The Inevitable Eclipse

Chapter 14 - Not A Truce

It was one of those points in the year when the seasons blended. The air was beginning to bite. Ivy wrapped her coat tighter around her body. It was times like that when she wished she could go back to her grandparents' homeland, but that was a distant dream, made impossible by the new restrictions. On second thought, maybe it wasn't too far fetched...

    Or maybe she was just cold.

    "There you are!"

    When he grabbed her arm, her hand flew to her necklace. "Kit, you made me jump!"

    Kit swung an arm around her. "Apologies. My charming good looks have been made to make people double take."

    Ivy rolled her eyes and let him steer her through the busy street. Even though they were on their way to another one of the 'trip planning' meetings that Ezra had ordered them all to, Ivy's mind was still in the art museum from the night before.

    His voice pulled her back to present and away from the lingering 'what if?'... "What are you getting Basma for her birthday?"

    "I ordered a customised leather camera strap," Ivy explained. "I need to pick that up sometime this week."

"I really need to get her something, I've just been so busy lately."

They weaved in and out of people, Kit with a firm grip around her arm. Had they passed him? What if they had brushed against each other in the thick of the people? No, she needed to stop thinking like that. It was not going to get the job done. She had already taken it too far.

"Everything that's going on with The Night Fall at the moment is a lot, right?" Kit said, glancing over his shoulder. "Void certainly doesn't take a day off."

She nodded. "Yeah, I guess. Nothing we can do about it though."

The conversation was slipping into dangerous territory, but before she could steer it back on track, Kit said, "It's so weird. I feel like there is something going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. Illumina is normally good at preventing these sorts of attacks."

"I don't know, she probably has a lot on her plate right now. Oh, maybe we could stop in there and see if you could get anything for Bas-"

"I wonder what Clarissa thinks of this whole thing. The Night Fall are... certainly on a roll."

"Who knows? Not our problem. Come on, we should probably go a little faster, you know how Ezra feels when we're late."

Kit gave her a look. "No, I know how you feel about being late."

***

When they got to Ezra's house his mother opened the door. A kind faced woman with dark hair that she wore pulled back into a braid. A splatter of freckles over her nose. As usual, she wore an apron over her dress. Anytime Ivy saw an apron, it made her think of Mrs Nocte. "Ivy! Christopher!"

Before she had a chance to respond, she was enveloped in a soft hug that smelt of sweet bread. When she pulled back, the woman smiled and wiped away the flour that had somehow crossed onto Ivy's cheek.

"Hey," Kit offered her his hand. He had given up trying to tell her that nobody aside from his grandfather called him Christopher. "Thanks for having us."

"It's always a pleasure!"

Ezra appeared at her side. "Hey!"

He and Kit did one of those boy handshakes that Ivy never understood. He stopped in front of Ivy. "We need to go to the BookNook because my friend, Adam— you know Mr Abernathy's grandson — told me that they got a copy of Dr Millar's new commentary on the beginnings of the French Revolution!"