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Luz tried desperately to convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming.
Belos was gone. The Collector had realized what they were doing was wrong and had helped fix everything. The Boiling Isles was saved. She, King, and Eda had gotten back to the Owl House in time for Raine to pass out in one of Eda’s nests. Her mom and Amity had arrived right after, safely and victorious, and she’d shared a kiss with Amity before getting pulled into a hug by her mom. She’d finally introduced her mom to Eda and King. Lilith and even The Collector themself had also arrived, and The Collector had restored Hooty from his disturbing puppet-form to his proper, disturbing true form.
Everything was perfect. They could all finally just share a happy, peaceful day for this salad-shooter-blended family to get to know each other properly. Luz could introduce Lilith to her new palisman Stringbean, her mom and Eda could exchange their favorite recipes for adult beverage mixes, King could show The Collector his stuffed animal collection “The Army Of Darkness,” Lilith could infodump to everybody about the new designs for bridges she’d started learning about, Luz could make a joke about Lilith throwing her off a bridge that time when — oh, farts. Luz hadn’t told her mom about that yet, had she?
She’d told her mom about Eda and Lilith, about how Eda had been a lifelong criminal while Lilith had been loyal to Belos until recently — she was sure of it — but hadn’t she changed the subject whenever it felt like she was about to tell her mom about Eda’s sister trying to kill her? Her mom hadn’t lived with Heel-Face-Turn Lilith, hadn’t seen how ashamed Lilith was at having served Belos so stubbornly for so long, hadn’t seen how hard Lilith worked every day to make up for the horrible things she’d done. If Luz told her mom “Lilith tried to kill me one time,” her mom would probably rip Lilith’s hands off of her arms and strangle her to death with them.
Trying not to ruin such an amazing day by over-reacting, Luz made her way in a calm, normal, and perfectly innocent manner to where a 50-foot-long tumbleweed of Hooty was embracing Lilith. “Hey, Lilith,” Luz asked in a calm, normal, and perfectly innocent manner, “can I talk to you for a minute?”
Hooty released Lilith, and she tumbled laughing and crying to the floor. “Absolutely.”
Luz led Lilith outside as Hooty started fusing the exposed guts at the end of his stump back into the door of the Owl House. “So, how’d it go meeting my mom?”
“It was wonderful,” Lilith answered with a beaming smile. “I can see how you grew up to be such a kind and brave young lady.”
Luz took a sigh of relief. “Aww, thanks. So the whole ‘throwing me off a bridge when you worked for Belos’ didn’t come up?”
“… No?”
Luz nodded, glad that she had time to gather her own thoughts on the best way to take care of this later. “All right! Let’s just get back to everybody else then.” She didn’t want to surprise her mom with it coming up in casual conversation, so she’d probably need to work backwards at some point: Start by reminding her mom how good a person Lilith had become since leaving the Emperor’s Coven, then easing her into Lilith having been part of the Emperor’s Coven by emphasizing that everybody’d been propagandized to supporting the Emperor, and admitting that Lilith had done bad things in general before emphasizing how hard Lilith had devoted her life to fixing her worst mistakes, before finally admitting that she herself had been the victim of one of Lilith’s mistakes.
Most importantly, she’d have plenty of time to worry about all of this later.
Luz made her way back to the living room, Lilith right behind her. “We’re back, everyone!”
Her mom waved her and Lilith over. “Is everything OK?” she asked, sounding almost a little worried, but not too much.
Luz started to say that everything was OK. She thought about vaguely mentioning that there were more things to talk about later once everybody had had a chance to catch their breath, but that right now, everybody just needed to enjoy the fact that the fight was finally over.
“I am so sorry I tried to kill your daughter.”
Luz’s heart started pounding at what had to be at least 1000 miles an hour. Lilith hadn’t just said that, had she? Luz had just been hallucinating that —
“Oh, shit,” Eda whispered as Luz’s mom’s face warped into the nastiest glare Luz had seen in her life.
Amity, King, The Collector, and even Hooty all fell dead silent.
Apparently Luz hadn’t been imagining it. “WHAT DID I JUST TELL YOU?” she screamed, wheeling around and staring at Lilith, only now registering how ashamed Lilith’s face had looked a second ago when Luz first brought this up.
