Dash to Pieces – 11.5
Author: Wildbow

Dash to Pieces – 11.5 | Pale

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“No, no, no, no!” Verona shouted, running.

The kid ran out into the street, chasing a dancing light.  Car headlights flashed, bright, and brakes squeaked, car lurching in its effort to stop.

Verona didn’t chase the rest of the way.  She wasn’t a runner and she didn’t want to be seen.

“Little dick!” Verona swore, as the car’s bumper hit the kid and he went down.  He rolled, one arm twitching while the rest of him was still.

The car doors opened, headlights dimming briefly, and both driver and passenger scrambled out to check on the boy.  Thirty-something guy driving, girl in the passenger seat with hair that needed a brush really badly- and Verona was normally a fan of scruffy.  They rounded the front of the car, and the kid was gone.

“Did we roll over him!?” the driver asked the passenger.

“I don’t know, I barely saw-”

“Where is he?”

“Are you sure it was a kid?”

“I was, but now- where did he go?  We didn’t hit him hard enough to throw him…”

Verona hung back in the shadows, but they spotted her.  “You!”

“Heya,” she said, zipping up her sweatshirt and dipping her chin a bit so the marks painted on her skin wouldn’t be visible.

“Did a kid just run by?”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a plastic bag or something?” Verona asked, stuffing hands in her pockets and shrugging.

“Maybe?”

“Like interpreting a cloud?” she suggested.

“I guess.  Holy sh-weet mother of god, my heart is racing.”

“Mine too,” the passenger said.

“Drive safe!” Verona told them, willing them to, y’know, actually drive.

They looked around for a second longer, climbed back into the idling car, and then shifted gears and resumed driving.  They rounded the corner, and when they were out of sight, the kid was back.  He was somewhere between four and seven, but blurry enough at the edges that it was hard to say for sure.  He wore a t-shirt and shorts, with a stupid dinky baseball cap with such a short brim it couldn’t really shield much sun.  Everything about him looked like it had been in bright primary colors once, but the damage and echo-ness of him made him look like he’d been put in a rather rough load of washing with black jeans and other things that had left him tinted, worn, and stained.  Only his eyes were bright, reflecting lights and things that weren’t around as he turned his head this way and that, eyes roving.

Finding a glint of light.

“No!” Verona told him.  “Stay!”

His head snapped to one side, looking right.

She ran left.  She knew after a few rounds of this that he didn’t-

His head snapped left and he took off running, in that way kids did.  Running to his right, her left.  In his wake, like a cartoon, there was a puff, not of dust, but of an adult woman chasing after him, hand reaching.

Verona had to outrun him, clasping a thing of salt.  She didn’t want to salt him, but if she ran ahead-

She hated running so much.  Stupid little bastard with short legs was only a little bit slower than her.  The only saving grace was that he zig-zagged, chasing a dancing light.

She lunged, threw the salt, and cast it out in front of him.

He reached the salted ground, dissolved, and immediately reversed direction, dashing the opposite way without needing to take the time to get up to speed.

“Yeah, go and-!”

A car came across the intersection, tires squealing.  It steered hard to the right and the corner of the car scraped along a fence that ran close to the edge of the property, where there was no sidewalk.  There was a thud, and the kid sprawled, body still, except for a twitching arm.

“-get hit by a car!  And your hat looks stupid!”

She left him and the car, as the owner climbed out, shouting to ask if the kid was okay.  But he wasn’t there anymore.  Verona glanced back to see the gray-haired woman looking at the damage done.

She crossed the bridge, and there were two figures wading in the shallow waters, following the course of the stream.  There was a male, kind of, pale as milk, with a face that looked like a cross between a plastic bottle and a damaged gas mask, parts missing to the point it looked like it should show his face, but it showed raw, grey-black scar tissue instead.  He was naked and his genitals looked like someone had burned plastic into a lump.  A little off to his right and behind him was a female figure with a head as long as a horse’s, but less nuanced, with long hair hiding most features.

Sight on.  She could see the life of them, and the lack of veneer between them and reality.  They were meaty flesh things, roughly approximate to what she’d seen before.  Spirits manifest.  He was a disconnected mass of tumorous, poisoned flesh, she was a little sleeker, more animal, exposed muscle tissues moist.

“You two!” Verona called down from the bridge.

Only the woman-spirit looked up.

“Be good!”

The man turned, then reached for the woman with the long face.

“Why are none of you cooperating!?” Verona shouted down.  She glanced around, checking the coast was clear, then hurdled the railing.

On the far end of the railing, barely holding on, she reached into her pocket for a feather and glamour.

Going bird let her soar down the rest of the way.  She detonated into a cloud of lesser birds, caught her sleeves and then cast the outer layer of her top off again, making fluttering shapes with her hand to encourage it to become birds again.  It left her arms free.  She touched the partial diagrams on her arms together, and felt the cold rush of the various water spirits in the air drawing together to form a spray of water.

She sprayed down the two spirits as the gas-mask spirit grappled with the woman spirit.  He didn’t seem to love the water, while the female spirit managed it fine.

“Be good!  Don’t hurt each other!  Cooperate!” Verona raised her voice.  She had to break the diagram to scatter her top again, turning it into dark birds that circled around her, waiting for a chance to roost again.

As she stepped closer to the water, it picked up and joined the diagram, intensifying the spray of water.

She’d have to readjust if she ever did this sort of diagram again.  Touching elbow to elbow and wrist to wrist like Sol did was uncomfortable in a chest-squish way.

What she was doing was helping the female spirit win against the gross bottle-faced gas mask guy, but not enough.  When the female spirit fought back and pummeled him, it did nothing, but when he got a grip on her, it diseased her flesh and hurt her.

Verona stopped, backing up, and watched as the female spirit succumbed.  Flesh tore and sagged, poisoned, and she dropped into the water.  It was dark and hard to see, even with the scarce light from the bridge above, but Verona could see the water that touched both spirits running dark.

When the female spirit surfaced again, she was paler, her face like a plastic bottle, flesh burned and melted around it, where plastic sank in.  Water hissed and sizzled where it ran against the legs of the spirits, and it smelled bad.

Verona’s top swooped in low, and she canceled the spray.  She made another fluttering gesture, encouraging it to become birds again, but this time she followed after it, hopping up before the male spirit could turn her way.

Verona flew back to the bridge, past it, landing before she got in view of anyone.  She shrugged her way back into her top, then did up the front of the sweatshirt all the way.  She ran hands through hair that had gotten wet, then ran from the end of the bridge to the convenience store.

There was a display of eco-friendly refillable water bottles to the right of the door, with crummy sunglasses of the same material.  She grabbed some bottles, hooking the loops around fingers so she could carry five bottles on one hand, then hold a sixth in the other hand.  She took eleven of those bottles to the counter, buying a regular, less eco-friendly water bottle while she was at it.

“What’s all this?” the girl at the counter asked.

“Stuff.  Weird night.”

