- Mason waited until Halia had gone back around the corner, then let out a deep, shaky breath. The breeze that had seemed so pleasant when he was with her now felt cold and biting, and the happy little bubble they'd created together on the walk home popped like someone had stuck a pin in it.
Monsters were real.
But so were the good guys, Mason reminded himself. There were good guys - a lot of them, by the sound of it - and Halia was one of them. There were magical monsters, but there were also magical good guys to protect against them. And then again again there were magical bad guys, apparently, but Mason was a little hazy on those details, because at that point he'd been trying to wrap his head around a few too many worldview-altering details, but--still.
Maybe it was just like the real world. His real world - where you just had to hope against hope that the good guys would outnumber or outfight or outlast the bad guys. Maybe you just had to get lucky, like he had, that one of the good guys happened to be wandering by when one of the bad guys had found him.
Mason took another breath. Monsters were real. So were monster-fighters.
Mason unlocked his front door and shut it behind him, making sure to lock it. He had no idea if monsters--what were they called? Oogaboogas? no, that couldn't be right--could get through locked doors or not, but...regular, real-world bad guys like robbers couldn't without effort, and just because there were now more bad guys to defend against didn't mean that he could let the usual safety measures slide.
"Madeline?" Mason called, a little quietly - maybe she had gone to bed--
"Where have you been," Madeline said, the second she clicked on the living room light. She was pleased with the way Mason jumped - about a foot in the air - but didn't let that show on her face. She just crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow in the way that she knew Mason knew meant trouble.
She stood up and crossed the small living room to stand at the bottom of the stairs, to get a better look at him.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Madeline asked. "I tried calling you, like, a hundred times--"
"I know, I know," Mason said, running over what he was sure was just the warm-up to the big yelling. "But, Mads, I promise, there was a really good reason. It's going to sound absolutely--like, I know it's going to sound absolutely insane, but--look, okay, okay. Let's sit down, and I will explain everything."
Well, almost everything. He couldn't tell her about Aruna's secret identity - like she was Superman or something - but he could tell her everything else.
"So you know those guys at school that say they see, like, models hopping around rooftops? And how we always say they're just making up some weird fantasy to get off to, how people would know if there were a bunch of people in fancy outfits running around the city every night?" Mason didn't wait for an answer; he took her dubious, wary squinting of the eyes as invitation to continue.
"Madeline, I met one of them. She saved my life. Not--not metaphorically--she literally saved my life, Mads. There was--a monster, a real monster, like some kind of--messed up nightmare creature that wanted to eat me to death, like tear me limb from limb kind of monster, and if she--"
"She?" Madeline interrupted archly. "You were out with a girl, and now you've concocted this whole--story--honestly, Maseface, we don't lie to each other, so what--"
"It's not a lie," Mason insisted, grabbing both of Madeline's hands in his own and giving them a squeeze. "I promise you, I'm telling you the absolute truth. Her name is Aruna, and she said--well, okay, she said a lot of things, but--look, see," Mason held up his arm, where she'd wrapped a bandage around his scrape.
"I got this when I literally fell on my butt in surprise when the monster thing--they have a name, I don't remember what it is--showed up and then she appeared. It would have killed me, Mads, like--like literally killed me, put my name in the obituaries kind of killed me."
Something in Madeline's face softened a little, and Mason could tell that whether she liked it or not, some part of her did believe him. They didn't lie to each other - not ever, but especially not about something as important as a life-or-death mishap.
"Without Aruna..." Mason shook his head, feeling tears well in his eyes in spite of himself. "I don't...I don't know if I would've made it home, Mads. It was going to kill me. I--I've never been so scared, ever, in my entire life."
Maybe Mason had lost his mind. Maybe he'd hit his head. Maybe a million things, but Madeline knew - knew down to her bones, in that moment - that at the very least, Mason believed what he was saying. He himself believed it - not just that he wanted her to believe him, which he did, but that he himself thought he was telling the truth.
They were twins. They had a closer connection than most people--most siblings, even. She felt it when he'd broken his pinkie playing soccer in the second grade; he'd felt it when she got her first period. It wasn't exactly a superpower, lots of twins reported similar experiences.
She'd felt it. That had been what she'd felt. She'd dropped a cup (one of her favorites, actually) when she felt the wave overtake her - that was what had spurred her anxiety, that was what made her so mad at him when he showed up unharmed. Behind the anger had been relief, and behind the relief had been fear.
Mason almost hadn't come home.
She pulled him to her and they hugged, tightly; she let him bury his face in the crook of her neck and sniffle a little, like he was a little kid again, and she brushed her fingers soothingly through his hair.
"She saved you? This--what did you say, Aruna?" At Mason's nod, Madeline let out a slow breath. "Well. I guess we'll have to bake her some thank-you cookies, won't we?"
Mason let out a wet laugh and nodded, pulling back from his sister to wipe his eyes. "She's really nice," Mason said. "She tried to explain this whole thing to me, Mads - there's like, good guys like her, and bad guys, and monsters, but..." Mason shook his head.
"I'm just really, really glad to be home."
Madeline nodded, giving him a little watery smile in return as she wiped his remaining tears away. "I'm really, really glad you're home too," she agreed. "Especially because it is way past our bedtime."
And so the two of them went around turning off lights, double-checking locked doors, and otherwise closing down the McCaffrey house for the night. Their parents' room was, as ever, dark and un-lived-in; more like a museum or a shrine than a master bedroom, but they didn't dare take it over for themselves, not even wanting to think what sort of trouble they'd get in if they tried.
Instead, the twins went to the room that had been their own for their entire lives. They were certainly old enough - and the house was definitely big enough - for them to have their own rooms, and there were definitely times when Mason certainly wished for a little more privacy, Madeline knew, but they liked to be together. Especially tonight, Madeline would be glad to have Mason close.
They got ready for bed robotically, the habits formed by years and years of repetition. Then Madeline climbed into the top bunk while Mason settled into the bottom bunk, and they let out a slow breath, in perfect unison.
"I love you, Mase," Madeline said softly, into the dark room. Tears were springing in her eyes now too--she was trying furiously hard not to think about what life would be like if Mason had never come home, but the images kept appearing behind her eyes anyway: how were you a twin if one of the twins died?
Maybe this Aruna person would get two dozen cookies.
"I love you, Mads," Mason responded, trying to focus on his breathing. "Thanks for not flipping out." He heard her soft chuckle and smiled to himself - he could tell that she was about to start crying, because he was about to start crying. He could only hope that this wouldn't lead to nightmares for them both--and that someday, the two of them, together, would find a way to pay Aruna--Halia--back, for everything she'd done for him.