Lilith backed away from Luz in surprise. “Wait, what? I thought you wanted me to —”
“WHY WOULD I WANT YOU TO TELL HER THAT?” Luz tried to turn to face her mom as fast as possible. “Look, Mom,” she said, holding her hands out in the best “please slow down” gesture she could manage, “I know that sounded bad —”
“‘Sounded’?” her mom hissed through clenched teeth. “You know that it ‘sounded’ bad?”
Luz gripped her hair in each hand, trying desperately to stop herself from ripping it out of her skin. “See,” she hissed, looking up at Lilith again, “why I was so happy when you said it hadn’t come up yet?”
“Oooooooooh.” Lilith bit her lip. “No, I hadn’t noticed that.”
“Then maybe you should let me do the talking!” The only thing that could possibly make this worse would be if Lilith admitted that she’d also been in charge of the people who’d abused Vee and the other basilisks, and right now, Luz didn’t know if she could count on Lilith not to blurt that out too.
Eda tried to back out of the room, but Luz’s mom jabbed her with the end of her bat. “Did you know about this?”
“OK!” Luz yelled, putting her hands up. “Mom, Lilith, Eda, how about the four of us talk in the basement?” There was no reason for Amity, King, The Collector, or Hooty to get scared having to watch all of this, and maybe the time it took to walk down the stairs would give Luz a chance to think of some way of salvaging the bomb that Lilith had set off.
Her mom glanced back and forth between Lilith and Eda, then finally said “Fine.”
Luz crept out of the living room, trying to ignore the look of fear on Amity’s, King’s, The Collector’s, and Hooty’s faces as her mom, Lilith, and Eda followed her. She made her way down the stairs, cursing under her breath so that nobody following could hear her. Not only did she have basically no time to come up with ideas for how to tell her mom about what had happened, but the only idea that she had come up with — easing her into it — wasn’t going to work anymore because Lilith had just blurted out the worst part first.
Unfortunately, running through the events in chronological order, starting with Lilith cursing Eda to get herself into the Emperor’s Coven, probably wouldn’t work either — it would be too easy for her mom to focus on “Lilith shouldn’t have put herself and her sister in such a bad position in the first place.”
As Luz paced around the basement, trying to ignore the death-glare her mom was giving Lilith, she decided that she might as well try the weirdest idea she’d come up with. Her mom was already wound up, so maybe it was best to try confusing her for a minute so she’d forget how furious she was. “OK, I think I’ve got something, but I need you to promise me that you’ll let me finish. I know that this is a lot to throw at you, but I promise that I have actually thought about how to explain this to you, and I promise that I do actually think this is the best way to do it.”
Her mom nodded, though she kept a death grip on the bat that was still aimed uncomfortably close to Lilith’s direction.
“Let’s say that it was you instead of her.”
Her mom mouthed “What.”
Good sign. Definitely a good sign. Probably a good sign. Maybe a good sign? Whatever, too late to back out now. “Let’s say that you did something really, really stupid, and let’s say that I got hurt, like, really, really bad. Maybe you were texting and driving and went off the road, and I ended up in a coma. You’d do anything to make sure I got better, right?”
Her mom nodded again, still scowling but not as homicidally as she’d been a second ago.
“Now let’s say that the greatest superhero who ever lived — who was elected President For Life Of Everything after saving the world from all of the worst supervillains — personally went to you and promised that he could heal me, and that he just needed you to do a couple of favors for him. You’ve already been raised your entire life to love him, and now he’s personally giving you a chance to fix the most horrific mistake of your life.” Luz took a pause to make sure that her mom was focused on how good this offer would’ve sounded.
Now to start twisting the knife — make her mom realize what a mistake this would have been. “Well, any day now.” Pause. “Well, any week now.” Pause. “Well, any month now.” Pause. “Well, any year now.”
Her mom’s eyes widened in greater horror with every addition.
That was a good sign, right? “So let’s say that the President Of Everything was actually the most bloodthirsty supervillain of all time — that he just had excellent propaganda that his innocent victims were dangerous supervillains — and let’s say that the favors he asked of you got just a little bit more and more morally-ambiguous as the years go by. How long do you think he would have to personally dangle my life in front of your face before you were willing to throw another parent’s child under the bus in order to save your own child? 10 years? 20? 30? How long would it take before you decided ‘I’m not doing this anymore — my daughter’s life isn’t worth it’?”
Her mom looked around the room, eyes starting to glaze over. “I need to sit down.” A chair dragged across the floor and stopped behind her — Hooty’s house-demon magic? She stared at the chair for a second before shrugging and sitting down.
