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Ricky gave himself a once-over in the hallway in front of his parents’ apartment. It had been a crazy night, and long, and there were only so many times he could show up suspiciously dirty and scraped up claiming there had been a fire that kept him. Last time, he’d had a cut on his face, and Emiko had looked like she wanted to call bullshit. It was warranted—fires didn’t usually have knives in them—but he’d managed to make up something about roughhousing with the Johns that placated her.
Right then, Ricky was mostly fine. He had a rip in the knee of his jeans and he smelled a little bit like if peppermint could go moldy, but his folks knew Santacon was going on. He could blame a lot on Santacon, and definitely would if given the opportunity. He raised a fist and knocked, loud enough that it would wake up his father if he was dozing on the couch.
Too loud, apparently, because when the door opened Ricky didn’t even get a glimpse of his father before a small shape barreled into his legs, almost knocking him over. “Hey, kiddo,” Ricky said, resting a tired hand flat on his daughter’s head. His father looked at him from the doorway, eyes swollen with sleep.
“She wouldn’t go to sleep in the bed,” he said, and didn’t sound even a little sorry. “She wanted to be ready for when you came back.”
“Miya,” Ricky said. He felt little hands tighten around the backs of his calves. “You know you have to be good about bedtime.”
She peeled her face away from Ricky’s legs and craned her neck to look up at him. “I had a bad feeling,” she said, matter-of-fact, and Ricky thought about mutant Santa clones and a disease that turned bones into peppermint and, before all that, the flaming beam that had crashed down just inches behind him.
He bent down and scooped Miya up. The second he got his arms around her she went boneless, all dead weight, heavier than she’d been when she was a toddler but never too heavy for Ricky to settle against his shoulder. “If we go home, will you promise to go to sleep right away?” he whispered in her ear. She nodded, and Ricky felt it more than saw it as she hid her face in his neck.
His father handed him Miya’s sleepover bag and waited until Ricky made it into the stairwell to close the door, which was as close as he was ever going to get to saying I love you. It was three flights down to the lobby and then two blocks to the subway, and with each step Ricky could feel Miya falling deeper into sleep. The strap of her ridiculously tiny bag kept slipping off his shoulder onto his elbow, and eventually he left it there hanging off his arm like a Sesame Street themed purse.
Miya usually stayed with Emiko on nights when Ricky had to be at the fire station. Ricky’s parents loved their granddaughter, but they were getting older and more tired, and she was a handful. Emiko was much better at getting her to sleep, and much more willing to let Ricky crash on her couch when he got home late like this. He was immensely grateful for her help, he realized as sat under the buzzing lights of the train car at 12:30. He was exhausted, and Miya was going to be grumpy tomorrow, and he still had to get her up the stairs of his own apartment. Thank God he never skipped leg day.
He let her sleep in his bed, because there was no way he was risking the fight that would happen if she woke up as he was putting her in her own. He did risk a shower, though, because he wasn’t sure the smell of rotten peppermint would ever wash out of his sheets if he went to bed without one. Luckily, Miya stayed passed out, and Ricky was able to fall asleep listening to the little huffs of her breath not too far past one.
Emiko called him the next morning at seven, which wouldn’t usually have been too early. Ricky slid out of bed and padded into the hallway, trying not to wake Miya up, and the second he answered the call his sister said, “What the fuck happened to you last night?”
Ricky stretched and felt the pleasant pop of the joints in his shoulders and back. Being a member of the Unsleeping City made most of his life complicated, but the quick healing was a definite perk. He only felt like he’d been run over by one bus instead of two. He picked up a soccer ball on the way to the kitchen, and then a tennis ball, making a mental note to talk to Miya about tripping hazards, and then he said to Emiko, “You know. A fire.”
She was not convinced. “A fire? I saw you in the hospital with a guy who looked completely unburned. Pasty, basically. Did you meet him at a fire?”
“Smoke inhalation doesn’t always have outward signs,” Ricky said, but even he could hear that it was bullshit. “This was just a guy who needed help.”
That wasn’t a lie. Pete had definitely been in a situation that warranted serious help, both before and after Kingston had dealt with the whole peppermint bones thing. He’d also been able to do something that looked like unzipping his arm to make fireballs shoot out, Ricky remembered suddenly, so he wasn’t even lying about the fire, not really.
“You’ve been really cagey recently,” Emiko said, “and if it’s about the whole dating thing, I’ll stop bringing it up. It’s just been forever since Anna, you know? I don’t think it would be bad to start putting yourself out there.”
Oh. That was not where Ricky had thought the conversation would go. And yet somehow, this was almost as bad. “I’m good,” he said, and tried to mean it in every possible way.
It seemed to come through well enough, because Emiko dropped both lines of questioning and instead told him about the radiologist she thought was cute and an asshole. Ricky half listened as he walked around the apartment picking up toys and socks and putting them back where they belonged. He was debating whether or not it was worth it to get a protein shake started when there was a thud and then the sound of feet thudding down the hallway, which decided for him. “Hey, Miya’s up,” he told Emiko. “Can we finish this conversation later?”
“It’s no big deal, I have other friends to complain to,” Emiko said easily. “I’ll see both of you on Wednesday for dinner though, right?”
Ricky confirmed and set the phone down on the kitchen counter just in time to catch Miya as she launched herself off the back of the couch. “Just a reminder to be safe with your body,” he said, and then put her down onto a barstool so she could supervise the cooking over the island.
“It’s safe to jump because I’m good at landing,” Miya decreed, which would have been sound judgement if she had more practice landing on the ground. Ricky caught her more often than not, and he was worried it was skewing her internal data. “Can we have pancakes? And waffles? And also muffins?”
“I’m making eggs,” Ricky said, holding up his spatula for emphasis. “But we can have them with green sprinkles, if you want.”
