Chapter Text
The room wasn't much, but it was three floors off the ground and it had a locking door, which went a long way toward making Warlock feel safe. He also had it to himself, which he was ambivalent about. On the one hand, it meant no one was spying on him and he could enjoy his privacy. On the other hand, there was no one to help him if trouble emerged. Still, he told himself, he was probably safe enough here. He set about unpacking some of his things and tried to settle down.
He found himself whistling a tune he hadn't thought of in a long time - an odd, lilting little lullaby. Nanny used to sing it to him when he was small. How did it go again? Go to sleep and dream of... What, exactly? The only words that sprang to mind couldn't be right. They must have been one of those amusing corruptions that small boys were in the habit of making out of innocent songs. No one would sing that to a child, would they? Then again, when he had come home from school one day singing a variant of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" that began, "Fuck, fuck, fuck a duck, screw a kangaroo..." Nanny had laughed and asked if he knew any more verses.
Either way, it bothered him that he couldn't remember all the words anymore. A lot of things were bothering him. He thought about sleeping for a moment before deciding it was a losing proposition, and instead picked up his phone and began playing a game in hopes that it would help him zone out.
He was still trying to find his way through a particularly tricky puzzle when someone tapped gently on the door.
"Warlock?" asked Mr. Kingston's voice. "Are you awake in there?"
Warlock instantly processed several things. One, that someone had tried to kidnap him today. Two, that it was nearly midnight. Three, that a man he didn't know was trying to get into his room.
It's probably nothing, he told himself, feeling his heart race. He just knows I'm shaken up and he's come to check on me, that's all. If I sit still and stay quiet, he'll go away.
He sat very still. Dr. Kingston tapped on the door again. After a few more seconds with no response, there came a soft scraping sound. It took Warlock a moment to realize that someone was trying to pick the lock.
But once he realized it, he sprang into action. As swiftly and silently as he could, he flung back the blankets on his bed and piled some of his things under them to approximate the shape of a sleeping boy. Then he stood next to the door and waited.
He nearly didn't make it. No sooner had he gotten into position then there was a click and the doorknob turned. Slowly, the door opened, and Dr. Kingston tiptoed in. When he had picked Warlock up earlier, he had been all smiles and jolliness; now his face was set in grim, determined lines. Any charity Warlock might have had towards men who snuck into boys' rooms in the middle of the night was immediately canceled out by the sight of a hypodermic needle in his hand.
Warlock waited until Kingston was inside the room, then slipped around the door and scuttled down the hallway. He knew he had only seconds before Kingston realized there was no boy in that bed, and he was torn between trying to get away as fast as possible and trying to stay silent and buy himself a little bit of extra time.
And where was he going to go? Back to the hotel? No good, they'd find him there right away. He had no friends here he could call on. His family was miles and miles away, on the other side of the ocean. Could he go to the police? He had no proof of what had happened, and he'd be accusing a man who no doubt had a sterling reputation. They'd tell him he'd had a nightmare and that he should go back to bed. He could try calling Nanny and Mr. Francis, but they weren't in London, and Warlock was forced to admit that he had no idea how far away the South Downs were from here.
He was just wondering what his other options were when a gleaming black car pulled up alongside him and the strange man from earlier leaned out.
"What the hell are you doing running around at this time of night?" he demanded.
"Someone broke into my room," Warlock panted. "He had a needle."
"Oh, for crying out loud," said Crowley. "These people just don't give up, do they? All right, hop in and we'll get you out of here."
Warlock looked at him suspiciously. "Why should I trust you? Maybe that guy was there to scare me just so I'd get into the car with you."
Crowley gave him a scathing look.
"As much as I respect paranoia as a survival tactic, now is not the time," he said. "Look at it this way, kid. Do you want to get into a car with people who maybe want to hurt you, or take your chances with the guy who definitely does? Answer quick, kid, you don't have a lot of time."
Warlock said, "But what if..."
"Young man, you get in this car right this instant, or so help me it will go the worse for you!”
Warlock was in the back seat and buckling his safety belt before he'd even consciously decided to do so. Something about that tone had brooked no argument.
As the car began pulling back into traffic, Warlock realized that there was someone else in the car, a man with fair curly hair and a prim way of holding himself. He looked even more familiar than the man who called himself Crowley. In fact, seeing them together was giving Warlock an uneasy feeling - the sort of sense he might have had if he'd gone into a familiar room and the colors of everything in it had been shifted a shade or two. Something was wrong, but it was hard to put his finger on exactly what was so off about it.