“I get weird.  There’s a guy who comes in every other night, smelling like really strong mustard.”

Verona left the counter and continued shopping.  She was the only person so it wasn’t a huge deal to leave stuff at the counter and grab more stuff.  She hoped.  “That’s Mr. Russell.  He lives close to one of my best friends.  His wife used to babysit her.”

“Used to?”

“She doesn’t need babysitting as much anymore and the wife died I think.”

“Oh well, now I feel like crap.”

“If you want weird, I just saw a kid get hit by two different cars.  I think he’s okay.  Nimble little asshole.”

“Huh.  He should go to the hospital.”

The convenience store had a bunch of stuff like ketchup, easy mac, bread, rice, and other staples.  She grabbed salt.  Lots of salt.  “Maybe.”

“I saw a little girl get turned into birds once.  You have no idea.”

“I think I saw some of that stuff too.  Was that that Daniel person?  Skinny, black hair?” Verona asked.

“Guess so.”

“Imagine if he was on Woobtube, with those kinds of tricks,” Verona said.  She carried the salt and stuff to the counter.

“I guess.  He had a creepy vibe.”

“He wouldn’t be the only one.”

“True.  That’s… depressing.  What is all this?”

“Salt and bottles.”

“I don’t normally ask and people still get weirdly bashful about really normal things, but is this for a science experiment?”

“Kind of the opposite.”  Verona sorted the mess on the counter out so it was manageable, then pulled a reusable cloth bag from her backpack.

She looked around and saw some really cheap looking toys.  There was a sparkly, light-up pinwheel.  She grabbed that and put it on top of the salt.

“Well, that’s going to bother me for the next long while, wondering what this is.”

“Sorry.”

Verona watched, impatient, while the cashier scanned everything.

She glanced at the total above the cash register.  Crap.

“That’ll be… Two hundred and thirty-nine, seventy three.”

She pulled out her wallet from her backpack, then fished out the card her mom had given her.

Wincing, she swiped it, then punched in the number.

Come on, come on…

Authorized.

She huffed out a breath of relief, then moved the salt to the canvas bag, putting as many of the plastic bottles as she could into her bag, which was like, three, along with the little plastic pinwheel.  Not all of the bottles fit into the canvas bag with the salt, either.  She ended up slinging her bag around to her back, shouldering the strap of the canvas bag –way too heavy to be comfortable- and then held one bottle in one hand and clamped the tab of another one that stuck out between her teeth.

She ran outside, rounded the corner, and at the end of the bridge, partially hidden by the railing, she did a little work to sort things out.  Diamond shape to impart quality, air rune, purple painter’s tape to bind all the salt together and keep stuff contained…

The bag was lighter.

Then she got trash, picking up plastic bags and napkins from the vegetation behind the convenience store, twisted them together, and used tape to help form a kind of helix shape on the non-eco-friendly bottle.  She grabbed some cigarettes, and stuffed them inside, along with broken bits of plastic and tabs torn off from disposable coffee cups.  With some tape, she filled in a diamond shape around the helix with tape, then drew a rune.

Without even standing up, she reached into her back pocket, found a feather, and then took off, bringing everything with her.

From high above, she could see glimpses of what was happening.  Lights where there shouldn’t be lights, figures in the gloom, moving between shadows.  Fog was hanging close to the ground in places, even though it was too hot for that.

Kennet was still more dark than it normally was for this hour and time.  She wondered if people would excuse it as a blackout, too many air conditioners running, the summer heat oppressive but not as bad as it sometimes was.

Wind rushed through feathers.  She was a crow, not unfamiliar with the night, and her eyes focused on the ground below, sharpening the picture, tracking movements.  Not a lot of cars out.

It looked like Others were mobilizing from Matthew and Edith’s house.  Meeting done?  That was fast.

She found the spirit she’d seen in the river.

She swooped, crash-landed, and became human in the crash, crouching.

The male spirit and the spirit he’d tainted were there on the shore, moving closer to a smaller male spirit that looked like a little boy with a very vague head, with eyes and mouth like they’d been gouged out of clay, then filled in with dark ink.

She spat out the bottle she held in her teeth, pulled her sweatshirt off so she wouldn’t be fighting it while trying to work, and let the bags and things fall to the ground.

Spirit binding and containment was supposedly really easy, to the point that it was one of the first things the majority of practitioners knew.  Spirits came in scales ranging from what the Carmine Beast or Sable had been alleged to be to this to the ambient, invisible spirits everywhere, like the spirit of wet in a droplet of water.

That was the system.  That was what she had to decipher.  She could break down this spirit by hurting it, even subdividing it, then she could capture individual pieces, but that took time and she didn’t have great tools for it.

Water.  Elbow to elbow, wrist to wrist, chest awkwardly squished, the half-drawn runes on her right and left arms touching to form one complete image.  She dropped the bottle she’d trashed up, then sprayed the guy with the plastic bottle gas mask face down.

“I bind you, stand down, spirit!” she raised her voice.

That got his attention more than the water did.

“I bind you-!”

He ran at her, limbs flailing, detritus peeling off of him to hang in the air.  She could see the spirit world through the gaps in him.

She kicked the water bottle his way.  It tumbled, skittering and bouncing over uneven rocks, until it touched the water that was running off of the spirit.  It stopped there, like someone or something had caught it.  He slowed, stumbling.

The woman behind him stepped closer.  Not as aggressive, but thinking about it.

The bottle behind him reoriented, nozzle facing him, and the spray of water seemed to hold him back more than it had.

“I bind you, thrice I’ve said it, let it be done,” she told him.

He hesitated.

“I’ll make you a shrine, guy.  But I don’t want you mucking things up like this.”

He went.  Stepping back, crashing onto rocks, and breaking down into constituent, wriggling forms.  Plastic bags and jugs, chemical smells that stung her nose and writhing forms like malformed babies, shrinking as they washed back and into the bottle.

She ran forward and capped it.

There were still two spirits.

“Go, get out of here, carry on that way, there’s a nice big body of water,” Verona told the spirit he’d tainted.

The female spirit turned, then carried on toward the water.

Over time, in small ways, the corruption seemed to fall away.  Maybe she’d never go all the way back to what she was before, but it looked like she could dilute it out or mend over time.  Maybe.

“You good?” Verona asked the child spirit.

He stared at her, the gouge-holes of his eyes and mouth widening and expanding until they took up more head real estate than the non-gouged spots did.  Blots appeared, dark, where new gouge-holes were forming.  In a bit, they’d be fresh eyes.

“I bid you, as practitioner of Kennet, stay out of trouble, keep the peace.”

A bubble formed and popped at the corner of the new mouth, widening it.

She nodded once, authoritative, stuffed the gross, spirit-filled bottle into the canvas bag, pulled out another bottle to carry, and stuffed her sweatshirt into the bag so it would help keep the bottles from spilling out the top.