Miya shouted confirmation that yes, that was what she wanted on her eggs, and Ricky got started cutting up the chives. The eggs were a hit—Ricky knew enough now to add plenty of cheese and also play a game where he pretended to sneeze them out before putting them on the plate—and when she was done and sufficiently covered in ketchup, Ricky handed Miya a damp napkin and said, “Do you want to play with Briar after gymnastics?”
The strange part about living in Brooklyn and being a father was that Ricky was often texting women named Vienna to set up playdates for his daughter after one of her million enrichment activities. He would’ve been perfectly happy playing with her at the park, but between work and calls from the Chantry, it was nice to be able to drop Miya off somewhere and know she was going to eat biscotti and chocolate-covered dates until he was able to pick her up. It was so far from the life he would’ve imagined for himself six years before, when he’d just met Anna and he was still trying out community college. He’d been toying with the idea of leaving the city and being one of those helicopter firefighters who they flew in during ecological disasters.
But he’d never gotten his pilot license, and now he was a dad, and also a protector of New York, and he spent his mornings trying to convince his daughter that ducky rain boots were not appropriate footwear for a gymnastics class. “We take our shoes off when we get there,” she said, pouting. She was sitting on the storage bench by the door where Ricky tried his best to keep the shoes, her little arms folded across her chest.
“You can’t get your boots off and on without help,” Ricky reminded her. It was a two-man job, and he sometimes had to brace his foot against the bench for leverage.
“The teacher will help me.”
Ricky held out her velcro sneaker again. He didn’t know why she was so set on the boots. Her sneakers lit up. She loved that they lit up. “The teacher has a lot to worry about. You should be in charge of your own shoes.”
This argument seemed to be satisfying enough. Just because she put on the shoes, though, didn’t mean she had to be happy about it. She stomped down the stairs beside Ricky, but still kept a hand on the railing, because that was the rule. Ricky pulled his phone out and found Kingston in his texts, realized the last time they’d talked was when he’d taken a geyser of acid from a sewer monster to the face.
I’ll be at yours as soon as I can, Ricky texted. He thought about mentioning Miya—Kingston knew about her, it wasn’t like Ricky kept his kid a secret—but it felt weird to mention her in the context of whatever was going down in New York. Miya was outside of that. She was skipping down the sidewalk in front of him, sneakers crunching on the salted concrete, the pom-pom of her hat bobbing around wildly.
He thought about the way she’d pressed her face against his shins the night before, how she’d told him about her bad feeling. He gave her a hug before waving at her gymnastics teacher and heading off towards the subway and Kingston, managing to mostly convince himself that Miya’s feeling was a coincidence, and it didn’t have to do with what was going on in the city at all.
The wedding was weird. It had been easy to cover himself in crumbs and snag a date, but the whole sewer thing and the espionage Pete was trying to do with those vampires was not Ricky’s style. As much as he was learning to like Pete and Sofie, as much as he appreciated Misty and Kingston and Kugrash for caring about the city, none of them had anyone to go home to the way he did. They were all willing to keep going, to follow the next clue, to put themselves in danger. Ricky had to pull out his phone in the middle of the sewer fight to check and see that Vienna was okay keeping Miya for dinner. Luckily Briar was a good friend with cool toys, otherwise Ricky would’ve had to leave everyone early, make them think he didn’t care about saving the city.
And even then, Ricky was pushing it by agreeing to walk Pete to the Chantry so Alejandro could watch him sleep. Maybe he would’ve felt better if he was doing it to make sure Pete got there safe, but that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was walking next to him through the library, watching him pull books off the shelves with a wry amusement on her face.
Ricky had a huge crush on Esther Sinclair, and it was killing him.
He was trying not to check his watch, because they were having a great conversation. She was teasing him a little, and telling him about New York magic, and if he looked like a total idiot chances were that she found it kind of endearing. Ricky could work with that. It was when she pointed out the Highway Hex—he’d known it would be a long shot, guessing it was traffic, but at least he’d gotten a laugh—that Ricky’s eyes were drawn to his own neighborhood, and he realized what time it was. “Shoot,” he said, half because he wanted to stay and half because he felt bad about wanting it when his daughter was probably somewhere eating quinoa and golden raisins and wondering where he was.
Esther grinned at him. “Shoot because the city’s ridiculously car centric, or shoot because of the hex specifically?”
“No, I have to go,” Ricky explained. “Miya’s waiting.”
The expression on Esther’s face turned blank in a complicated way. It was neutral, yes, but carefully, intentionally, like she was trying to hide her emotions from herself as well as Ricky. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry for keeping you from your girlfriend, I didn’t mean to-”
“What? No, it’s not- Miya’s my kid.” Ricky said it almost subconsciously, like it was something he figured she already knew. And it was strange, watching the fact that he had a kid land on Esther’s face. Ricky kept a pretty tight circle, and everyone in it already knew Miya. Most of them had been around when she was born. But Ricky had kept Miya out of whatever he had going on in the Unsleeping City, deliberately, which meant Esther had jumped the distinction of cool wizard crush to actual friend.
Esther turned away for a second and said, “I didn’t know you had a kid.”
“Yeah,” Ricky said, and then he figured he might as well be as up front as possible, just in case of the best outcome. “It’s just me and her, so I can’t always- it’s hard for me to run around chasing clues all night like everyone else.”
“How old is she?” Esther asked, and Ricky’s stomach swooped when he saw her risk a small smile.
“Four” he said, and then, because he could never help himself, “but she’s reading at a third grade level.”
“I bet we have a lot in common. Let me know if you want any book recommendations, this library isn’t all wizard tomes.”
“I might actually take you up on that,” Ricky said, and then he really did have to go. He did look back, though, just before he walked out the door. Esther was watching him leave, and she returned the wave that one his excuse to get one last look at her. So maybe that was something.