"So now that he's here, where are we taking him?" the fair-haired man was asking.
"I hadn't thought that far ahead yet, okay? Getting him away from those clowns was what I was focusing on."
"What are we supposed to do, then? Take him home with us?"
"Can't. It would raise too many questions."
Warlock piped up with, "I have questions now."
"Well, you can ask," said Crowley, "but I don't promise you we can answer."
"Who are you people?"
Crowley shrugged. "We're your friends. I told you that. That's all you really need to know."
Warlock frowned at them. He was starting to form certain suspicions, but they were so earth-shattering that he didn't want to think about them. If he did, a lot of things he had always taken for granted were going to slip away like raindrops over a windowpane. Nevertheless...
Nevertheless, that tone that had ordered him into the car had been distinctly Nanny's voice, the one he'd learned to obey even more than his own mother's. She'd been a woman and this was a man, which had thrown him for a while, but that didn't mean much these days, and the red hair and dark glasses and all the general features were there. And Mr. Francis had an overbite and a country burr you could spread on toast, while this man spoke in drawing-room accents, but when Warlock ignored that and just focused on the silhouette...
"I think I really need to know who you are," he said softly.
There was a long pause. At last, the man who looked like Mr. Francis said, "We could make all this not have happened. Not really, of course, but close enough that it would make no difference. We could put you on a plane and send you home. Your parents would think the program was over already and no one would ever question it. We could sort out the problem here, and you would be quite safe. You'd never have to think about any of this ever again. It really could be like it was just a bad dream."
"I don't think I can do that," said Warlock. "Because even if you sort out everything else, you still look just like Nanny and Mr. Francis and you aren't, and they were my friends and I thought I knew who they were and now I'm not sure anymore and I really need to know."
The man sighed. "We are your friends, Warlock. Even if we're a bit unconventional in that regard."
Warlock scowled at him. "Are you spies? That's it, isn't it? You disguised yourself as the nanny and the gardener and you were spying on my family."
"Not on your family," said the man. "Just you."
And there it was, the thing at the bottom of all of this. It was the thing Warlock had been trying not to think about ever since he'd seen the angel in the basement.
In a small voice, he asked, "Am I the Antichrist?"
"Good heavens, no!" said the man.
Crowley added, "But there are good reasons why someone might make that mistake."
Warlock wrestled with this concept for a moment.
"So do you have something to do with those guys who kidnapped me?" he asked.
"Never knew they existed before today," said Crowley. "As far as I know, they're just a bunch of clowns who are good enough at research to get to almost the right answer." He paused before adding, "Which, all right, I can't blame them too much for, because Aziraphale and I knew more than they did and we still made the same damn mistake."
"Aziraphale," Warlock repeated. "That's the name you used earlier, when you were talking about the angel."
"That's me," said the fair-haired man. "The angel Aziraphale. I suppose at this point it's no good trying to hide it any longer, since you seem to be in it up to your neck now anyway."
Warlock nodded slowly, tentatively accepting this as fact. Somehow it was easier to absorb than thinking that dear old Mr. Francis had been some kind of spy. Presumably an angel could appear in whatever form it chose. Somehow it felt less deceptive than thinking a normal human being had been getting himself up in costume every day just to keep an eye on him. He turned his attention to Crowley.
"And are you an angel too?" he asked. "Or, like, some kind of wizard or something?"
Crowley gave a bark of laughter. "Me, a wizard? I like that. Nah, kid, I'm not a wizard or an angel. I'm a demon."
Warlock thought about this. Nanny had always had an air of mischief about her, and a certain macabre sensibility, but some of the Goth kids at his school were a lot worse.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
Crowley took his eyes off the road long enough to lean around his chair and look at Warlock with his glasses pushed down. The irises were yellow, and the pupils were slitted like a cat's. Warlock stared a moment.
"I've seen contact lenses before," he said. "I know a girl who wears heart-shaped ones sometimes."
"Oh, yeah?" said Crowley. "Can she do this?"
His irises expanded until his eyes were yellow from edge to edge, all but those unnerving black slits. He opened his mouth, bearing a pair of gleaming white fangs, and when his hissed, a forked tongue flicked between them. Warlock jumped.
