The walk back to the motel is one of shoving her fists in her pockets and fighting off the fatigue. Maybe she shouldn't have stayed up so late. Maybe she should have called someone and asked for a ride. She can walk, though— and she'd rather have a chance to clear her head.
And there it is: Nothing.
She spots it in the windows of homes and businesses she walks by. It grins, waves, looks at her— tries to look her in the eye. Unacceptable. She keeps walking.
Tiff pauses under a streetlamp under the corner, against her better judgment, and looks down at the puddle in the concrete there.
It stares at her, waving shittily and backed by the yellow glare of the light and the infinite stars above. "Hey there, dear Nothing."
"What are you doing here?" she asks, surprised how tired her voice is and peeved at its presence. "I thought you were relegated to dreaming."
"Sometimes. You're talking to me, though, aren't you?"
"I'm not asleep."
"You're not asleep," it agrees. "You're just between. You always are, though. There's a reason you're always so bone-tired."
Rolling her eyes, she keeps walking without checking the street. "My bones are fine."
It appears in the reflection of a stop sign next. "You're working yourself to the bone again."
"And why shouldn't I?" Tiff tilts her chin up to it, regards it for a moment, and keeps walking. When Nothing pops up again in windows and water, she ignores it.
"I told you," it says. "I was right."
And Tiff says nothing.
She gets back to the motel about half an hour later. Five AM, and the sun is still down. No matter how hard she tries, it's impossible not to think when your mind works a mile a minute and your body can only keep up by devolving into pure, numb anger.
She could describe it in flowery terms or old sayings her great-uncle used— she's so angry she could spit— but nothing sums it up better than her just being pissed. There isn't even time to be delighted or marvel at the odd design choices in the halls of Penitent Ivan's. She just opens the door with the chunky, piece of shit key and its triangular rubber keychain. She doesn't want to touch it. She doesn't want to touch anything.
Everyone inside is still asleep when she shuts and locks the door behind her. Drew is face-down in bed; her aunt is curled into a ball, frowning in her sleep; Kepler is sprawled out on his back in a very non-rat way.
She wants to take off her shoes and jacket and go to bed; she wants to pour all this emotion into something productive; she wants to go for a walk until she reaches the end of the world and falls off; she wants to peel off her skin; she wants to start running and never stop. She just stands there, looming in the doorway like the shadow of a narrative, chest heaving with the weight of breaths she can't quite catch.
Her aunt stirs, bolts awake. The clock by the bed glows a green 5:13 AM. Tangled in the blankets of a motel bed, she blinks away what little remains of her already-small sleep. She squints into the darkness.
"Tiff? What are you doing awake?" She squints some more. "And how come you're dressed? Where are you going?"
"There is a conspiracy afoot." She barely breathes, trying to keep everything contained. "Involving our family."
A moment of hesitation in the green alarm clock glow. "What?"
"I know the truth now!" It takes more effort to keep her voice down than it should. "I know the truth."
"It's way too early for this."
"It's way too late."
"Excuse me?"
"Our family is full of monsters, Auntie. Not the good kind. I know the truth of what they have done, I have seen the truth, I saw it with my own two eyes. I know, I know, and I know you know. I know you were keeping it a secret. I know."
She yawns into a tired hand. "What are you talking about?"
Involuntarily, Tiff bristles. "Don't worry about it. Don't ever worry about it. I thought I had finally gotten paranoid enough that I couldn't be lied to anymore. I was naive. I was an idiot." She takes in a shaky breath, knowing full well how irrational she's being. "I'm going for a walk."
Another walk. Fucking idiot. Of course she's going for another walk, like that will fix anything.
Taking the key with her (it never left her hand), Tiff heads outside. She isn't sure where she's going until she gets to the parking lot and sees wet neon reflections stretching out around her, finds herself at the edge where the asphalt and the grass meet, bleeding into well-worn rocks in the cracked blacktop slick with mud. She looks down into it, expecting drowned ants and enterprising worms. It's just mud. Some wonder this is.