One bottle in hand, one in teeth, bags carried… she became a bird again.  Third time in maybe five minutes.  Maybe a bit over five.

Wings flapped.  There was awkwardness as she wrestled with the weight mismatch to the shape she had wrapped herself in, and for a brief moment she worried she’d lose the glamour while high in the air.

She let the weight carry her down, made the transition into thinking of it as velocity and the natural ‘drop’ of the dive, and then swooped up, the thought of the bag’s weight at the back of her mind, well behind her, and out of the glamour’s reach.

Easier now.

She was burning through her collection of feathers and the stored glamour pretty fast, but she really didn’t want to lose track of what she needed to keep track of, and she really didn’t want to have to carry all this crap if she could be a bird and fly it to where she needed to be.

She had the glamour, and that was working well enough.

A car horn honked, and she veered that way.

Two cars had nearly gotten in an accident.  A short distance away was the echo of the kid with the stupid hat, chasing glittering lights.

Verona landed, crashed into human form, feathers scattering around her-

Crap.  She hadn’t meant to use that packet.  The feathers around her were rigged to darkness runes and efforts at blinding peering eyes.  Something for dive-bombing into the middle of a fight.

She crouched, reached into the bag to get the glittering toy, got salt, and got a packet from her back pocket.

She only had two left, and the night had barely begun.

She crouched there, watching the kid run off, while her hands worked.  Bottle, sticker pried off the side of the box of salt, tab opened, toy flipped on… glamour.

He’d disappeared from sight.  She kept working, sorting out everything she could.  Hopefully he wouldn’t go far.  Hopefully, he wouldn’t cause an accident that resulted in more than a scraped bumper or honked horn at night.

She did what she could, moved her stuff to a good spot, and then went looking for him.

Car headlights.  That was a good sign.  She paused, waiting by the side of the road, looking down the road to see if he was up there, ready to dart out into the way of incoming traffic.

Little bastard.

As the car swept past, something seized her from behind.  Motive force- reaching out to her arms and legs.

Lights from the incoming car headlight reflected off of parked cars and nearby windows and turned the world into a kaleidoscope, a tunnel of light, enchanting.

She took a step forward, ready to break into run.

She stopped.  She wasn’t a runner and-

The effect pulled away, from head and neck before arms and legs.  She twisted her head to the side with enough force that her body followed, and she collapsed onto the hood of a parked car, metal hot against bare stomach and arms.

The car swept past her, too fast, her hair blowing across her face with its passage, side view mirror clipping her backpack.  Clothes fluttered against skin, and she huffed out a breath.

The kid fell and tumbled onto the lawn behind her, body still, arm twitching.  The runes at her back were sharp in how cold they felt on her skin, to the point she could feel the lines traced on skin as if icicles were tracing their way along her shoulders and arms.

“Nice try,” she exhaled the words.

He was on his feet a moment later, dashing away at full speed.

“You dirt-gargling butthuffer!” she swore.  “With a stupid hat!”

She turned on the toy, shoved it into her mouth, and then became a cat, darting after him, the toy held in her mouth.

He paused at the next intersection, looking left and right, and in his glance right, he saw her.

He’d chased some lights on the ground into traffic.  Now she had her own.  A toy, tantalizing for a kid.  And she was a cat and who didn’t like cats?

He came after her, or after the lights.  She led him off to the side, to the driveway of a house, then ran in a circle around him.

The kid with the stupid hat and glittering eyes didn’t turn on the spot to follow her, but instead distorted, changing his facing, so he could stand facing another direction, head snapping left, then to track her, he’d almost flip around to face the other way, head snapping right.  Alternating, so every time his head snapped to one side, his body would be oriented right.

She became human mid-run, carrying on, holding the glittering pinwheel in one hand, box of salt in the other.  The box was already open, the salt pouring out in a line.  She did a second circuit to make sure it was solid enough, then stopped.

He remained in the circle, eyes glittering the wrong colors as opposed to the red LEDs of the pinwheel.

She planted the pinwheel in the lawn so he had something to stare at, aware that he was starting to blur more by the second, cut off from other things that had stabilized him, or because he was an echo who moved and she was making him stand still.  If she’d crafted this with more thought and care, she’d have made it a circuit where he could run laps in a tight circle.

She pulled out the purple painter’s tape, touched one side of the length of tape to the salt, so that half the strip was salted, and then wrapped it around a bottle.  She taped the salty end down secure, then repeated the process around the cap.

This was rude, crude, and ad-hoc, but… to get it to fit, she broke the toy, crumpling it, then dropped it, still glittering but no longer spinning, into the bottle, before holding the bottle across the threshold of the circle.

He went inside, and she capped it, the cap and bottom of the container lined with salt, held in place by tape.

“Two down,” she whispered.

Ninety-eight to go?  Maybe?

Back to her stockpile of stuff and the bag of salt and bottles she’d left behind, with her sweatshirt.  She pulled the sweatshirt back on, and the rune at the back circulated cool air along her skin, making her aware of how sweaty she was.

She kept running.  On a level, it wasn’t as bad as it had been in spring.  Yes, she’d taken gym class in the second semester, but she’d ended up running more and going on more walks and hikes and swims with Tashlit at the beach, and around the Blue Heron.  She was out running around at night, surveilling, wandering around parties.

So there was that.  She was getting strong legs.

But the bag was heavy, even with the air rune, and she was loaded down.  Straps pulled down and pressed clothing close to skin, hurting the air circulation, which made the heat oppressive again.

She told herself she wanted to get where she was going so she could be free of all of the downsides here, and used that to motivate herself.

She crossed the eastern half of Kennet, heading for the valley where the cabin had been.

A dog barking scared the daylights out of her.  She turned, looking for it, and saw Doglick.

“Here boy!” she called out, digging into the bag for a box of salt.  She threw it with two hands.

He caught the hurled, three-pound box of salt in his teeth, and landed hard, in a way that might’ve dislocated the jaw or brained something that wasn’t goblin.

“Share it, use it!  Be kind to good spirits, just go after the mean ones!”

The other goblins were following.  She threw Bluntmunch another box.  He caught it in one meaty hand with claw-tipped fingers.

“Did you finish voting?” Verona asked.

“Toadswallow won.”

“Ah, okay.  That’s going to be interesting.”

“Mmm,” Bluntmunch said.  “He said to ask you three, get your rumps downtown.  We don’t have many that can handle things there.”

“Okay.  I think we’re rendezvousing out here in the valley and then we’ll fall back.  They’re funneling in this way.”

“Uh huh,” Bluntmunch said, like he didn’t care much.  He scowled, making an ugly, lopsided, and rather hairy mug look even uglier for a moment.  “I hate fighting ghosts and crap.”

“Little bastard in this bottle here nearly ran me into traffic,” Verona said, holding up a bottle.  “And I told this pollution spirit I’d set up a shrine.  Can we check with Toad and others if that’s a doable thing?  Like… I’m picturing us doing shrines all around the perimeter, funnel some spiritual power in.”

