THIRTY-NINE
Quincey did not come down to breakfast, which hardly surprised me. After I went back up, though, there was a poorly-penned apology stuffed beneath the door of my room, which surprised me greatly. He had never been a great communicator, but he’d been so much worse since coming home. I appreciated the effort. Assuming light and noise would both be unwelcome at that hour—and very likely for many hours to come—I slid a reply under his door, letting him know we might try again that evening. Before he hit the sauce. You don’t have to like the people you love.
I saw my family off. They had planned to stay until the new year, but with what we had learned—or rather, what we strongly suspected—they would be safer at home, near Grandfather and Uncle Dietrich and his multitudinous progen
