Hell's Army

Chapter Thirty-three- Farewells

Holly and Ingleseid stood at the boarding docks of the Setan City train station as Morganstone pushed her bags onto the loading dock. People bustled around them, running their hands through their hair, checking their watches, yelling, or doing some combination of all three. Ingleseid looked at his shoes, wishing he could be anywhere else. He'd told Holly he didn't want to come because of Morganstone's less than thinly veiled threat, but they both knew the real reason. Garrett wasn't the only one who saw someone's face every night before he went to sleep.

"What will you do?" Holly asked as Morganstone's train slowed to a stop.

"Felix is out there somewhere," she said. "And somewhere inside him is the person I knew. I'm going to find him. And, hey, I think it's a safe bet that there'll be people who need my help along the way."

"You know," Holly said quietly, "I think I might actually miss you."

"Keep doing what you're doing, okay, Fawkes?"

Holly gave her a mock salute, and she looked at Ingleseid.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She looked down. "It wasn't your fault. I wanted someone to blame. Because that meant I couldn't blame myself. But now I have a chance to make it up to him."

"Call us if you need anything, yeah?" Holly said, and Morganstone grinned.

"Good luck, Morganstone," Ingleseid murmured.

"I'll see you two kids later," she said, and with one last wave, she was on the bus and out of sight.

The weeks after that passed fairly uneventfully. Garrett still lived with Tatters, and while he still had nightmares every time he went to sleep, he was slowly getting better. Clients still flooded into the agency, and Ingleseid still spent far more time at Holly's flat than he did at his, and for a while, he was happy.

Then he went back to school.

He wandered down the halls of Setan City High, narrowly missing two students almost glued to each other's faces.

"Ingleseid!" the teacher who gave him tea, Ms Woods, he thought her name was, called.

He turned around. "Hello."

She looked like she wanted very badly to say something, then adverted her eyes. "Look at them," she said disapprovingly, casting an eye to the two students, who had somehow managed not to breathe this whole time. "Thank God we're not like that anymore, right?"

He nodded slowly, trying to think back to a time when he actually had been like that.

"I mean, it's just silly," she continued, so fast the words almost melted into one another, "all those crushes and dates and..." She took a deep breath. "Asking people to go out with them."

He frowned, decided that Ms Woods was not going to speak her mind without giving him some sort of cryptic code, so said, "Sorry, did you want something?"

Her eyes widened, and she said, "No! Not at all. Sorry, I'm just- I'm just going. Class to teach." And with that, she hurried off, leaving Ingleseid to watch her go and wonder if there was something he should have been picking up on there.

He went to the lunchroom, where Samael was sitting at a table with what looked like the entire football team, cheerleading squad, and, heck, probably some matheletes nestled in there somewhere, too.

Wiggs and Marcie, who would have been the glorified king and queen of the school had their subjects not abandoned them, stalked past, glaring at Samael like he was dirt under their boots.