'So he just... kicked you out?" Bruce said, for roughly the fourth time, as they trudged back through the fog toward the clearing. "Mid-negotiation. For homework."
"He called it a courtesy."
"That's insane. That's an insane way to run a negotiation."
"He's not wrong, though," Xavier admitted, low, mostly to himself. "I walked in there with a plan for how to talk and no plan for what to actually give up. I don't know what I expected. That he'd just take my word for it?"
Stephan, unusually quiet through most of the walk back, finally spoke up as the fog began to thin toward the clearing. "What do you even have that's worth something to a three-hundred-year-old demon? We're not exactly rich in cursed heirlooms."
"I don't know," Xavier said, and meant it, and it sat uncomfortably in his chest the entire trip back to the town. And through a restless, half-slept night back at the Sunbeam Rest, none of them spent talking about anything useful.
***
By morning, Xavier still didn't have an answer, which was how he found himself back at that same cheerful, storybook-wrong cabin with his entire pack upended on Emory's conjured table, turning out every pocket and pouch he owned like a man emptying his life savings onto a counter and hoping something in the pile turned out to be worth more than it looked.
Emory watched with open, delighted interest, chin propped on one hand, not offering a single hint.
"Coin purse, no. Already established." Xavier set it aside. "Spare dagger... Bruce's work, actually, pretty good make-"
"Lovely craftsmanship. Not remotely what I'm after."
"The Duke's badge." He held it up, the little affiliation token catching the firelight. "Proof of standing with House Windstrom, might be worth something politically-"
"I have no politics. I have a cabin with roses and excellent water pressure." Emory waved it off without even really looking at it.
Xavier exhaled, frustration mounting, and kept digging. A spare bowstring, a half-eaten ration bar, a folded letter from Duke Windstrom he'd forgotten he was still carrying... None of it drawing so much as a raised eyebrow, until his fingers closed around the last thing left in the bottom of the pack, tucked where it always was, where he'd stopped consciously noticing it weeks ago: the thin, leather-bound scripture, worn soft at the corners.
He hadn't meant to bring it out. He'd genuinely, entirely forgotten it was even in there.
The moment it cleared the pack's edge, Emory went very, very still.
"...Where," he said, very carefully, all the theater draining out of his voice at once, "did you get that?"
Xavier froze, half-caught, the book dangling forgotten from one hand. "This? It's nothing. It's just a diary. It's not-"
"Give it here."
"I wasn't offering-"
"I know precisely what you were and weren't offering. Give it here. Now." Emory's hand was already extended, and for the first time since Xavier had walked through that door, there was nothing playful in it at all.
Reluctantly, feeling like he'd stumbled into something far bigger than he understood, Xavier set it on the table between them instead of handing it over outright. Emory reached out, almost reverent, and stopped just short of touching the cover.
"I haven't seen that hand in longer than you'd believe, little mage. Roswell. You know him?"
"We're... acquainted," Xavier said, which felt like both the truth and a lie at the same time, and considerably less in control of this conversation than he'd been a minute ago.
Emory studied him for a long, unreadable moment, top hat tilted slightly, embers-for-eyes flickering with something that might have been nostalgia and might have been calculation. "Half," he said finally.
"What?"
"Half the page. Not the whole thing. I have my own sense of fairness, believe it or not, and taking the whole of it from a boy who clearly doesn't understand what he's holding, and clearly didn't even realize he was carrying it, feels distasteful. Even for a demon." Emory produced, from absolutely nowhere, a small silver letter-opener, and held it out, hilt-first. "Split it clean. Half for me. Half stays with you. That's for the amendment you asked for yesterday. Corbin's happy little nightmare gets scaled back to something bearable, and his daughter gets her hands back. Deal?"
Xavier stared at the letter-opener, then at the diary, then at Emory's suddenly very focused, very unplayful expression. This wasn't the leverage he'd walked in planning to use. He hadn't planned to use it at all, hadn't even known it counted as leverage until thirty seconds ago. Some small, wary part of him wondered exactly how much of this Roswell would understand, or forgive, if he ever found out.
He picked up the letter-opener anyway.
The page split clean down the middle with far less resistance than he expected, like it had been waiting to be divided all along. He slid one half across the table. Emory took it with the delicate care of a man accepting a gift he'd wanted for a very long time, and it vanished into his coat before Xavier could even see where he'd put it.
"Pleasure doing business," Emory said, already standing, already ushering Xavier toward the door with the same warm, unsettling hospitality he'd greeted him with, the playful theater sliding smoothly back into place like it had never slipped at all. "Go on, now. Check on the girl. I imagine her father's missed her rather a lot."
***
The walk back into town felt shorter than the walk out had. By the time they reached the square, the change was already obvious. The frantic, glassy laughter had softened into something quieter, more human. People were blinking at their surroundings like they were waking from a very long dream.
Mayor Wells was on his knees in the town square, sobbing, a small girl with tangled brown hair wrapped tightly in his arms, very much no longer a rat and very much confused about why her father wouldn't stop crying.
"Wren," he kept repeating, like the name itself was a miracle. "Wren, Wren, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry..."
Xavier let Bruce and Stephan handle the reunion from a respectful distance, pulling the remaining half of the torn diary page from his coat instead, smoothing it flat with careful fingers. The handwriting was cut off mid-thought now, a jagged edge slicing straight through Mitchell's cramped, familiar scrawl. He hadn't meant to give any of it up. He still wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that.
He folded it carefully and tucked it away.
"Worth it?" Bruce asked quietly, coming to stand beside him.
Xavier watched the mayor's daughter laugh. A real laugh, small and surprised and entirely her own, for the first time in three years.
"Yeah," he said. "Worth it."
***
They found Josh exactly where they'd left him, parked by the well, fast asleep, entirely unbothered by the fact that the town around him had spent the last several hours quietly, collectively, waking up from three years of forced delirium.
"Josh." Xavier knocked on the side of the carriage.
One eye opened. He took in the noticeably calmer square, the mayor still hugging his daughter by the well, the general absence of anyone frosting cake onto the pavement, and nodded slowly, entirely unsurprised. "Cool. We heading back?"
"Tomorrow," Xavier said, glancing at Mayor Wells, who had finally noticed them and was already crossing the square with Wren's small hand in his, both of them wearing the specific, slightly dazed smile of people who'd just remembered what an ordinary good day felt like. "Tonight, I think this town owes itself a party. And we'd like to be there for it."
"Sweet." Josh, entirely unbothered by the change of plans, simply tipped his hat back down and resettled against the driver's bench. "I'll be here. Probably asleep. You know me. Wake me when you're ready."