When Ricky was finally done running after the key to the city and he was standing, hands on his head to open up his lungs, in the middle of the Financial District, he felt the Dalmatian he’d just summoned press its nose into his leg. “Hey, boy,” Ricky said, and then, “oh, Miya is going to love you.”
He wondered if Find Greater Steed had reacted to the lingering Polymorph spell, if something in him had still been doglike and cheerful. Emiko also said he had golden retriever energy, whatever that meant. Whether or not either of those things were true, Ricky was supposed to pick up Miya at school in an hour and he have anywhere to put the dog in the meantime. And anyways, the dog was his best friend. They’d established that half a borough ago.
Ricky texted Kugrash that the trail on the key had gone cold and headed towards Brooklyn. There was a text from Emiko waiting for him when he emerged from the subway and regained service—did you get a dog?? also twitter is freaking out about how hot you are, PLEASE let me set you up with one of my friends—that Ricky ignored in favor of scratching the dog behind the ears.
It was only a few minutes past pickup time when Ricky got to the school, but even so, Miya was the only one left on the playground. She was doing the monkey bars, so focused her tongue was sticking out between her teeth, which meant that when the teacher waved him over she still hadn’t noticed him. “Miya had a tough day,” said Ms. Carpenter, instead of hello.
Ricky took a deep breath. This wasn’t the first time he’d had this conversation, or even the seventh, but that didn’t mean it got any easier. “Bad like how?”
“Bad like she couldn’t participate during craft time because she threw a pair of scissors.”
Well, that was a new one. Ricky winced and said, “I’ll talk to her about it. We take safety very seriously, and we practice with scissors at home.”
Ms. Carpenter’s expression went a bit softer, and she uncrossed her arms. “Thank you. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate,” she said, and Ricky was pretty sure she was hitting on him.
Thankfully that was the moment Miya finished on the monkey parts and noticed her father. Dealing with a charging four year old was an excellent out from the conversation, and Ricky took it. He knelt down to say hello, and the first thing Miya did was run a hand over his right ear. “That’s pointier than it was this morning,” she said, and then Ricky noticed he could small the green beans she’d had for lunch, along with the ravioli. So maybe the Polymorph hadn’t been as temporary as he thought. But Miya was asking about dinner, and could they watch Wallace and Gromit, and could they play astronauts, so Ricky didn’t have much time to dwell on it.
The Dalmatian was waiting very patiently by the gate to the playground. He sat let Miya come to him, his back half wiggling alongside his tail, and then when she put her hands on his face he set to licking her all over. “Is this ours?” she asked, her giggles making the question almost unintelligible.
“If you’re okay with it, yeah.” Ricky swung Miya up into his arms, because if he didn’t he knew they’d never make it home. “What should we call him?”
There was a second of fierce contemplation, complete with a furrowed brow and a finger tapping her chin like she was a tiny philosopher. Then she said, decisive, “Ox.”
“Ox? Why Ox?”
“We learned about them today in school. They’re our O animal. I like them.”
Ricky thanked God Ms. Carpenter hadn’t chosen to study orangutans instead. When he tried the name out, the dog seemed to love it, and it did suit him. It was short, and definitive, and a little silly. He loped behind them as they walked him, and at stoplights he’d jump up and put his paws on Ricky’s shoulders to say hello.
They had cesar salad for dinner, and dinosaur nuggets (grilled chicken for Ricky, because of macros, but he hadn’t been able to get Miya interested in anything but nuggets, and protein was protein no matter how breaded). They were most of the way through the Wallace and Gromit movie with the creepy penguin when Ricky got a text from Kingston. He wanted people over the next day to talk about Pete, who was maybe dangerous, and dangerous made Ricky think of Ms. Carpenter and the news about the scissors.
He paused the movie and said, “Your teacher told me you had to sit out of craft time today.”
“Uh-huh,” Miya said. She was still picking at the croutons on her plate, and she was crunching one when she added, “We were cutting out flowers to use for the ox’s meadow.”
Ox let out a small yip when he heard his name. Ricky reached down to pet him, because this dog was awesome and absolutely his best friend, but he didn’t want to distract from the conversation by saying it out loud. Instead he said, “She also said you had trouble using this scissors safely.”
Miya pouted. “I held them like you said!”
“With your hand on the metal part when it’s closed? That’s good. But did you hold onto them the whole time?”
“No, I threw them.” Her voice went up in volume when she added, “But I was just putting them away!”
“By throwing them?”
“Throwing’s fastest.”
Ricky understood the logic. He also knew they made a game out of tossing vegetable scraps into the garbage and laundry into the hamper like basketball. But the thing was, “Scissors can be really dangerous. We have to care about being careful before we care about being fast, or you can’t use them.”
Miya took her time considering what Ricky had said and then she nodded solemnly. “I won’t throw scissors.”
“And?”
“And I’ll say sorry to Ms. Carpenter tomorrow?”
Ricky put a hand on her head and messed up her hair. “Exactly. Good job, kiddo.”
Then they watched the rest of the movie and played trains before bed because Miya wanted to act out the scene where the finally captured the creepy penguin, and she barely argued when he said it was time to brush her teeth because he said that she could have Ox in her room overnight if she promised to let him sleep and not keep him up. Ricky was done with dad duty by eight, with enough time to get a workout in and text Kingston that he’d make the meeting before going to bed himself for his own eight hours.
The problem with Kingston asking to meet up on a Tuesday night was that Ricky had no one to watch Miya. Emiko was working, his parents had bridge night, Mrs. D. across the hall had a weekly dinner with her grandsons. If it had been anything less important than the fate of the city, and anything more dangerous than a meeting, Ricky would’ve cancelled. Unfortunately, it was both those things, so he got Miya bundled up in her coat and mittens and hat and headed uptown to Kingston’s house.