“No idea,” Bluntmunch said.  “For right now let’s kick translucent butt and make sure we’re not overrun, yeah?  Gotta buy time.  Handle the rest of that later.”

“Buying time for what?”

“Montague.  Your eyeball godsbaby is hauling him out to the perimeter.”

“At this hour?” Verona asked.

“Might be a twice a night thing, now.  Until the end of summer.”

Her eyes widened, and she nodded.

“Yeh,” Bluntmunch grunted out the word.  As a car came down the road, headlights swept over them, and the bottle Verona was holding jerked, excited, and Bluntmunch ducked down into the ditch.  “I’m goin’.”

“Laters.”

She leaped the ditch, bag bouncing at her side, and he ran along the base of it, passing beneath her.

She saw Avery and Lucy, and Lucy had her arms exposed, marks showing, while Avery was holding the Dropped Knife, taken from the transient raiders.

Verona reached for her arms, dragged fingers down upper arm, elbow, and forearm, and then painted wings with the residual glamour, knowing birds were fresh in its memory.  She leaped, going about ten feet up and twenty feet out, and then landed.

Lucy turned and sprayed her with water, interrupting the spray nearly as fast as she made it.

Snowdrop laughed, while Verona pushed wet hair away from her face and dropped her bags.

“Scared me!” Lucy admonished her.

“I was going for a movie trailer style arrival, all of us in formation-”

“Did you get the stuff?”

“Got it.”

“Avery did her shopping trip.  We can push them back okay, and even bribe them, but when they group up in twos, threes, fives-”

“Tens,” Avery added.

“They get snarly.  Harder to resist and stuff.”

“Yeah,” Verona said, shucking off her top.  Lucy pressed arms together.  “Hey, turns out, that’s pretty uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

“A bit, but is that really our concern right now?”

“I think if we paint ourselves up with diagrams again we gotta do it like Sol’s mom did it, turn the ones on the right arm ninety degrees, and that way there’s more flex.  Don’t have to touch your elbows together.”

“Is that really our concern, Ronnie?  Heads-”

Verona scrambled back.

“-Up!”

The echo came from high above, if it was an echo.  A tattered humanoid figure was spread-eagled across the head of something more spirit-like and snake-like, winding its way through the sky.  It rushed in close, shrieking.

Back wasn’t the direction that was important, as much as down was.  Verona let herself fall backward onto the grass as the thing’s belly drooped in close, moving fast enough that if it had scraped against her head it might have scalped her.

There were goblins on the street.  Kittycough was with Nat.  They carried a trash bag with something hairy and ragged sticking out the end.  They dropped the bag and Kittycough aimed it while Nat ran back, and as the creature dove toward them, Nat ran forward and threw herself on the bag.

A dark cloud of something fetid plumed up into the Other’s face, the cloud swirling with flies and flecks of something that stirred in the air.  The echo that was attached to its head and worn like a mask peeled away, dissolving, and the spirit reared back, folding in on itself.  It was Lucy and Avery who had to get out of the way as it beat a retreat, the smoke rolling off of it.  As it scraped along the ground here and there, it scattered some spirits and echoes, and stirred others into the air.  Breaking their momentum.

The rune at Verona’s collarbone went cold, and the thick green-yellow tinged cloud lost its momentum about a foot from her face.  Some of it reached her legs, and her skin prickled.  The cloud diffused out, the rune still pressing it back, and the rune around her neck activated, clearing the air and making it flow, cold and crisp and clean, down her throat.

“Oh yeah, Blunt says Tash is taking Monty to the perimeter.  They’re going to supercharge the perimeter,” Verona reported.

“Let’s hope that works,” Lucy said.

“I made it to the grocery store and back in the time it took you to get back,” Avery said.  “And it’s further.”

“That’s your whole jam, Ave.  And I got delayed.  I caught a spirit and a ghost while I was out.  Ones that slipped past.”

“I banished two ghosts.  Feels crappy but one was a child abuser and the other was something gnarly stuck to a ghost that was barely there.  Salted ’em.”

“This isn’t a contest,” Lucy said.

“If it was I’d be winning,” Verona pointed out.  “Capture’s worth more than a kill.”

“I also bribed a nature spirit thing to help keep spirits out of the woods,” Avery said.  “Gave her crackers.  Friendship’s better than a capture.”

“Yeah?” Verona asked.  “Badass.  Not going to argue.”

“Shelter spirit,” Lucy said.  “I think.”

“I like her,” Avery said.

“She’s huggable?” Verona asked.

“That has nothing to do with it.  It’s a cool aesthetic, part tree, part building, plus she’s nice, we could do worse for minor allies and stuff.”

“And huggable?” Verona asked.

Avery shot her a look.

There were spirits gathering, and with them, it sure looked like the spirit world was leaking in, in the form of low, rolling clouds or mist.  The ground had a different texture when viewed through the mist.

They saw the three of them and paused, waiting for slower entities to catch up.  Spirits were pretty cool, really, with a lot of aesthetic.  They looked like pictures taken out of a sketchbook, colorful, mismatched to the environment, humanoid figures with decorative elements, often naked.  Woman with skin like wallpaper ragged at the edges, man with a machine in place of a head and hands, androgynous figure with near-featureless head bowed, arms wrapped around his upper body, where thorny bars caged what looked like a fading sun.

Even when they paused, it wasn’t really a stop.  They just slowed, pacing forward here and there, swaying, finding footing.

Like they were being drawn into Kennet.

“She was more motherly,” Lucy said, then for clarification, “the Shelter spirit.”

“That turns some people’s cranks, I bet.  Maybe like Paul’s?”

Lucy made a face.

“I really wasn’t thinking about the spirit that way,” Avery said.  “I was thinking oh god, I’m so glad I don’t have to fight her, there’s a ghost over there who looks like he wants to tear my face off…”

“Which I dealt with,” Lucy said.  “Me, here, trying to hold the line while you guys run your errands.”

“You could’ve gone!” Verona protested.

“I could’ve but you’re better at transforming.  Three echoes tried to get me.  Runes aren’t working that well, I think we did something wrong.”

“Let me see,” Verona said, jogging over, holding two empty bottles.  She tugged down on the back of Lucy’s top where it crossed her shoulders.  The silver ink ran and mixed with the fine whorl of hair between Lucy’s shoulder blades.  “You’re melting.”

“What?”

“I think the silver marker runs more than the black marker does,” Verona said.

Avery moved over a few feet and held out an arm, comparing the black marker on freckled skin to the silver marker on brown skin.  “Yeah.”

“Pain in the ass,” Lucy said.  “I liked the look of the silver.”

“It’s great,” Verona said.  “I wish we’d got a photo.  I wonder if using the gold-”

“Next group incoming,” Lucy said.

“Yeah.  Would using gold or copper tinted marker stick better, with your implement?”

“Well now you come up with that.”