As painfully as Luz’s own heart was breaking, she knew she had to push through. “Mom, I really am serious about this. Can you look me in the eye and say to my face ‘Luz, I would let you die if committing horrible crimes against innocent people was the only way to save your life’?”
Luz’s mom buried her face in her hands. “I — I don’t know.”
Luz walked over as quietly as she could. “Then I’m glad you’ve never needed to find out, and I hope to Titan we won’t ever need to find out,” she said, putting a hand on her mami’s shoulder, “but Lilith already found out because of a mistake she made when she was my age.”
Her mom gasped.
“When she and Eda were in high school,” Luz continued, “there was a tryout for the most powerful student to join the Emperor’s Coven without graduating first, and this was back when the two of them both wanted to join the Emperor’s Coven because they didn’t know anything else yet.”
Wait, should Luz go into detail about how Eda had already started to rethink joining the Emperor’s Coven for petty, “I don’t care about the rules” reasons that later grew into vengeful “I hate the Emperor’s Coven for ruining my life” reasons before finally becoming moral “Belos’s regime can’t be allowed to hurt anyone else” reasons?
Luz forced herself to focus — she and her mom could worry about those details later. “They would’ve had to duel each other, but Lilith was certain that Eda could beat her in a fair fight, so Lilith acquired an illegal curse that she was told would weaken Eda’s spell-casting power enough for one day that Lilith would be able to win the fight. What she was too lazy to pay attention to,” she emphasized, hoping to make it clear to her mom that she still hated Lilith’s decision even if she didn’t hate Lilith as a person anymore, “was that there were two curses in the scroll that she used—one that would drain Eda’s magic for a day, and a second that would transform her into a mindless Owlbeast anytime she ran out of magic for the rest of her life. Such as when the first curse kicked in, on the day of their public duel.”
Again, Luz stopped herself from monologuing about how the Owlbeast wasn’t actually the mindless monster everybody thought — they could worry about that later. “Lilith was inducted into the Emperor’s Coven by default when the final duel was cancelled, but now all doors for Eda to live a legitimate life were shut tight by everyone deciding she was a monster, and she turned further and further to crime to survive.” Ha ha, doors, like the Portal Door. Luz forced herself to focus. “Emperor Belos found out how Lilith had cheated to win her place in his Coven, and he spent the next 30 years promising that if she arrested her criminal sister and recruited her into the Emperor’s Coven, then he would cure her of the Owlbeast curse that Lilith had so thoughtlessly inflicted on her.”
She braced herself for what she knew her mother would see as the extra-nasty part. “So eventually I come along, and when Eda’s curse started getting harder and harder to manage, I broke into the Emperor’s castle to steal an artifact that I thought would heal her. Lilith caught me and held me hostage to force Eda to surrender, but Eda fought like hell to save me, and Lilith tried throwing me off a bridge as a distraction. Eda ended up getting captured, and — surprise, surprise — Lilith finally found out that he’d been lying to her the whole time when he sentenced Eda to be publicly executed. Lilith and I hatched our own plans to save her, and when we ran into each other again, she was able to convince me that she’d realized she was on the wrong side and that she wanted to work together.”
Her mom sat in dead silence for what felt to Luz like hours.
“Mom?”
At last, Luz’s mom looked up at her. “And, had she been living with you and Eda ever since?”
“For the first few weeks. After we saved Eda, Lilith took on half of the curse so that Eda could control it again, and once Lilith started to learn how to control it herself, she moved back in with their parents and just came by the Owl House to visit once in a while.”
Luz’s mom shook her head, bracing her hands against the seat of the chair as she slowly forced herself to stand. “Then I suppose I can be glad about part of this, at least. It sounds like you were able to be 100% absolutely certain, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you were completely safe from Lilith the whole time she was living in your home with you.”
“Absolutely.” Luz took a deep breath. “Honestly, she had more reason to be afraid of me.” She’d felt so ashamed of herself for so long about this other part, but under the circumstances, perhaps this was the best time to come clean about it? “When I first saw her after Eda’s capture, I was 100% ready to murder her—”
Her mom’s arms crushed around her before she even noticed her mom had walked over.
“—and I didn’t think about listening to her until I saw that she was willing to let me.”
Luz lost all track of time as she started sobbing into her mami’s shoulder. Had she and Lilith ever actually, straight-up talked to each other about this instead of always just joking around and trying to ignore it?