He made sure to get there early, just so he could get Miya settled before things really started happening, but he wasn’t the first one there. When Kingston swung the door open Ricky could see Alejandro and Esther sitting around his kitchen table talking quietly and sipping what looked like whiskey, although Ricky didn’t know enough about fancy alcohol to be sure. Kingston was mid “Hi, how are you” when he noticed Miya standing a half step behind Ricky in the hallway, trying to shake one of her mittens off and onto the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” Ricky said, “I couldn’t find anyone to take her. Usually I’d call Emiko but she’s-”
“I know all about how much your sister works,” Kingston said, and at the tone of his voice Ricky felt a sense of calm wash over him. He’d never had the full force of the Vox Populi directed at him before; it was kind of a lot. “My mom loves kids, you know. She’d be so happy if you let her watch yours.”
Ricky peered over Kingston’s shoulder to the kitchen. Esther was pretending not to look over, and Alejandro was fully invested in whatever scroll he’d brought that Ricky was sure he’d have to pretend to understand. “That’d be great, thanks.”
“Of course,” Kingston said, which is what he always said when he did people the biggest favors in the universe. Then he stepped to the side to let the two of them into the apartment.
When Ricky turned to grab Miya’s hand, she’d gotten both of her arms out of her coat and then gotten the zipper stuck at the bottom. He paused, knelt down and unstuck it for her, and then made her wait while he tucked her mittens in the pockets. Finally, he tapped her on the shoulder and said, “This is Kingston. He works with your Aunt Emiko at the hospital.”
“Cool,” Miya said, and it seemed like she meant it. After a long beat where no one was talking, she seemed to realize what everyone was waiting for and added, “I’m Miya.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Miya,” Kingston said. He looked down at her with a complicated kind of smile, like he was seeing more than just Ricky’s kid, but by the time he asked them to come in it was just a smile. A warm one, with nothing but a greeting behind it.
Kingston went downstairs to talk to his mom while Ricky helped Miya hang up her coat, and once that was done there was really no other choice than to say hi to Esther. Ricky was busy trying to figure out what to say when Miya lifted herself onto a chair and said, without even a hello, “You have very cool hair.”
Esther did the thing Ricky was used to people his age doing, which was shoot a quick, panicked look at him because they had no clue how to interact with children. He raised his eyebrows in what was hopefully a supportive way, and she just said, “Thanks, I think so too.”
“How old do you have to be to have hair like that?”
“Um, it depends, I think. There’s probably fumes from the dye to take into account, and the semi-permanence of it, so a sense of long-term consequences is good. Maybe ten?” Esther said, and Ricky tried really hard not to smile like an idiot. He was sure he failed.
Miya opened her mouth like she was going to argue, and Ricky jumped in to say, “Hey kiddo, why don’t you say hi to everyone at the table? And ask their names?”
They’d been working on manners, when talking to new people, and Miya did a great job telling Esther and Alejandro her name and how old she was and what she was learning in Pre-K. By the time Kingston came back with Victoria, she was talking about deciduous trees and how New York City used to be a big deciduous forest, because apparently their school was on a botany kick. Miya would’ve stayed talking for as long as anyone would let her, but Victoria lured her away with promises of cinnamon buns and Blues Clues puzzles. “Take your time up here,” she told Ricky in a low voice on the way out. “This is shaping up to be the best part of my day.”
“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Ricky,” Alejandro said, swirling his drink for emphasis. “Kingston, did you know this?”
“Ricky’s mentioned her a few times,” Kingston responded easily, and that would’ve been the end of it if Sofia hadn’t come barreling into the apartment a few seconds later.
“There is the cutest little girl in the hallway with your mother, Kingston. Whose kid is that? She’s precious, I just wanted to squeeze her until she pops! Hi Ricky, hi Esther, how are you? Did you see this kid?”
“She’s, uh. She’s mine,” Ricky said.
Sofie stopped dead, only one arm out of her coat. “That little angel was yours?”
“Miya, yeah. Or, Miyako, if you ask my mom, but usually no one does.” Ricky shuffled uncomfortably, still standing in the middle of the kitchen. “Do you want help with your coat, or-?”
“Since when is Mr. March is a father? How did I not know about this?” At least this time Sofie had the presence of mind to get out of her coat and move towards the table. Ricky followed, feeling awkward and bumbling and, honestly, stupid.
He knew that he wasn’t the kind of guy people assumed was a dad. It was the whole calendar thing, the fact that he was a pretty face with not much behind it. Most people assumed he had no clue how to take care of a kid, that he relied entirely on other people to help raise Miya. And Ricky knew he did accept a lot of help. He worked long shifts, and it was hard to take Miya with him on errands because she got bored, and he felt awful about how much time she had spent with other people over the past year, but he was trying his best to keep the city safe. The city that she was growing up in.
Ricky tried as hard as he could to be a good dad, and nothing made him feel like that was less true than when they acted like it was the last thing he could possibly be.
He was trying to think of something to say when Esther jumped in and said, “Our lives are kind of dangerous, Sofie. It makes sense that she hasn’t been around the Occult Society.” Sofia seemed to accept that explanation, and when she started chatting with Alejandro, Ricky shot Esther a grateful look.
When everyone was finally there and the topic of the meeting was revealed, Ricky was incredibly glad Victoria had taken Miya downstairs. Kingston was talking about killing Pete if he got too unpredictable. The only thing Ricky had contributed in ages was a quick, startled “What?” He listened to Misty recommend magical caves, to Kugrash talk about bringing Pete into the fold and explaining what they needed from him. Sofia spent a little bit trying to convince everyone to switch all of Pete’s drugs out with Tic-Tacs, and the whole time Ricky sat there, listening, doing his best to try to put into words what it is he was feeling.
Killing Pete would be wrong. That was what it came down to, but there was also something that Ricky was feeling about Kingston, about his station, and about how Ricky felt like he fit into that. “You keep talking about choosing the city,” he said slowly, and then forced himself to look at Kingston. To say this thing to his face. “In my mind, the people of New York City includes Pete.”