Verona used water, blasting at a spirit with skin that looked like it was all cracked porcelain, with a very realistic, very clear eye peering through face cracks, that stood out in the gloom.  “Go away!  Not here!”

“They don’t really listen.”

“They’re supposed to.”

“It’s like they’re pushed by the ones behind them.”

Verona looked, using the Sight.

Sure enough, yeah, the spirits had very little wrapping to them, and a whole lot of meaty flesh things, to the point that the silhouettes were pretty much the same whether she looked with Sight or regular eyes.

But her Sight painted things out with more wrapping than just what was necessary to keep the meat in bounds.  Ropes and rags extended out, tying them to things, and got caught up in the mist, stirring, to the point where it was hard to see where one spirit started and the other ended.

Echoes, almost the opposite, were wrappings with blood and fluids staining them, holding shapes from being stuck to something for long enough or with enough force.  A bandage peeled away from the face, holding a face shape, even though that face wasn’t there.  Or plastic wrap, or matted spiderweb, or cheesecloth. They found and filled the voids, disconnected and being blown around by the weird weather that seemed to surround the gathered spirits.

The cracked porcelain spirit advanced, and as Verona moved to the side, he fixated on her, following, picking up speed.  Corners and points of the hard, cracked edges bristled, shivering with more intensity as he got closer.

“Nah, buddy,” Verona told him.  “We’ll both be happier if you don’t-”

He came at her, picking up speed, pulling on mist and things to puff himself up, individual pieces moving away from skin.  She took two quick steps to get onto a dirt path, then swiped out a pouring of salt, straight across ground.

He hit the line and shattered.

One shattered half of him flowed or spun off to the side, regrouped, and came at her, smaller, half of him turning into two-thirds of a person.

She met hard with hard, using the ‘quality of earth’ diamond shaped rune she’d put on her elbow as a quick emergency smackage tool.

He broke apart.  The rest of his subdivided self was reforming into a smaller figure, wandering off toward the side of the mountain, where it looked like he’d be diverted off toward the east again.  There wasn’t a good road to go up the mountain and west.

Snowdrop was swinging the ugly stick around, and Avery backed her up.  Driving back two lesser, dog-shaped spirits.

“It’s all a thing we’re figuring out as we go,” Verona finished her thought.  “We’ll use copper or something for your body paint next time, how’s that?”

“Figuring things out as we go is fine, but you gotta remember that if we really screw up we might get eaten by a ghost,” Lucy said.  “Or something.”

“Can you get eaten by a ghost?” Avery asked.  “Eaten-eaten?”

“No,” Snowdrop said.

“If it gets in you and devours your Self, takes up residence, yeah,” Verona said.

Snowdrop pointed at her.  “Wrongo.”

“We’re supposed to head downtown, since there aren’t many combat-ready Others.”

Lucy shook her head.  “If we screw up here then the echoes and spirits funneled this way by the mountains and trees are going to sweep right into the neighborhood where we’ve got Edith imprisoned.”

“And my house,” Avery said.

“I told Munch no and he didn’t seem to care much, but Toad might get frustrated.”

“I’m frustrated,” Lucy said.  “What the hell?  I thought we had a victory but…”

She dropped her hands to her side, shaking her head.

There were twenty or thirty Others between them and the horizon.  Six spirits were gathering together for another push, led by the one with the machine head.

“It’s a victory,” Avery said.  “It’s just that Edith was important to Matthew and to Kennet and she’s been around for a while and just ripping her out of the fabric of things is awfully messy.”

“Like when I pulled a fat pickle out of Cherrypop’s throat.  Pluck!” Snowdrop said.

“What?” Verona asked.

“Heads up!” Avery shouted.

The machine-headed spirit charged in, and he moved with enough force that he dragged others in.

“We’d like to make an offering!” Avery shouted.

He swung a hand that was like a car engine block.  There were sounds of chainsaws buzzing in the trees now.

The dirt road Verona was on cracked, and the blades of a plow or something crested from the ground.  She backed away from it, itching to go animal, but she only had two easy transformations left.

“Rust!” Lucy shouted, spraying him down.  The markings on her arm weren’t as screwed up as the ones on her back and collarbone, so she was able to at least put that together.  Verona joined in, ducking around to the side, spraying him down.

“Or deal with us fairly!” Avery shouted.  The sound of chainsaws was louder.  A chainsaw chain that had torn free of the actual chainsaw whipped at a branch and struck it clean off the tree, ten feet from Snowdrop.

“Deal?” Verona asked, pointing at one of the spirits that trailed behind, something feline-ish with a very fluid body.  “We’ve got snacks, and we could set you up a shrine.”

The spirit looked at her, and seemed almost like it would oblige, but then the machine spirit charged at Lucy, hands grinding.  Verona was reminded heavily of the sort of machinery that killed workers in those industrial workplace safety recap videos she and Lucy had watched out of morbid curiosity, a year or two back.

“Batter up!”

Something slammed into his head, and all of the machinery stopped.  Dirt crumbled, filling in the void where the plow blades had been, and no chainsaws whirred in the recesses of the woods to their right.  His hands were silent, just hunks of metal.

The twine-wrapped ball hit ground, twine unraveling.

“Stop,” Avery said, stern.  “Now, do you want a snack?  Spirits like snacks.  We could cooperate.”

“You just want to befriend the others for the points, don’t you?” Verona accused.

“I want to befriend the others, period,” Avery said, looking at Verona.  “And I want the extra points, yeah.”

“You got her all competitive,” Lucy told Verona.

A spirit of wind-swept papers stabbed right at Avery.  She hopped back out of the way.  Lucy threw some salt at it, and it turned sharply away, twisting.

The metal was chugging and sputtering its way back to life.  More ground shifted in the part of dirt path that had collapsed, as metal moved beneath, ready to push up and forward.

“Aren’t spirits meant to listen to practitioners?” Avery asked, touching arms together and connecting the water symbol, producing a spray to wet him down.

“Kinda,” Verona said.  “These are like, partway to Edith’s level.”

She glanced around.  Water wasn’t working.  Smaller rocks in the machinery, maybe?  It wasn’t stopping the plow.  Hmmm-

An echo landed.  Small, compact, but intense.  Verona stumbled back as it washed over her.  Feelings of frustration, deep sadness, coming from a place without reservation-

She was a girl, young, wearing a leotard, in a dance or gymnastics studio way too big to belong to Kennet.  There were crowds, and there was a group of girls all together, all belonging to the same group, wearing matching outfits.  All belonged to the Wavy Tree studio.

A girl said something, like she was wishing luck or reassuring her.  She was ten or so, hair in a bun, makeup on, like a clear effort had been made.  And Verona -or whoever Verona was meant to be- was the same age and height.  There was a quick, tight, perfunctory hug.

Then the teacher ushered her on.  And because she wasn’t in control of the scene, that ushering really felt like it had pull, drawing her in.

She went, hurrying along, past strange, muscular men, who stood on standby as she climbed up onto the balance beam.

