that the glass was too dirty to permit full visibility in either direction.
He watched the silhouette as the raptor moved slowly back and forth along the length of the plate glass window, making an eerie snuffling sound as if it were sniffing the air for something. It paused by the broken corner of window, and sniffed some more.
Then it was gone, a shadow flying upward.
Daniel stood still for a long moment after that, then uneasily headed toward the back. Probably any windows back there were as well-barred as the one out here, but after all, Kelly and the girl were back there, and it was worth checking to make sure all was well.
As he walked, he suddenly realized that his fingers were tingling. He stopped, looking down at his hands. Was it his imagination, or could he see a sort of glow around his hands in the darkness?
Shaking himself, he continued toward the back room.
The bathroom door opened just as he entered the bedroom / apartment, and the girl emerged first, followed by Kelly.
"Hi, Daniel," Kelly said, her voice tired. "Any luck?"
He shook his head. "There was a raptor just outside."
"What?" Kelly stopped in her tracks, and the girl turned to look at her. "Are you sure?"
"Well, I didn't exactly see it clearly, through that window," he said. "But it landed, sniffed around a while, and then took off again. There aren't that many flying things around, at least not that I know of."
"So it did fly, then?" Kelly said, her voice tight.
"Yeah," Daniel said, confused. "Of course it did."
Kelly sat down abruptly on the side of the bed. "Well, then something isn't right," she said. "I thought they were supposed to be weaker around Guardians."
Daniel stood still, confused, for several seconds, before he caught on. "You mean she's --"
"Yeah," the girl said softly. "A Guardian."
"My grandfather had been telling me some about it," Taylor said. The room was nearly dark, and they were gathered around the bed, Daniel and Kelly having already checked the bars on the windows in the bedroom and bathroom and pronounced them worthy. "About the kinds of things to expect, and what the Guardians did. He didn't really get a chance to tell me all that much, though, since my dad really didn't want anything to do with it. I only ever got together with Grandpa when I was visiting my mom." She laughed shortly, a humorless laughter that was gone as soon as it had started. "He wasn't even her dad, he was my dad's dad. I think he liked her more than he ever liked Dad."
She took a deep breath and lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling in the last of the dusky light. "He told me about how the Guardians kept the balance. That's what he called it, 'keeping the balance'. That there were the two worlds, and they used to be a lot closer, to where faeries could come across a lot of the time, and steal babies or curse crops or haunt houses."
She paused, and a smile crept across her face. "I used to love his stories. He'd tell stories about faeries that would clean your house for you unless you ever tried to look at them, and you could only see them if you looked through a knothole. Or ones that sang and danced in faerie rings at night." She shivered. "And then they weren't always nice. The dragons, of course, and the trolls and the Winter Queen and the goblins. Most of them, really. They didn't have the ideas of 'good' and 'bad' like we do, and a lot of those stories really threw you. We went camping one time, and he told faerie tales around the fire." She paused, then shivered again. "He was always a good storyteller."
"Why didn't your father like him?" Kelly asked quietly.
Taylor shrugged. "Why do grown-ups ever do stupid things?" she said bitterly. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to talk bad about all grown-ups around you guys, but seriously, they worry about us doing stupid things? Hell, I remember in one of my classes we read about how in the majority of teen pregnancies, the father wasn't even a teen--" She blinked suddenly and bit her lip. She was trembling slightly.
"I'm sorry, honey," Kelly said, reaching out to stroke the girl's hair, but not quite meeting her gaze. "I wish there was something I could do. I don't know if we'll be able to get you out of here, but if we can, then we will."
Daniel raised his knees and wrapped his arms around them. "So he...?" he started to say, then stopped, not sure how to say it.
"Don't dance around it," Taylor said harshly. "Yes, Lance raped me. He had me escorted into his private bedroom and just tore my underwear off, literally ripped it, and then just went at me. It... it hurt. A lot. I'd never... you know? Never done it before." She blinked back tears. "I knew it sometimes hurts the first time, but... God. Still raw. It still hurts when I move."
Daniel shuddered. "Okay. Enough."
"Well, I'm sor-ry, Mister Prissy," she snapped.
"No," he said, pulling into himself a little more. "It's not that I'm a prude. Hell, I've..." He laughed hollowly. "Yeah. It's just that... it makes me feel so damned helpless."
She was quiet then, digesting that.
"Always did," he added softly, shaking his head.
"You've known other girls who were raped?" she said, glancing over at him.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. I was up really late one night, talking to one. She was my cousin... well, cousin's cousin. We were sitting on the floor of my cousin's bedroom after he'd gone to bed. But since the two of us both had to get up early in the morning to go to the airport, and we only would've gotten like three hours sleep by that point, we decided we'd be better off to just stay up the rest of the night and talk. And that was one of the things we talked about. For a couple of people just sitting around and talking, that was still a pretty wild night." He was quiet for a while, then added, "That was when I first really figured out that guys want to be heroes. And when I figured out how much it hurts when it's already happened, and there's nothing we can do to stop it."
She was quiet for a minute or two, then said, "So... what do you think my boyfriend will do when he hears about it?"
"I don't know," he said. "If he really cares about you, then... well, it'll probably make things really weird. Because he'll always be wanting to do something to make it better, to make you feel safe again. But he might not even know what you need, or if you already do feel safe, or... I don't know. It's really hard to guess. Though in my case, I barely ever knew her. She flew off to the other end of the country and I haven't seen her since. Just sent letters a couple of times." He smiled faintly. "I think most of us guys would probably back off just because we don't know what to do, and don't want to get it wrong and make you mad or something. We'd care but we wouldn't have the first clue how to show it. Give us a good dragon to slay any day, and we'll be happy."
Taylor was quiet for a long time. Finally she reached out and touched him on the shoulder. "Thanks," was all she said.
There was a rustle of sheets as she rolled over. A few minutes later, she was asleep, her deep, even breaths faint but audible.
Daniel stayed awake for a long time, staring into space, unaware of Kelly watching him.
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