Crowley turned around as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
"That's what I thought," he said.
"Really, my dear, I do wish you'd exercise a little more restraint," said Aziraphale.
"Sorry, angel, I'm having kind of a rough day."
"You think you're having a rough day? What about me?" asked Warlock. "I'm the one everyone is after, and you still haven't told me why yet."
Aziraphale looked to Crowley. "Should we tell him?"
Crowley shrugged. "Might as well. He already knows some of it now - we don't need him filling in the gaps and getting it all wrong. That's how this mess started in the first place, didn't it?"
"All the way down the line, I think," said Aziraphale. "All right. Where should we start?"
Warlock thought about it.
"How about telling me why an angel and a demon are hanging out together?" he asked.
"Oh, that's easy," said Aziraphale. "Because we enjoy each other's company. We were friends back in the Time Before Time, you see, and even after everything changed, we still found that we got along better with each other than anyone else. Anyway, you know Crowley. He's a bit of a rebel but he's not that bad when you get used to him."
Warlock was forced to concede the point. Nanny had always been a little weird, but she'd never been unkind to anyone who hadn't brought it on themselves.
"And you were keeping an eye on me," he said slowly, "because you thought I was the Antichrist."
"In our defense, it was an easy mistake to make," said Aziraphale. "Oh, don't look at me like that - I didn't mean it that way. Give me a minute and I'll explain... Unless you'd like to do it, Crowley?"
"You do it. I'm driving," said Crowley. "You're a better storyteller than me anyway."
"All right," said Aziraphale. He settled himself down more comfortably and gathered his thoughts. "Roughly nineteen years ago, the Antichrist, the son of Satan, came into this world. We know this for a fact, because Crowley here was chosen to transport the child to a particular hospital, where on that night the wife of an American diplomat would be giving birth. The plan was to take her child away and leave the infernal child in his place."
Warlock was trying to follow along. "You're talking about my mom. And me."
"Sort of, but listen. What no one counted on was that another woman, a Mrs. Young, also gave birth that night at the same hospital," said Aziraphale. "We had to piece a lot of this together years after the fact, so some of this is just guesswork, but here's how I think it must have happened. I think that Crowley made his hand-off to one of the nuns in the hospital, and that she brought the Antichrist child to Mrs. Young's room instead of Mrs. Dowling's. We know that must have happened because that's where he finally turned up, living in Tadfield with the Youngs. But we also know that there was a switch of Mrs. Dowling's child and another baby, so the logical inference was that someone came and took a child from Mrs. Young's room under the impression that he was the Antichrist child, and someone else allowed him to be taken under the impression that he was being disposed of. At that point, presumably, Mrs. Young's son was given to Mrs. Dowling, and Mrs. Dowling's son was taken away somewhere." Aziraphale paused reflectively. "I believe they had him discreetly adopted."
"So you're saying," said Warlock slowly, "that I'm not really my parents' kid? That my real mom is this Young woman?"
Aziraphale looked flustered. "I'm sorry. I should have led up to that more carefully."
"It's okay," said Warlock. "Really."
And it was, more or less. After all, hadn't he wondered, from time to time? His coloring was enough like his parents' that it wasn't glaringly obvious they weren't related, but there had been the little things - the line of the jaw, the shape of an ear, the angle of a cheekbone, the way his hair fell across his forehead. No one ever said to him, "Your father was just like that when he was young," or "You have your Great-Aunt Hilda's nose" or "You look more like your mother every day." Hadn't he wondered sometimes, particularly when his parents weren't getting along, if maybe there had been someone else involved in the making of him? And now he knew. His mother was Mrs. Young, who lived in Tadfield, and presumably there was also a Mr. Young and maybe even some brothers and sisters. Somehow that felt like a bigger deal than being told that the actual Antichrist had been involved in his birth.
"Can I meet them?" he asked. "My parents, I mean. My real parents."
"I'm not sure that would be a good idea," said Crowley. "I mean, what are you going to tell them? 'Hi, I think maybe I was switched at birth and I'm your real kid?' That's not gonna go over well for anybody."
Aziraphale said, "As far as your parents ever knew, you were their son, the only one they ever had. They loved you and raised you exactly as they would have if you'd been theirs by blood. Let that be enough."
"Anyway," said Crowley, "we have more immediate problems - like the people who think they can use you to kick off the end of the world, so maybe let's focus on that and worry about the other stuff later?"