She crouched, then posed.  First a frontflip, toes pointed.  A split-leap, feet touching back on the bar.  One of the toughest jumps she’d do at this level.  Front-flip.  Dizzying, so many eyes watching her.

It was all muted, all faded, all blurry.  Handstand, twist, roll, and back to her feet.  There was light applause, even though there was supposed to be silence from the gallery.  Her mom was out there, hands clasped.  Not-Verona flushed, happy.

This wasn’t the root of the echo, it was context, it was-

She was so fixated on the next move that she screwed up the steps that took her down to the end of the beam.  Walking.  She slipped, ribs hit beam, and she bounced off.

“Get back on,” the coach said.  “Theresa!”

The emotions all hit.  Fury, disappointment, frustration-

“Finish the routine.”

Tears welled up, until she couldn’t even see the beam clearly.  She touched it, then pushed herself away from it, running from the floor to her mom’s waiting arms.

And this was the echo, her mom, and being home and the event repeating in her head, the stupid mistake that ruined months of work and build-up, an event that she’d traveled to.  Weeks or months of hating herself for getting ahead of herself, for making mistakes, for not getting back on the beam and finishing.

Weeks and months of sulking, of experiencing the memory more vividly than she experienced reality.  Of frustration with her parents and school and everything, because what was the point if it could all fall to pieces that easily?  That was the echo’s root.

She felt the well of depression, unfiltered because she was just young enough to not even have much to weigh it against, as far as crushing, year-defining disappointments went.

She was wearing the leotard, her hair in a bun so tight it pulled at her scalp, and her lips felt like plastic with the thick show lipstick she wore.  The crowds were around her.  Her friend said something, but the words didn’t make it through the blur of a memory inside of an Echo.

The coach motioned for her.  It was her turn.  She ran out, toward the beam-

Snowdrop tackled her.  Even that wasn’t enough to stir her out of the echo’s mirage.

She wrapped arms around herself, feeling for where Snowdrop’s arms were, and then felt the runes kick to life.  She grabbed at the mirage as best as she could, then flung arms away from her body, tearing it away and shaking it off.

“Oh no,” Snowdrop said, releasing the hug.

“Thanks, ‘poss,” Verona whispered.

Lucy held out a staff or stick of some sort, her entire body braced against the weight of a machine-hand that was pressing down her way, backed by a spirit’s muscular arm.  Avery was atop the machine spirit’s shoulders, smacking him across the head with the ugly stick.

They were okay.

“Frig, did my diagrams get too sweaty?” Verona asked.

Snowdrop shrugged.

“It landed right on top of you!  I think she liked you!” Avery shouted.  To avoid the fluttering paper spirit and twining-feline thing.  She leaped away from the machine spirit, runes on her spare shoes glowing as she got the extra air and then cushioned her landing.  “Clipped Lucy good too!”

“Lucy’s diagrams aren’t-”

The machine-headed spirit pulled back, swinging for Avery.  She ran back.

And Lucy backed off.  Her eyes were unfocused.

Her movements dejected, slow.

Very much in the echo’s sway.

Verona drew in a deep breath, then barked out, “Lucy!  Wake up!”

“Lucy!” Avery followed.

“Go deeper!” Snowdrop shouted.

Lucy shook her head, then shook it again.  The echo wrapped around her, pressuring her, making her shrink down.

The machine spirit came after her.  Verona pulled a spell card from her pocket, throwing it, and it glowed, bright, but the machine spirit didn’t even have eyes.

Lucy, movements lax and uncertain, managed to shake herself to reality enough to bring her stick up and swat at the machine spirit’s incoming hand, trying to parry it.  When she couldn’t, she let the swinging hand knock her weapon back and stumbled a bit out of the way.

She shook her head, then shook it harder.  “Frig!”

“You’re back?” Verona asked.

“Frig fricking frick frack, I hate echoes!  Hate this!”

“I get you, bestie,” Verona said.  “Kinda not a fan of a lot of the ones I’ve run into tonight.  And I wasn’t a huge fan of the child-beating, animal-killing abuser I dealt with the night Clem came to town.”

“I saw that one earlier!” Avery exclaimed.  “Same one, or another echo from the same person maybe?”

“Dunno,” Verona said.  “Dude, Lucy, how the heck are you able to fight while you’re in the echo dream?”

“Guilherme’s training?” Lucy asked.

“That’s awesome!”

“It’s not awesome that echoes keep getting their hooks in me!”

The three of them were backing up away from the spirit and the others in its orbit.  Nat was dealing with an echo somewhere behind them, throwing salt at it, and Kittycough was prowling closer, too scared to really engage the big spirit, but maybe looking for opportunity.  Or something.

Not every Other in Kennet was a friend.  Goblins had helped Edith with traps, or she’d got the traps from somewhere.

“Done with this,” Lucy said.  She shook her weapon, turning stick into marker.  She drew on her hand, then clenched it.

The arena unfolded around her, a circle expanding out.  Lucy’s hair went pink, ponytail extending and billowing out.  The ground turned bright, foliage milk white and luminescent, ground red tinted, swords with ribbons tied to them stuck everywhere.

“Whoooooo!” Verona cheered.

Her thoughts jumped from applause to anxiety and then touched on that deep depression that had followed the screwed up routine.  It was hard to shake the residual effects of the echo.  She could sense it was still out there, out of a kind of… empathy, but directional, like hearing could let her locate the source of a sound.

Lucy put on her fox mask, and in this altered colorset, it was black, eyes burning pink.  No sooner than it was on, she leaped forward, going after the machine-head spirit.

He was more free to act in this space, with more plow-blades and things erupting from the ground, the forest dissolving into chainsaw blades, but Lucy was free to act as well, and she was able to grab blades from the ground and use them.  When she bowled him over, he fell on some.

Spirits from his orbit pulled away as he collapsed, writhing, fighting to get to his feet.  Lucy leaped and landed on his chest.

Snowdrop, hair silver-white, ears black-tipped, was more nimble and able too, snatching a lesser spirit out of the air.

Those other spirits-

“Guy!” Verona called out, to the writhing, fluid feline one, with a face like something carved.  At the same time, Avery shouted out to the paper spirit.  Verona and Avery exchanged looks.  Verona spoke very fast, “Guy, cat thing, I love your look.  You can go help your boss, who seems to be dragging you around, or you can have snacks!  And if you’re really good and you go in the bottle, I’ll-”

The spirit flowed to her, touching ground, body twisted three times between front legs and the back legs that were about fifteen feet behind it.

“Yeahhhh, good for you.  Love it.  Want snacks?” Verona asked, leading him back.  Another, smaller spirit followed after.  Verona didn’t turn her back to him as she walked back to Avery’s shopping bag and dug in it.  She found a pop-tab thing of tuna, pulled it open, and held out a morsel.  The spirit ate out of her hand.

“I think Lucy’s arena is helping to separate spirits from each other,” Avery said.