Kugrash jumped in on the tail end of what Ricky was saying, mentioning his own kids, which was a crazy bomb to drop in the middle of a meeting like this, that the three-foot rat they’d all been hanging out with had once been a businessman with sons, plural, and the conversation moved on pretty quickly. But Ricky felt Kingston’s eyes on him as the conversation moved on, the pressure of his consideration heavy.
The meeting wrapped up when Esther put things into perspective and Alejandro blew too many smoke pigeons for anyone to stay serious. People said their goodbyes—Misty sang a few bars from the Sound of Music—and once Sofia had given him a huge hug and said she wasn’t in the right babysitting headspace but she’d love to buy Miya clothes since she had too much money and no one to spend it on, it was just Ricky and Kingston left.
“I just wanted to check in with you, Ricky,” Kingston said. Ricky was helping him clear off the table. It was a quick job, just glasses, really, but Ricky wanted his hands busy. “I heard what you said, but I'm gonna ask you to think about it again. The city we can’t give up for Pete, that version is the one that includes your daughter.”
Ricky paused, tried to put what he was thinking into the perfect words, and then thought, screw it. Kingston would understand. He always did. “She’s gonna grow up here, of course I want the city to be safe. But I also want it to be the kind of city that’s…she loves to make friends. She does it everywhere. It doesn’t feel like this would stay that kind of city if we did that to Pete, I guess.”
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Kingston reached out a hand. “You’re a good guy, Ricky.”
And the whole way home Miya chattered about how much she loved Mrs. Victoria, how she couldn’t wait to go back, how next time there might be brownies or lemon tarts. And Ricky could feel what he said to Kingston coming true right in front of him, just a little bit.
Nod was everything and nothing like Ricky had thought it would be. He’d spent a little bit of time wondering what it would be like when he first learned about the Unsleeping City, but he’d quickly figured there was no way he could picture it. He’d been right, but he’d also been wrong. Nod looked exactly like one of Miya’s crayon drawings. He had a feeling most parents had some version of Nod hanging on their fridge, and as he bounced up to fly after Sofia and Misty made out with the moon itself, he thought maybe it was a good thing that only a few of them could ever really travel here.
Of course, Ricky was beat up, and there was business to take care of, so it wasn’t all flying around and having a good time. Kingston and Kugrash gave out locations to look through, and Ricky figured he’d tag along to hell, put out any fires that escaped to try and get them. That also meant that he got to talk to Kugrash, really talk to him, for the first time since the meeting at Kingston’s. The city blocks they were walking seemed to bunch and stretch, each one without any sort of uniform length, and it kind of took the pressure off the conversation, not knowing how long they had to hold it.
The air was getting heavier and smokier when the conversation veered more personally. “Wally’s great,” Ricky said. “I can’t comment on your resemblance, but he’s fun to hang out with.”
Kugrash coughed out one of his hacking laughs. “He doesn’t get it from me.”
“My kid is so smart it scares me,” Ricky admitted. He pulled a mask out of his back pocket to fit on his own face and then offered one to Kugrash, who declined.
“You don’t talk about her that much,” he said, and Ricky didn’t know if he’d always known or if Sofia had told him. Either way, it kind of was like the group had sent the dad squad on a trip to hell, which Ricky found he was kind of enjoying.
“This is really dangerous,” he said. “It feels like I should keep those two parts of my life separate.”
The smell of smoke was getting overwhelming, and Ricky checked one of the glittering street signs. They were a few blocks away from Hell’s Kitchen, or Hell itself. Kugrash dropped to all fours and said, “Take it from me. The more you try to keep this shit separate, the further apart it’s gonna fuckin’ get until you can’t put it back together anymore. I have another kid, David. Wally’s older brother. He hates my guts, and he should, because I’ve been a rat fuck in the sewers for almost forty years.”
“What if I just avoid the sewers?”
One step was the distance of a hundred, and then the flames of Hell were licking at their shoes. “They’re metaphorical sewers, Rick. No one avoids those fuckers,” Kugrash said, and then they were swarmed by rats and the conversation was over.
When Ricky picked Miya up from school, she told him that she hadn’t thrown any scissors, but she had to sit out from crafts anyways because she bit into an eraser and almost threw up. “I know they taste bad now, so I won’t bite them anymore,” she said into the fabric of his jacket. Then she pulled her face away and said, “You smell like different fire today,” and Ricky thought, oh. Those sewers.
Christmas was Miya’s favorite holiday, because it meant she got to spend the day at work with her dad. She only got to sleep at the fire station on very special occasions, times when it was just Ricky and her Uncles John and she didn’t have school the next day or anything that she couldn’t be tired for. She’d been coming to work with him every Christmas since she was teeny tiny. It rivaled the presents for her favorite thing about the holidays.
At that particular moment, she was making a nap fort in the bunk room while Ricky and all three Johns worked out and talked. John had just started dating this guy named Filippo, who was a chef and not very communicative, and John’s mom was moving in soon because she needed more help. When the conversation moved around to what was going on with Ricky, he listened for a second to make sure Miya was occupied and then said, “I think I have a crush on this girl. Woman. Person, I guess.”
Every single John stopped the exercises they were doing and sat backwards on their chairs, leaning toward Ricky. “Spill.”
“It’s weird, because- you know how I help out at the Clinton Hill Chantry? She does, too, and for a while we were kind of flirting, or at least I was trying to, but she didn’t know about Miya.” Ricky scrubbed a hand through his hair and couldn’t help remembering the way Esther had listened to his kid talk about different types of trees. “And then the other night, they met, and like, I shouldn’t be thinking about it as much as I’m thinking about it. I don’t need to get into some complicated relationship when it would mean I’d have less time to spend at home.”
