Ern returned to his home-of-the-moment an hour and a half later to find Hoyle unattended. Neither Molly nor Holly were anywhere to be seen. Something important must’ve happened to drag them out, or Ern must’ve been a lot later than he thought, or both.
He quickly tiptoed between the bedrolls on the floor to the IV tree, only to find out that Hoyle wasn’t hooked up.
“What the...”
“Ern? That you?” Hoyle stirred.
“Hoyle? You’re up?”
“Ughn. You’re not that cute.”
“When did...”
“How the hell should I know. Mom had to run out, she said you should be here any minute, I got bored waiting and fell asleep. What the hell’s going on here? Where am I?”
Ern filled him in as best he could on what had happened, starting at the fight in French’s train annex six weeks ago and bringing him right up to the present. He had to stop a lot to answer questions, and back track, and repeat himself. Hoyle’s brain was a little muddled and he wasn’t exactly sharp, but then Ern wasn’t ever sharp first thing in the morning, especially when he’d overslept, and Hoyle had just overslept by about a month and a half.
Ern left out the bit about finding out that it was Doc’s son that they killed, and about finding out that his own father was a Former. Judging by Hoyle’s reaction to Doc being a Former and being part of the family now—so to speak—he wouldn’t take any of the rest of it very well.
Funny. His whole life Ern had considered Hoyle intimidating, and much more sophisticated. Now, he felt as if their situations were reversed, and he didn’t quite know what to think about that.
“So your Mom is a night monster, huh?” Hoyle chuckled. “That’s funny.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“So? What’d she say?”
“Huh?”
“You said you were out trying to figure out how to check up on her.”
“Oh. That. No, I didn’t find anything. Gonna have to try again tomorrow.”
The conversation drifted after that, and before long Hoyle was asleep again. Ern sat down, thinking he might nap until Hoyle needed him again, but found he felt too alive to sleep. He had only his thoughts to keep him company, and the books. Casting about for something to read, he settled on Principles of Legitimacy and Democratic Consent, one of Doc’s pamphlets which Celine had talked about all afternoon.
But read and re-read it though he did, he found that his thoughts kept straying back to her, and the extraordinary realization that had blown all other considerations—including his mother—out of his mind:
She’s a slug sliver like me, and it doesn’t bother her.
It took another day for Hoyle to tolerate more than a few bites of food at a time, and a couple more beyond that until he was walking around again and off the IV feeders, for keeps. But when he did, things got...interesting.