“It’s for one-on-one duels mostly so that makes sense.  You bought meat?”

“I’m vegetarian, but if I have a kid I’m not going to ruin her ritual by putting in a meat substitute or something.  And you don’t feed a carnivore pet non-meat, you know?  It’s kinda gross but whatever.”

“I can feed the meat-eaters if that makes it easier,” Verona said.  She grabbed a bottle, then held it out.  “Get in, be bound for now, and I’ll see about your shrine, how’s that?  Little thing.  I got taught about that stuff while I was on vacation.”

The cat spirit flowed into the screw-top bottle.

“Yeahhh, good stuff,” Veorna said, capping it.  She used a marker to draw on the bottle, matching the spirit’s face, and the spirit within briefly pressed its face against the surface on the far side of the image, lining up to it.

The echo was up there or out there.  Verona felt it approach, then back off, not wanting to intrude on Lucy’s arena.

Lucy was pounding on the machine-headed spirit, venting frustration.  Snowdrop leaped onto Lucy’s back, momentarily, and she seemed lighter than air, or Lucy was strong, because Lucy barely seemed to care.  Snowdrop hissed at the various orbiting spirits.

“Snacks!  Anyone want snacks!?” Verona called out.  “Tribute for spirits, in exchange for cooperation!”

“You might get salt and ass-kicking or kicking of whatever you have that’s ass-like if you don’t cooperate!  Not a hard decision!” Avery called out.

Lucy hopped down off the machine-headed spirit and grabbed the grille at the front of his face.  She dragged him after her, back toward them.  He was triple her size, though it fluctuated, and she barely seemed to care.  “Glad you’re having fun.”

“Aren’t you?  I love Spirit Lucy, this is great!”

“I bet you’re pleased at racking up the points while I’m doing the hard work, huh?”

“Huh?” Verona asked, matching Lucy’s attitude in the moment, putting her face close to the fox mask.  “Nah, you get big points for taking down the big guy, and for being cool.”

“Totally,” Avery said.

Lucy huffed, looking like she wanted to be mad but was pleased, and didn’t know how to handle it.  Verona reached out, giving her arm a light push.

“In the bottle, spirit,” Lucy said.  “Unless you want to duke it out some more.”

The big guy flowed into a bottle.  Lucy grabbed a ribbon off of a sword and wrapped the bottle tight.  She took an offered marker from Verona, and wrote down ‘tech head’ on the top.

The arena shattered a moment later.  Lucy’s pink hair disintegrated, leaving it normal, the colors flaking away, the world painted back as normal.  Lucy looked at Avery.

“What?  Why me?”

“You screwed up my arena against the Bathos with one of those ‘down to earth’ balls.”

“I didn’t touch or do anything.”

“It’s all of your faults,” Snowdrop said.  Then she pointed.

The sky was turning red, and the perimeter was appearing in reality.  The sky and the very edges of Kennet shuddered, and clouds formed, boiling into existence, before starting to rain, droplets as heavy as punches.

It ramped up from there.  The flickering effect they’d seen in the dream tea party with Montague reached across the sky and perimeter.  Thunder rumbled and then didn’t stop rumbling, like a great machine was churning, and parts of that machine squealed when they ran up against one another.

Echoes, spirits, and other things crumpled, reacting to sound and rain and everything else.  Legs buckled, flying things touched ground, and echoes frayed.

“There we go,” Avery said.

There was a frayed figure in the background, and he moved quickly, pulling in the fraying, weakened echoes, drawing them into himself.  A wraith or something, but bound together, or trying to make himself into a composite like Edith was.

The ones that weren’t being extinguished or driven away were getting more aggressive, desperate, and greedier.  One dark looking spirit that looked like a humanoid tangle of bent, bloody nails wasn’t suffering as much as the others, and it bent down to grab a lesser spirit and ground that spirit into bloody mush against the nails of his chest.

“Spirit eating titty rub,” Verona observed.

“Spirits!” Avery called out.  “Echoes!  If you want shelter, we have vessels!  They’re not very good but if you’re willing to cooperate-!”

Spirits flowed in.  Verona rushed to pull bottles she’d bought out of the bag, setting aside the ones she’d already filled.

She glanced back and saw Matthew, standing in the intensifying rain.

“Matthew’s here.  He might be able to cover this area,” Verona observed.

“What happens with the Doom, do you know?” Avery asked.

“No idea,” Lucy said.  “I’m not sure I get the full story.  But if he gets stronger he can grind it into nonexistence within himself, I guess?  And that’s what Edith was trying to balance out, when she was injecting him with more?  So if he’s strong…”

“I don’t think he’s feeling very strong right now,” Avery said, holding out a container for a lesser spirit to flow into.  “If I were him my Self would be like, I dunno, the size of a thimble?”

“Yeah,” Lucy agreed.  “Can’t help but think of my mom and Paul.”

Avery nodded.

“I can relate, too,” Snowdrop said, nodding a bit, sounding sympathetic.  Her ears stuck out and her hair stuck close to her head.  Avery gave Snowdrop a light push.

“Let’s bottle what we can, then deal with the big ones here and then head downtown,” Lucy said.

“Hey, um, so maybe a dumb question, changing the topic a smidge,” Verona spoke up.

Lucy and Avery looked at her.

“You want to talk practice, don’t you?” Lucy asked.

“Have you noticed, this might all be in my head, but… the diagrams aren’t as juicy?”

“I thought that,” Lucy said, “but then you said the silver marker ran and got blurry, right?”

“Yeah.  But even beyond that…”

Lucy nodded.

“It’s not just Edith that’s gone, right?” Avery asked.  “It’s… all of the Others who made a big difference are kinda not brimming with Self right now, I’d imagine.”

“Yeah,” Verona agreed.  She bottled another spirit fleeing the rain and Montague effect.  The perimeter flickered and jumped, and she could swear she saw some spirits tossed two hundred feet in the air as a response to that flicker-jump.  She pushed wet hair back and out of the way of her face.  She needed a haircut.  “The entire system here is in shambles right now.  Perimeter, leadership, balance, purpose…”

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about that, though,” Avery said.

“Bottle the friendly, cooperative ones, stop the worst ones out there, we get through tonight,” Lucy said.

The echo of the gymnast hit ground, bouncing off a dead tree that lay on its side in the same way the girl had bounced off of the balance beam.  Painful but manageable.  She crumpled, crying, phantom voices chasing her.

“Echo!” Verona called out.  “Want a weak hallow?  Shelter from the rain?”

“She doesn’t listen and she’ll regret it,” Lucy predicted.

The gymnast turned, pushing herself away from the beam, running off toward her mother, or that approximate direction, away from Verona.  Only to fray, crumple, and dissolve in the intensifying rain.  The echo went out.

“You were promising spirits shrines, weren’t you?” Avery asked.  “A lot of them.”

