The house had a different energy the morning they started packing for Iceland.
It was hard to name exactly. Not tense, not quite excited, somewhere between the two, the particular charge of a group of people who have been preparing for something long enough that the preparation has become its own kind of normal, and now that the actual thing is finally here the normal has to shift again.
Bags came out. Weapons were checked and wrapped and packed with the practiced efficiency of people who had learned the hard way what happened when you didn't check something twice. Thomas moved through the house with a list that he consulted constantly and added to frequently and never seemed to get shorter no matter how many things got crossed off.
Katherine stood in her room looking at her bag on the bed and the things arranged beside it and thought about what it meant to pack for something like this, not a trip, not exactly, more like a deliberate stepping toward a version of the future that couldn't be un-stepped toward once you went.
She packed the sword last.
Downstairs the house was busy in a warm way. Niall was in the kitchen eating what appeared to be his second breakfast and talking to Carlyle about Icelandic geography with the enthusiasm of someone who had spent the previous night reading about it. Kristen was at the table across from them with her weapons laid out in a neat row, cleaning each one with methodical focus. Courtney was on the living room floor doing a series of slow deliberate movements with her moon blade and her sun blade together, something Thomas had shown her, her eyes closed and her expression absorbed.
Dean was at the front window.
He had been at the front window on and off all morning, looking out at the street with the particular stillness of someone watching for something specific.
Katherine came downstairs with her bag and stopped at the bottom of the steps.
"Something out there?" she asked.
Dean glanced at her. "No," he said. "Just looking."
Katherine set her bag down and went to stand beside him. The street outside was quiet, morning light thin and pale across the pavement, no cars moving, no figures in tannish brown suits.
"You've been at that window three times since breakfast," she said.
Dean said nothing for a moment.
"We're going to be away for a while," he said finally. "I just like to know what normal looks like before I leave it."
Katherine looked out the window at the ordinary quiet street.
"Is that something you learned?" she asked. "Or something you always did."
Dean considered this. "Something I learned," he said. "The hard way. Years ago." He paused. "You should always know what normal looks like in a place. So when something changes you see it immediately."
"And right now?"
"Right now it's normal," he said. "Which is good."
Katherine nodded slowly.
Thomas appeared from the hallway with his list and looked at Katherine's bag at the bottom of the stairs. "Is that everything?"
"Yes."
He made a mark on the list. "Good. We're almost ready." He looked at Dean. "Anything?"
"Nothing," Dean said, stepping back from the window.
Thomas nodded and moved back toward the kitchen, consulting the list as he went.
Tierney came down the stairs with two bags, one over each shoulder, moving with the efficient calm of someone who had packed for dangerous things before and knew what to bring and what to leave. She set them beside Katherine's and looked at her daughter.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Ready," Katherine said.
Tierney studied her for a moment with that particular look she had, the one that was looking at the thing under the thing, the thing Katherine said and the thing Katherine meant.
"Ready and nervous are allowed to be the same thing," Tierney said.
"I know," Katherine said.
"Are they?"
A beat.
"Maybe a little," Katherine admitted.
Tierney put her hand on the side of Katherine's face briefly, the way she had done since Katherine was small, and then dropped it and picked up her bags.
"Good," she said. "Nervous means you're paying attention."
Carlyle appeared at the kitchen doorway with a piece of toast in his hand and his bag on his back, apparently ready to go to Iceland the way other people were ready to go to the grocery store.
"Niall wants to know if Iceland has good food," he said.
"Tell Niall to focus," Tierney said.
"He says he can focus and also be curious about food."
"He's not wrong," Kristen called from the table without looking up from her weapons.
"Everyone is ready except Thomas," Courtney said from the living room floor, eyes still closed, blades still moving.
"I heard that," Thomas said from somewhere in the back of the house.
"It was meant to be heard," Courtney said serenely.
Katherine looked around the room at all of them, at this group that had come together out of something dangerous and stayed together out of something stronger than that, and felt the nervous thing in her chest settle slightly, not disappear but settle, the way things settle when you remember you are not carrying them alone.
Thomas emerged from the back of the house with his bag and his list and his coat and the cold coffee he had picked up from somewhere and was definitely not going to drink.
"Okay," he said, looking at the room. "Is everyone ready."
"Yes," everyone said, in varying degrees of unison.
"Does everyone have their documents."
A collective rustling of pockets and bags.
"Yes," everyone said again.
"Does everyone have their weapons packed correctly and not in a way that is going to cause problems at—"
"Thomas," Dean said.
"I'm just checking."
"We know. You've checked four times."
"Five," Kristen said.
"Five times," Dean said.
Thomas looked at his list. "The list says four."
"The list is wrong," Kristen said.
Thomas looked at the list for a moment longer and then folded it and put it in his pocket. "Fine," he said. "Let's go."
They gathered bags and filed toward the door in the particular organized chaos of a group that had learned to move together, bumping shoulders in the narrow hallway, Niall holding the door for everyone, Courtney and Kristen arguing briefly about who had left the kitchen light on, Dean going back to check the front window one final time not because anything had changed but because that was what he did.
Katherine was the last one out.
She stood in the doorway for a moment and looked back at the house, at the living room where they had unlocked their powers and learned to fight and sat up too late talking about things that mattered and things that didn't. At the basement where they had swung wooden staffs badly and then less badly and then well. At the kitchen table where plans had been made and cold coffee had been forgotten and KaSandra had set down a stack of documents and sipped her tea like she had all the time in the world.
It had been a house when they arrived.
It was something else now.
She turned and pulled the door shut behind her and went down the porch steps into the pale winter morning where the others were loading into the car and Niall was asking Carlyle something about Icelandic weather and Kristen was telling him to please stop and Tierney was standing by the car looking at her daughter coming down the steps with a smile that was small and sure and meant everything it meant.
Katherine slung her bag over her shoulder and walked toward them.
Iceland.
Then everything after.