Warlock was forced to admit that this was probably a good idea.
"So where are we going now?" he asked.
"Back to the cottage," said Aziraphale. "You'll be quite safe there with us keeping an eye on you, and once we know you're secure we can focus on finding these people and shutting them down."
"Can you do that?" Warlock asked.
Crowley shrugged. "I mean, we're not all-powerful or anything, but we've got a few tricks at our disposal. And now we've got a starting point. Aziraphale's got friends at Oxford. We'll sniff around there a bit and see if we can pick up a trail."
"We've handled stranger things," said Aziraphale reassuringly. "We'll handle this too. Don't worry."
Warlock decided they were probably right. If he had an angel and a demon on his side, what could a lot of silly humans do to him?
And in the meantime, he was going to go stay at the cottage in the South Downs. It wasn't going to be exactly the way he'd imagined it, but he'd spent so much time wanting to go there that it was hard to be sorry that it would finally happen, even if it was going to be under peculiar circumstances. Nanny and Mr. Francis weren't the way he remembered them, but time did change people. Underneath the superficial changes, they seemed to be just as strange and just as kind as they'd always been, and for now, they were going to take care of him.
They left the city behind them and drove into less populated parts of the world. As the lights around him grew dimmer, Warlock became drowsy. The warmth of the car, the hum of the tires, and the sense that someone else was looking after him combined to make him relax. Gradually, his eyelids slid shut, and he dozed.
He awoke again to Crowley shaking his shoulder.
"Come on, up and at 'em," he said. "What kind of college student are you if you can't pull an all-nighter?"
Warlock staggered to his feet, rubbing his eyes and trying to get his bearings.
"Where am I?" he mumbled.
"The Taj Mahal, whaddaya think?" Crowley retorted.
Warlock blinked a few times and managed to clear his eyes. They had pulled up into the drive of - yes - a cozy little cottage surrounded by flower beds and other decorative foliage. He recognized it from the pictures, but he hadn't realized how warm and welcoming it would look on a dark night with the windows lit and the front door open invitingly. He hadn't realized that you could hear the sea from here. He hadn't realized how huge and full of stars the sky would be at night.
He let Crowley lead him inside. Aziraphale was already in the living room, lighting a fire in the fireplace. Warlock took his first good look around the place and found it living up to his expectations. Everything in it was tasteful and easy on the eyes, but also looked comfortable and homelike. This wasn't a place occupied by people who cared what other people thought of them, it was a home occupied by two people who had fitted it out the way they liked it. His eyes picked out small details: a clock depicting Adam and Eve approaching an apple tree with a snake wrapped around it, a small side table with an open book resting on it, numerous framed photographs of Aziraphale and Crowley enjoying themselves in various contexts, potted plants stuck in odd corners, an antique map of the night sky.
He flopped down in an easy chair and held his hands close to the fire.
"Well, this was not how I planned my vacation," said Aziraphale, "but I suppose that can't be helped. I could do with a drink just now, couldn't you?"
"Generally, yeah," said Crowley, "but I think first I'll scout around a bit - make sure no one followed us."
"Not a bad idea," Aziraphale admitted. "All right, I'll keep the home fires burning for you."
Crowley tossed him a lazy salute and sauntered off. Warlock heard the front door open and close, and then the sound of an engine starting.
"Don't worry," said Aziraphale. "If anyone out there is up to no good, he'll find them. Demons in general have a very good nose for people who are up to no good, particularly if they've been up to occult nonsense like these people have."
"What will he do if he finds someone?" Warlock asked.
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. "Who knows? Depends on his mood, really. Turn them into snails, or zap them off to Timbuktu, or baffle them into thinking that what they really want is to go back to London for a curry, or just lead them on a merry chase all over England. Whatever he does, they won't get anywhere near here, I promise you that."
"But what if they do?"
"Then they'll have me to contend with," said Aziraphale. "And the difference between Crowley and me is that a demon has to have some tolerance for evildoers, whereas I am under no such strictures. I assure you, you are quite safe. Now, about that drink. Do you want one? Are you old enough? People keep making different rules and I can't be bothered to keep track of all of them."
"I'm old enough in England," he said hopefully.
That got a chuckle out of Aziraphale. "But not in America, I take it? Well, well. I suppose you were planning on taking the opportunity to sneak off to a bar somewhere and experiment?"