Maybe she'll start walking and never look back. Biological determinism is bullshit and bunk, but nurture's effect on the actions of a given individual can not be discounted. It may not be in her blood, but it's certainly in her nature. It's in the way she was raised. It's in the way she is. She can't escape that. Maybe her role was always to screw things up— just like her father always said she would. Maybe it would be better if she and everyone else in her family just disappeared. She could be the first. She is willing. Someone has to pull the trigger when the wizard is on his knees. It might as well be the person who feels the most guilt.
She kicks the dirt clod again. She's not walking off the edge of the earth just because she's upset. That's dumb. That isn't going to happen.
A hand touches her shoulder from behind; she bristles again under her jacket.
Behind Tiff, her aunt asks, near a whisper and a sigh, "What's going on?"
She frowns. "I don't know anymore."
"It looks like rain."
"It looks like our family is full of horrible people."
"You already knew that."
"Not like this, I didn't."
"Is this about your mom?"
"No, things are— things are fine there," she lies. "We don't need to worry about that. It's something else. It's that I— I know about what our family has done. I know. What we have is a heritage of violence. What we have is an ancestry of doing things wrong, of upholding the wrong side of history, of being wrong about people— about hurting the very people and creatures I hold so dear. Did you know they hunted so-called witches? Just people, Auntie. They were just people. Did you know they still hunt them?"
There is a moment of silence. The answer within is more than obvious.
"Everything I love, everything I hold dear— they would rather wipe it out than see it flourish, and I... I don't know how to feel about that. Why would you keep it from me?"
"I wasn't supposed to know." Esther keeps her voice low, here on the side of the road. "I'll tell you. I'll explain, I swear— But not here. And not without something in my hands."
She says it, though she knows she shouldn't. "I know about you being chosen."
Now it's her aunt's turn to bristle. "What about my destiny?"
"I don't know. What about it?"
"I don't have one. I rejected it."
"Fate is shaped by the choices we make, but it's still an active force. It always comes for us in the end."
"Not if we don't let it."
Tiff turns around. She walks past her aunt, back toward the side door of the motel. "I don't know what I want to say about this. I'm just tired of things being kept from me. And I'm tired of trusting people to only have them... To have them prove themselves horrible and evil and... And to prove me a fool."
She rubs her eyes, suddenly exhausted, suddenly aware that it's past five in the morning and she hasn't properly slept in days.
Melodrama. That's what this is. The only option is to cut it out, and she has no idea how to do that. Her mom was always yelling; her father was a man of threats; and it is only natural that she is the same as both of them, and that the only way out of it is to just walk away. So she heads back to the door.
She wants to talk like a person, but she knows it isn't compelling to witness. The universe is laughing at her. It wants to see the monkeys dance. It wants to see shit slung, pills flushed down the toilet, revenge and drama— it wants blood, it wants tragedy. She's more useful if she's dysfunctional. She's more compelling. It wants her on the carousel, frozen steed spinning in a pop-up carnival.
And what use is a childhood she didn't have? What use is any of this? What's the point? She thinks about Eliza again. She thinks of herself desperately yelling that there has to be meaning to their suffering and that there's time to be happy. When? When will that time come? Eliza was right.
Oh, the narrative. It isn't real. The universe isn't wishing for her fall; it isn't calling for bloodsport. What's the point of trying if the end never comes? If the horns don't swell? If she doesn't get that fairy tale ending?
Her aunt puts a hand on her shoulder again. "We can talk later."
"That sounds like code for 'we're never going to talk about it at all.'"
"We'll talk about it."
"The narrative wants me to throw my stuff in the river, I think."
"We're not going to the river." Esther nods solemnly. "How about... How about the two of us go for a drive? Get some breakfast? Have a talk?"
"I don't know if I have time. I'm— I'm trying to save everyone. I'm trying to figure out who Priscilla Cain is. I don't have time."
"We'll make time."
"Fine." She frowns. "Fine, we'll do that. I just need answers. I don't know if you have them."
"Attagirl." With a sigh, she pats Tiff's shoulder and steers her to the car.