John said, “Sometimes you have to prioritize yourself. Who knows, you might be a better dad if you’re more fulfilled in your personal life.”
“Yeah absolutely,” John chimed in. “You’re a dad but you’re also still a person.”
It looked like the final John was about to speak when they all suddenly clamped their mouths shut and practically threw themselves back on the exercise equipment. Ricky turned to look over his shoulder and, like he’d summoned her, Esther was there in the doorway looking nervous and small. “Hey,” she said, and gave the tiniest wave. “Sorry, I know you’re probably busy.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, and waved her over, pulled out a chair. “What’s up?”
Esther sat down in the chair Ricky offered, but she wouldn’t look at him. Instead, she addressed everything to where her hands were folded in her lap. “I have this errand to run, and it sucks. And I guess I figured… you have that aura, you know? Stuff just feels better around you. So I was going to ask you to come, but I think maybe that’s stupid, and I’ll go-”
“I’d love to come,” Ricky said, wishing that she was looking at him so she could see the sincerity in his face. He wanted to help her. He wanted her to feel okay. “I have Miya with me, though. Is it okay if she's there too?”
She paused, biting her lip, and then said, “Does she like the park?”
“She loves it,” Ricky said, and hopped up to go wrestle his kid into a coat. It took a little bit of negotiating since she wanted to use the nap fort right away, but when he brought up Esther she came around fast. “The pretty lady with the cool hair” was a favorite new friend of hers, especially since Ricky had caved and gotten her that temporary hair coloring chalk stuff they sold at the drugstore. Miya had a blue streak on one side of her head and a purple one on the other, and she showed them off to Esther proudly before Ricky told her she had to put her hat on if they were going to go outside.
They’d brought Miya’s scooter to the station because she loved to go in circles around the big concrete floor, and she rode ahead of them the whole way there. Esther was quiet for a while, the only thing between them the steam of their breath on the air, but then she watched Miya stop and wait at a crosswalk and she said, “How did you do it?”
Ricky held a thumbs up to his daughter as a thank you for waiting patiently, and then he asked, “Do what?”
“You spend so much of your time making sure things are safe, which means you know that mostly they aren’t. How did you know that and have a kid anyway?”
“Well first off, she was kind of an accident,” Ricky said, and he was relieved when Esther huffed out a laugh. “But beyond that, I think it’s like, stuff might not always be safe, but when that happens she’s got people. I mean, I’m not the smartest guy-”
“That’s not true,” Esther started, but Ricky cut her off with a small smile.
“I’m not,” he said. “There’s lots of stuff I don’t understand. But I listen, and I do the best I can, and I usually get the same thing back. I’m trying to teach her how to do that. All the other complicated stuff I leave up to her teachers.”
They’d made it to the entrance of Tompkins Square Park. Ricky gave Miya permission to go play on the playground, told her that he and Esther would come over when she was done with her errand. “Okay,” Esther said as they walked deeper into the park. “This is the part that sucks.”
Two women stepped out from behind a tree. They looked like Esther, once Ricky got past the shock of them standing in the snow wearing nothing but tattered robes and shawls, and one of them carried a long, gnarled staff. Their eyes were covered over with something filmy and white but they looked directly at Esther, zeroing in on her as she pulled two wrapped packages out of her bag. “You have come again, Daughter of Sorrow,” one of the women said, the one who was taller and younger. “The time will come soon for you to join us, and we will be complete.”
“Hi Mom, Grandma,” she said. Her voice was flat and even, her expression blank as she put the presents on the snow in front of her family. “I just came to say merry Christmas, and that, you know. I defy you, I defy the prophecy, I’m learning as much magic as I can to make sure this never happens to me, and I love you.”
She didn’t seem upset, not really. She mostly just sounded tired, and resigned, and when she went to kiss each woman on the cheek it was with practiced movements that told Ricky she’d been spending holidays like this with her family for a long time.
“I’m Ricky, by the way,” Ricky said, because the fact that it was rude to meet someone without introducing yourself was one of the key rules in their household.
The older, stooped woman turned her unnerving gaze onto him and hissed, “What darkness lies in the heart of Ricky Matsui?” Esther cried out as she made some sort of gesture towards him, but whatever portal she was opening into his chest just showed light. It was with a little less gravitas that she continued, “Darkness, reveal itself. There’s usually…” Lightning crackled. “Darkness, reveal.”
“Do you need-? I can come closer,” Ricky offered.
He got a step in before the woman who must’ve been Esther’s grandma held a hand out and said, “No, don’t help me. This is- You’re strange. It’s sinister that you have no darkness. Begone from here.”
When Ricky stepped away, he saw that Esther was laughing, covering her mouth with one of her hands. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I would’ve shown her any darkness if I had any.”
Esther waved him off. “No, that was great. I haven’t laughed in this park in a really long time.” Ricky just walked beside her for a long minute, waiting, before she asked, “Do you care to know what any of that was about?”
“I could go either way,” Ricky said, and then that sounded wrong, so he rushed to explain, “I mean, do you want me to know? ‘Cause I don’t have to know. But I want to know if you want me to know.”
“Honestly, maybe some other time,” Esther said, and they didn’t have to talk about it anymore because Miya had spotted them from the top of the slide and she was waving her arms like a madwoman.
They spent a half hour in the playground, both of them chasing Miya around and then Ricky chasing Miya and Esther when Miya decided she should get a teammate, and then there was a little bit where Ricky kind of hung out while Esther explained the history of Christmas trees to Miya, who’d been upset by the fact that they weren’t deciduous since someone had put one up in the fire station. “Those trees aren’t from here,” Ricky could hear her saying, and he smiled as Esther patiently explained tradition, and Western colonialism, and the fact that they smelled good.