Warlock nodded, feeling transparent. Aziraphale shook his head.
"No, no, that won't do," he said kindly. "Take it from me - that way lies hangovers and waking up in places you really don't want to be, quite often in company you didn't want to be with, and frequently minus a few things you wanted to keep. If you're going to learn to drink, you should do it in trustworthy company, preferably a responsible adult - someone who can take the bottle away and see you to bed before you've had too much." He paused and considered. "I don't know how responsible I qualify as, but I've been around more than six thousand years, so I suppose I'm adult enough to make up for any lack of responsibility. Wait right there."
He walked off. Warlock heard the sound of him moving around somewhere, and of glassware clinking, and then he came back carrying a bottle and three glasses.
"Crowley will want something when he gets back," he said, laying the glasses in a row on the coffee table, "but we can start without him."
So saying, he filled one glass, and then filled a second partway and pushed it toward Warlock.
"Just a bit, to start with," he said. "Don't gulp - sip it slowly. This is good wine and it's meant to be appreciated. Think about how it smells, how it feels, how the flavor develops from the first moment it hits your tongue to the last aftertaste. Consider how the taste might remind you of other things. Tomorrow we'll try something different and you can compare. That's how you start developing an educated palate."
"Is that important?" Warlock asked, reaching tentatively for the glass. The label on the bottle made it look old and possibly expensive, and he was afraid of doing something clumsy and dumping the whole lot on the floor.
Aziraphale smiled. "Well, it doesn't hurt. Having an understanding of anything - whether it's wine or art or literature or music - helps you appreciate and enjoy it more. Once you get an idea of what makes different wines unique from each other, it will make it easier to seek out what you'd prefer and avoid the ones you find less agreeable." He smiled. "And of course being able to talk knowledgeably about about good wine impresses a certain kind of person, and you never know when you might need to impress a snob."
Warlock giggled a little, thinking of some of the people he'd seen his parents sucking up to for one reason or another. You saw a lot of that sort of thing, when your father was in politics.
"You're probably right about that," he said.
He reached for the glass and took a careful sip, and tried to follow Aziraphale's directions. The flavor was not unpleasant, and he was forced to admit that Aziraphale had probably been correct in warning him not to gulp it down like a sports drink.
"I didn't know angels drank alcohol," he said.
Aziraphale gave him a humorous look. "Why not? They keep it in churches, don't they?"
"But you really are an angel. Like, you've been to Heaven and met God and stuff."
"Yes, I have," he said. "But I like Earth better. There always seems to be something interesting happening here."
"I guess you've seen a lot of interesting stuff, huh?" said Warlock thoughtfully.
"Oh, yes. I was here when the Garden of Eden was planted, and I've been keeping an eye on you humans ever since," said Aziraphale. He gazed dreamily into the fire. "Wars and celebrations and scientific discoveries - all the great triumphs and tragedies of history."
"So you remember all the way back to the beginning? Back when the universe was created and all that?"
"I can remember further back than that," said Aziraphale. "I was there when we were still planning out what the universe was going to be like when it was created. That was how Crowley and I met - he was setting up a nebula and needed someone to give him a hand. Of course, he wasn't a demon back then, just another angel like the rest of us, and so excited for this wonderful thing we were creating together. He was so innocent back then... it was a very different time."
The thought seemed to make him melancholy. Warlock tried to steer the conversation in another direction.
"So what's the very first thing you can remember, then?" he asked.
"The first thing?" Aziraphale seemed to come back from a long way away. "Well, let me see... the first thing I remember was being created."
"You can remember that?"
"Oh, yes. It left an impression, you might say."
"What was it like?"
Aziraphale leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. "It was like waking up from a deep, dreamless sleep. One moment I knew nothing, and the next moment there was a voice calling out, 'Aziraphale!' and I knew that was my name, and I knew there was a me to have a name. So I opened my eyes, and there was this ... wonderful, wonderful being regarding me, and I knew that they loved me and had chosen me. You really can't imagine how it felt..." He trailed off, then shrugged. "Of course it all got complicated later. I suppose it does. It always gets complicated between children and their parents as they grow up."
Warlock conceded that this was probably so. Things were complicated enough with his own parents, and had been even before he'd learned they technically weren't his parents. He couldn't imagine how complicated life could get if your parent was the actual God.
Crowley came back in.