“I am so,” her mom whispered, “so sorry that I wasn’t there to protect you from all of this.”
Luz wiped her eyes. “And what about Lilith? She didn’t have anyone either.”
Her mom took a massive breath before sighing. “Fine.” She looked over her shoulder. “Lilith?”
Lilith looked up from the floor to meet her judge, jury, and potential-executioner’s eyes. “Yes?”
“I accept that my daughter and your sister both forgive you,” Luz’s mom struggled to say, “and I will try to forgive you too. I wish I could say that I would’ve done better than you did, but Luz is right — I could easily have done even worse.”
That seemed to Luz like the best they could expect for now. She hoped it was good enough for now for Lilith too.
“And so we don’t have a repeat of what just happened in front of everybody else,” her mom asked, “is there anything else we should get out of the way while we have this chance for some privacy?”
Luz looked over at Lilith, who nodded at her. “She does have one other thing to say. Do you want her to be the one to tell you again, or do you want me to try this time?”
Her mom squeezed her again before answering, “If she would like to tell me herself, I promise not to react the way I did upstairs.”
Eda put a hand on Lilith’s shoulder as Lilith prepared for her second confession of the day. “I — as Belos’s right-hand, I was in charge of the people who created and abused the basilisks.”
Luz felt her mom start to gasp, felt her force herself to breathe.
“I would love to hide behind the excuse that I wasn’t personally involved,” Lilith continued, “but I read enough of my subordinates’ reports to know that the project existed, and even if I had gotten personally involved, I can’t imagine I would’ve made my subordinates do anything different. I’d never thought of basilisks as anything other than predators to be kept under control until Luz personally confronted me about this—telling me that she’d met an incredible new friend in the Human Realm and demanding to know my part in the hurt that her friend had suffered in our own Realm.”
Luz could feel the tension in her mother’s arms that meant she was clenching her fists. Her mom took another breath, and the tension in her arms relaxed. “Well,” she hissed, “even though I will try to forgive you for your part in that too, I hope you understand that you will need Vee’s forgiveness far more than you need mine?”
Lilith nodded.
“That said,” Luz’s mom added, “I want you to know that I like your chances, because Vee is the kindest, gentlest, most loving sweetheart you could ever meet in your life. When I had to save her from a human who’d kidnapped her and gave the man a beat-down, the first thing she asked me was whether her captor was going to be alright.” Her brow furrowed in thought. “Actually, wait. Luz? Have you and Vee already talked about this?”
“A little,” Luz admitted. “I told her basically what Lilith just told you, and I didn’t get much further before she said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, but she said that she was OK with me being friends with Lilith even if she didn’t think she’d want to be friends herself.”
Lilith looked back down at the floor. “Under the circumstances, I suppose that’s more than I could’ve asked for.”
Luz’s mom released her and walked over to Lilith. “Well, if this is good enough for Vee, then it’s good enough for me,” she said, embracing the much, much taller woman she’d been so set to murder just minutes ago. Lilith knelt down to hug her back, her face breaking down in tears against the much, much shorter woman’s shoulder.
As they finally separated, Luz’s mom asked Lilith and Eda “Would you two please go upstairs and tell everybody that everything’s OK while I ask Luz just one last thing, just the two of us.”
“Of course,” Lilith said, following after Eda who was already half-way up.
Luz let herself relax as her mami’s arms wrapped around her again.
“Mija,” her mom asked, “did you not think to tell me this over the summer, or did you think you couldn’t?”
Luz tried to look her mother in the eye. “I was terrified the whole time that she might be dead and that it was my fault if she was, and I — I couldn’t risk you thinking that that was a good thing.”
Her mami’s arms squeezed her tighter. “Then I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am for proving you right about me. Again. Can you forgive me?”
Luz forced herself to laugh, at least a little. “I mean, if you can forgive her for trying to murder me, then yes, I can absolutely forgive you for being mad at her about it.”
“Thank you so much. From now on, I will try so much harder to remember that this place had been your home for so long—that these people have been your family for so long— and not jump to the conclusion that you don’t know what you’re doing with them.” Her mom glanced wistfully at the stairs. “Would you like to go back up now?”
“In a second,” Luz found herself answering.
Her mom sat down on the floor next to her. “Take all the time you need.”
Luz sat down and rested her head on her mom’s shoulder.
Her mom was right—they finally had all the time in the world to catch up on everything properly.