Eventually it had been long enough that Ricky really did feel like he had to get back to the fire station. When they got to the edge of the park, he turned to Esther and said, “You know, I’ve got a pre-release of the new fireman’s calendar if you want to walk back with us. Just to say Merry Christmas, and stuff, since you just gave some gifts and didn’t get any.”
Esther raised her eyebrows, which wasn’t entirely what Ricky had meant by the gesture, but that was fine because she did agree to walk back with them. Miya was too tired to ride her scooter so Ricky carried it in one hand and held his daughter’s in the other while she chattered away. “Who were those gifts for?” she asked, and Esther’s expression tightened.
“My mom and my grandma,” she said, with no further explanation.
Miya said cheerfully, “My mommy lives in San Francisco.”
“San Francisco, huh,” Esther said, and gave Ricky a look out of the corner of her eye. He shrugged.
“Yep. She really wanted to work, so she moved all the way far, and she likes it, so she stays there.” It made a complex feeling bubble up in Ricky’s chest, the fact that Miya was so casual about Anna being gone. It hadn’t hit him that hard, either—it was mostly the fact that this seemed like the kind of thing you do with another person rather than him specifically wanting to do it with Anna—but he wondered when it was going to turn hurt or bitter. Esther seemed to be wondering the same thing, because when Miya reached up to grab Esther’s hand, she took it without a second of hesitation, and they walked like that all the way back to the fire station.
It stood to reason that the second things felt like they were looking up, everything fell apart. There were too many good things in a row: Miya learned how to tie her own shoelaces, Ricky got to go to opening night of Midsummer Nights on Broadway (and if he was naked for a lot of it, that was for the good of the ritual), and he got to witness fairies have a political argument that gave him almost too much material for bedtime stories. Someone bought him this insane red Maserati, just left it on the street outside of his house, and once he got the right car seat it was honestly kind of useful.
But then he got the text from Kingston that Liz was in the hospital, some kind of twisted magic slowly killing her, and he got to the hospital with a knot in his stomach and Miya in his arms, knowing exactly what he’d have to do.
He passed Emiko as he ran toward Liz, put Miya down and said, “Watch her, please,” even as Emiko rightfully called after him that she was at work and couldn’t just stop what she was doing. Other people were showing up, Rowan with her enormous umbrella and Pete on a scooter that he really shouldn’t have been riding through the halls of the hospital, and all of their phones were blowing up, texts from Ana and Emilia and Jackson and even a magic Skype from Esther letting them know the library was being attacked, but Ricky didn’t stop moving until he could put a hand on the part of Liz that looked like it would hurt her the least and cast Remove Curse.
The beeping on her monitor slowed, settled, and Ricky would’ve seen Kingston letting out a breath if he hadn’t been too busy getting some kind of vision of Yankee Stadium that he knew he didn’t have time for. Kugrash was quietly talking about what had happened to David, and Ricky could barely listen. As soon as Liz seemed stable, Ricky started moving towards the door.
“Where are you going?” Sofie asked, following after him, ridiculously fast even in her stilettos.
Ricky spoke without slowing down: “Miya’s with me. I need to get her out of here.”
“Out of where, the hospital? Doesn’t your sister work here? I’m sure she can stick around for-”
“Out of the fucking city!” he burst out, finally stopping, rounding on Sofia. Her eyes were wide; Ricky didn’t think she’d ever heard him swear before. “He’s going after people’s families, Sof! She’s four, she can’t- she can’t be here. I’ll stay, I’ll fight, but I’m gonna- I have to ask Emiko to take her and get out.”
Sofia didn’t say anything. She just held out her arms and stepped forward until Ricky let her hug him. It was only a few seconds before he collapsed into her, not crying but close, taking deep breaths as she scratched her long nails against his back. It couldn’t have been long, maybe only a minute, but it exactly as long as Ricky needed to pull himself together for the conversation he needed to have.
“Thanks,” he told Sofia, and she waved him off.
“No need for that, you’re family,” she insisted, and then she was gone, off to where the fighting was thickest.
Ricky found his sister by the nurse’s station, trying to get Miya to stop crying. He walked over, exhausted before the fight had even begun, and knelt down on the floor. Miya flung herself into his arms. “You really scared her,” Emiko accused him, and she was right. Ricky hadn’t been thinking of anything but speed when he’d put her in the car, didn’t answer any of her questions about where they were going or why, and then he’d left her and ran off. “And when the hell did you get a Maserati?”
Ricky rubbed a hand up and down his daughter’s back and said, “I don’t know, someone gave it to me. I kind of hate it.”
“What the hell is going on with you?” Emiko asked, and Ricky was glad she was cutting right to the chase.
He could feel his grip on Miya tightening as he said, “I need you to take her for a little bit, and you can’t ask any questions.”
Emiko actually threw her hands up in the air and started to walk away. Ricky waited patiently for her to come back and say, “What the hell, Rick? Take her and not ask questions? I’m on hour five of a twelve hour shift, I can’t just leave. And even if I could, you’ve been weird for a while. It’s gotten worse lately, but it’s been like the whole year, and I can’t keep sitting at home watching your kid knowing you’re lying to me. I love her, and I love you, but I can’t keep doing this.”
“One day,” Ricky said, and he could hear the desperation in his voice and also the little hiccups Miya was making into his shirt. “I just need one day. Take her and take a trip, go to Jersey, or even Connecticut, I don’t care. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
Emiko stopped walking and stared at Ricky. Her eyes caught on his, and he knew she saw the tears that were about to spill out. “One day,” she said, and Ricky felt a bit of his heart lock up. Safe. Gone.
He peeled Miya off of him and wiped her face. There were tears and snot all over his shirt, but that wasn’t anything new. “I’ll come get you tomorrow,” he said, because he knew she’d been listening. She was always listening.
She shook her head. “Why can’t you take me home now?”
“There’s some dangerous stuff going on,” Ricky explained.
“Like throwing the scissors?”