"No sign of anything," he reported. "I think we're good for now. Is that glass for me? Thanks."
He flopped down on the sofa next to Aziraphale, with the ease of one who has done it a thousand times before, and began filling his glass. The two of them fell into conversation on the subject of, "So what are we going to do now?" Warlock didn't mind being excluded. He had a lot to think about, so while they talked, he refilled his glass and settled back to think about everything that had been happening to him. It had been a long and trying day, and it was comforting to feel that someone older and wiser and more capable than himself was going to handle everything from now on.
It was very late, and he was tired. The wine and the warmth of the fire were making him drowsy. His head began to nod. He felt the nearly empty glass begin to slip out of his fingers and sat up with a jolt.
"Oh, dear me," said Aziraphale. "It's so easy to forget that other people need sleep. You must be exhausted. Let me show you to your room."
He took the glass away and helped Warlock to his feet. Warlock was glad that, after all, he hadn't tried his first experiment with alcohol alone. He hadn't had much, but that plus the exhaustion of the day's events was taking its toll on him, and he hated to think how he would have coped by himself. As it was, he was more than happy to let Aziraphale take him by the arm and show him deeper into the house.
They came to a cozy guest room, colored in shades of green and white and natural woods, all nicely balanced so that it would seem light and airy in daylight but still calm and comfortable at night. Warlock looked longingly at the bed, with its fat pillows and fluffy patchwork quilt.
"I don't have my pajamas or a toothbrush or anything," he said.
"Hm? It's all right, we can take care of that."
Aziraphale walked over to the wardrobe - a good big one, with carved plants and deer and birds on it, the kind that probably had a portal to Narnia inside. He rapped briskly on the doors.
"Excuse me," he said. "Sorry to trouble you so late, but could you please fetch young Warlock's things for him? I believe they're in a dormitory at Oxford somewhere. Thank you."
Then he opened the doors. Warlock blinked. His clothes were all hanging neatly on the racks, and the rest of his things piled neatly on various shelves.
"How did...?" he began.
Aziraphale raised his eyebrow. "Did you forget I'm an angel? I'm not omnipotent but a little thing like moving luggage around is easy."
"Must be useful, being an angel," said Warlock.
"It has its ups and downs. Now, be a good lad and brush your teeth before you go back to bed."
"Yes, Mr. Fran... I mean, Aziraphale."
Aziraphale showed Warlock where the bathroom was, then sent him back to bed and wished him a good night. Warlock changed into his pajamas (which, he noted, appeared to be freshly pressed and scented with lavender) and snuggled down into that warm, soft bed.
Within seconds, he was sound asleep.
He didn't know what waked him. It might have been a dream - surely the things he'd gone through in the last twenty-four hours were enough to give anyone nightmares. Maybe it was just an unfamiliar noise in this unfamiliar house. Whatever it was, Warlock found himself with his eyes open, looking up at the ceiling. Someone had painted ivy vines on it. After he had stared at it for a few seconds, he decided that what he really wanted was to get up and use the bathroom. He slipped out of bed and padded down the hall.
He was on his way back when he heard the sound of voices speaking softly somewhere nearby. More curious than alarmed, he tiptoed in their direction.
He peeked around a corner and caught a glimpse of his two hosts. Crowley had Aziraphale backed against the wall, and they appeared to be in the midst of an extensive makeout session. At any rate, Crowley's hair was disheveled, and Aziraphale's shirt was partially unbuttoned.
"Come on," Crowley coaxed. "After the day we've had, I know you could use a little stress relief."
"What about the boy? He might hear us."
"So? He's a big boy; someone must have taught him the facts of life by now."
"That doesn't mean he needs us to give him a practical demonstration."
"Then we'll just have to be nice and quiet, won't we?" said Crowley. "Anyway, you saw him. He was dead on his feet. He's going to sleep like a stone, and he's on the other side of the house."
"Mm, you're probably right..."
Warlock smiled and began walking back to his room. It sounded like they weren't going to want to see him again for a while.
Mommy and Daddy are kissing, he thought with amusement. But it did feel a little like that, didn't it? These people might not be quite the same as he remembered, but as soon as they'd found him, they'd started taking care of him and teaching him just the way real parents would.
Maybe he did know what it felt like to wake from a deep sleep and know that a marvelous being loved him.
Smiling, he tucked himself back into bed and went back to sleep.