“Yeah, like that,” he said, and did his best to swallow the lump in his throat. “There are some bad people that are throwing scissors, so Emiko is going to take you somewhere safe, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Miya wasn’t satisfied, but she was too wrung out to fight any more than she already had, so she accepted the kiss Ricky pressed to her forehead and let her aunt carry her away. Ricky didn’t ask where they were going because he didn’t want to know, didn’t want to be able to tell anyone where to find them.
He watched until they rounded the corner, gave himself ten seconds to put it all away, and then he got in his car and drove to the stock exchange.
Ricky hadn’t been thinking of his daughter when he died. He was trying not to feel bad about it, because there had been so much going on—Esther jumping him, all the kind-of ghosts playing catch with him at Yankee stadium, the Questing blade saying it was really unlikely that he would actually die—and still, maybe because of that, maybe not, when he woke up, he was thinking of her.
He dodged the tornado made of fire and chaos, and thought of Miya. He jumped up Esther’s arcane platforms to take a swing at the American Dream and thought of Miya. And so when, right as he was about to take another swing, time stopped and the strange everyman avatar of the American Dream stood in front of him and showed him everything he could ever want in the world, it showed him Miya.
He saw her happy, safe, running around Prospect Park in her ducky boots. He saw her reading a whole chapter book about an orange cat out loud to him. He saw her in her spring concert, waving at her grandma and grandpa in the audience, Ricky’s parents who came to this country with their own dream, that was maybe a fantasy but had also produced a life for Ricky that was fulfilling, and difficult, and worthwhile. A life he loved.
“You don’t have to fight your friends,” said the American Dream. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You just have to lay down your weapons and let me pass. I can make all of these dreams come true.”
More flashed in front of Ricky’s eyes, a picnic date with Esther in the park, a commendation from the Fire Department, Emiko standing next to him holding a bouquet of flowers at his wedding while he waits for Esther to walk down the aisle. And then it all slowed down, like this enemy Ricky was fighting knew things were too hectic, that he hadn’t quite nailed it yet. A new dream faded into vision, and Ricky felt himself holding his breath.
Ricky and Esther put Miya to bed. She asks for one more book, but Esther laughs and says she’s too tired, they’ve read three already. Ricky promises they’ll read more tomorrow morning, with her little sibling, too, and he knows it’s true. He doesn’t have to leave, he doesn’t have to work, the world is a kind and safe place that doesn’t need saving. He gets to wake up every morning next to Esther, knowing his daughter is going to pounce on the bed and demand pancakes before their alarm has had a chance to go off.
It's perfect.
But there was something that stuck in Ricky’s mind, something that kept his hand clenched tight around the Questing Blade. “That’s my dream,” he said. “What about everyone else’s?”
Miya’s dream would not involve going to bed on time. Maybe Esther’s dream wouldn’t involve more kids, or pancakes. Maybe she didn’t like the idea of either. Ricky let the dream live in his mind for one more beautiful moment before he let it go. “Everyone should have a chance to get a dream.”
“Will you submit and lay down your weapon?”
This time, Ricky did think of Miya. He also thought of Esther, and of himself, and he knew there was only one answer.
“No.” And then he kept fighting, because that was all there was to do.
After the fight, after everyone was as patched up as Kingston and Ricky could get them, Ricky found a quiet moment with Esther. It took a little bit for her to reassure herself that he was alive, that she could talk to him and touch him, and then it took a little bit longer while they got the first bit of that joy out of their system. Pete wolf-whistled as he passed them, which made Esther smile against Ricky’s mouth, and he thought, why didn’t that stupid dream try to tempt me with this? It totally would have worked.
Eventually, though, Esther asked if he wanted to go get Miya. Ricky did, but he also knew that it was midnight and she was asleep. “I promised her I’d get her tomorrow,” he said into Esther’s neck. “We can definitely find a hotel room before then.”
She pulled back and looked at him, took his face in her hands. “You know that I actually really like you, right? And I like your kid, and I’m not cursed anymore, and I want to- We should actually give this a shot.”
Ricky couldn’t wait to kiss her, not even to say that he felt the same way. But by the way she responded, he was pretty sure it was implied.
The next morning, Esther took Miya on a walk while Ricky explained things to Emiko as best as he could. He’d never inducted anyone into the Unsleeping City before, but he’d chatted briefly with Kingston after the battle, and he’d given Ricky some tips. Ricky did some small magic and tried his best to bat away the umbral arcana, although it was harder now that he’d given the Questing Blade to Dale. He mostly talked about his friends, how they were the heroes who saved New York, and how that guy that she’d always just thought was really short was actually the most selfless rat in the history of the city.
“He ate a bagel and turned into everything?” Emiko asked when Ricky had finished.
“That’s how they explained it to me, yeah.”
“And I can use this magic to heal people. That’s why Kingston’s so good at this.”
Ricky shrugged. “Kingston kind of has a leg up on the average person, but yeah, basically.”
“Yeah, I for sure want in,” Emiko said, and Ricky knew he’d made the right choice.
And even weeks later, when Esther stayed the night and in fact did love reading books to Miya at bedtime, with Ox snuggled up between them as small as he could make himself, Ricky wasn’t as surprised as he should’ve been when his daughter plucked the arcane spellbook off Esther’s belt and read the title out loud. Sure, they’d wait to really explain everything when she was older because the Unsleeping City wasn’t for kids, but it was nice to know she’d be able to make the world safer, one day.
Ricky followed Esther into his bedroom and then into his bed, and when she was still talking about it, he pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, right above her shoulder blades. She shivered. “Go to sleep, babe,” he said, and in it he put all the rest of the things he wanted to say. I love you, and thank you, and I’m so glad you’re a part of our little family. I hope you stay forever.
And Esther rolled over and said, “You wish,” and Ricky knew that this moment was perfect not because he’d dreamed about it, but because it was real.