“I figured we could approximate what Matthew and Edith were arranging with the spirits in face to face meetings, shortly after they took charge.  Which were deals I think collapsed and let all these guys in at once,” Verona said.  “Ummm, but yeah.  Imagine spaced out shrines all along the perimeter.  Spirit gets a home and a bit of worship to feed on, we’d have to stop by once every two or three days pay respect, check if they need anything, but you know…”

“They get a place?” Avery asked.

“Sure.  Like a hallow but open and paying a tax to the perimeter, giving them reason to guard their turf and guard us, y’know?”

“How much effort does a shrine take to make?” Lucy asked.

“Could be a stack of concrete blocks, or a wooden archway with a, I dunno, board on a rock with a five cent crystal on top or something, I dunno.”

“How many shrines did you commit to making?”

Verona looked down at the bottles that were scattered around them.  “Well, I bought twelve bottles…”

“You committed us to making twelve shrines?

“Yeah, I guess I did.  Minus one because you didn’t really give that machine guy a choice.  He’s strong though, so if we can get him to cooperate…”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, sighing.  She looked over at Avery.

“Can we make a shrine for the shelter spirit?”

“Yeah.  Why don’t you go make sure she’s okay, and Lucy and I will get started on the wraiths?”

“Tomorrow is going to suck,” Lucy said.  “I’m betting we’ll still be at this when Montague does his just-before-dawn shift, too.  And then we’ve gotta not make my mom worry.”

Verona nodded.

“Pace yourself.  This is going to be a grind.”

Lucy’s head turned.

Matthew was approaching.

“Hey,” Avery said.

“I can deal with those if you want to go.  Toadswallow wants you downtown.  It makes sense,” Matthew said.

“Are you up for it?” Lucy asked.  “It’s been a bad night.”

“It’ll get worse if we don’t stop things like that,” Matthew said, indicating the growing wraith and nail spirit.  “I wouldn’t say up for it, but I know my way around dark things like that.”

“Gonna go check on Shelter,” Avery said, before running off.  “Take care of yourself, Matthew.”

He made a sound that might have been an attempt at affirmation, when there wasn’t much that was affirming or positive left in him.

“Are you okay?” Verona asked Matthew.

He looked off into the distance, staring at the perimeter.

“Sorry, dumb question,” she said.

“No,” he told her.  “Yes, dumb question, but it’s appreciated.  And no, I’m not okay.  Ten years of my life, give or take.  Those were supposed to be- they were good years, compared to the ones that came before.”

“Yyyeah,” Verona said, quiet.

“So it’s really all the years I’m questioning.  All of it.  This.”  He looked like he might be crying but with the downpour that Montague had brought down on them, the grinding thunder, the pitch squeals in the distance, it was really hard to tell.  Verona felt uncomfortable.

Like, she got it.  She understood.  But at the same time, she’d got it and understood with her dad after her mom had left and…

Uncomfortable.

“If you’re not up for it-” Lucy ventured.

His voice sounded very steady but hollow.  “I’ve wrestled with darkness for a while, I can grapple with this, don’t worry.  The rest of that is for me to deal with.  You… go downtown, when Avery gets back.”

Verona nodded.

Avery stepped out of the trees, holding a bottle triumphantly overhead.  Lucy and Verona grabbed the necessary bags, then started to hurry over.

“You’re doing a good job,” Matthew called out after them.

Verona turned, looking.

“You’re good at what you do.  You’re exceptional.  If I’ve ever implied otherwise, I’m sorry.  That might’ve been Edith whispering in my ear, or me extending trust to her when I shouldn’t.  It’s… ten years of conversation to go through.  Months of conversations where she and I talked to you.  Stuff I’ve got to work out.  I feel like an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “She clouded your head as part of the deal she made to get the syringe.  Don’t torture yourself.”

Verona looked at Matthew, studying his expression.  If she’d had to put money on one guess, she’d have put the money on ‘that explanation hurt him more than it helped’.

“Don’t tell me to do the impossible,” he said, one corner of his mouth pulling back.  “Be safe out there.”

“You too,” Avery said, as she caught up with them.  She took a bag from Snowdrop, pulling it over her shoulder.

“Two in the morning,” Matthew told them.

“What?”

“Two in the morning.  Clean up what you can, prioritize the worst stuff.”

“And the friendly ones we can get on board?” Avery asked, glancing at Verona and Lucy.  “We were thinking shrines.  To bolster the perimeter.”

“I was thinking shrines,” Verona hissed, jabbing Avery.  The gesture felt hollow with Matthew this close, this miserable.

“Sure,” Matthew said.  “If you have the time and energy.  Trust your instincts.”

It felt like he was going to say something, or that the sentence was a fragment left unfinished.  Like ‘trust your instincts, I don’t trust mine’.

“We were ready to go until Montague’s second go-round before dawn,” Lucy told him.

“Two in the morning, not five-thirty, okay?” he asked.  “Conserve your energy, turn in, sleep until eight, get at least six hours.  You can’t get them all, you’ll only hurt yourself or burn yourself out trying, and with the witch hunters out in the wings, even if Rook says they’re distracted for now, I don’t want you tired and burned out if they show up.”

“So we just… do a partial clean up?” Avery asked.

“Triage, or damage control.  Kennet’s going to be a bit haunted with echoes and spiritual weirdness until the end of summer,” Matthew said.  “We can give Ken more spiritual responsibility and see if that helps, but…”

He didn’t sound optimistic.

“But it’s Ken,” Lucy said.

“Well, that too, but I was going to say he’s not especially strong.”

Lucy nodded.

It felt a bit like any time they tried to fill in or say something or ask something it made it worse.  Which was another reminder of the times Verona had sat on her dad’s bed, consoling him and rubbing his back while he sobbed.

She shifted her feet, uncomfortable.

The wraith stirred, and Matthew turned his head.

Wordless, and because they’d already used up all the words and said what needed to be said, they left him behind.  Rain was stirring up mud and lifting up the oil on the roads, giving them a reflective, oily sheen that made them as red and distorted as the sky above.  It was like being in the Ruins, but noisier.

Goblins were gathered at the edge of downtown, sharing out some of Bluntmunch’s box of salt.

“Who’s up to run an errand?” Verona asked.

Biscuit, Nat, Butty, and Bluntmunch were crouched there.  Their eyes reflected all the red of the sky, and in the strobe of the flickering red distortion of the sky, it looked like their movements were more intense, fiercer, the simple act of sharing out salt and mixing salt in with fireworks made to look like those Natural Atlas videos of hyenas tearing apart a zebra.

The sky squealed.

Biscuit stuck her hand in the air.  “Me!”

“Can you go find Toadswallow, let him know he needs to send someone to Matthew’s side?” Verona asked.  “That’s one dude who really doesn’t need to be alone right now.”

Biscuit looked back in Bluntmunch’s direction.  She gave him puppy dog eyes as a matter of habit.

“Go,” Bluntmunch ordered.  Then, after Biscuit scampered off, dropping the salt she’d been taking, he said, “Sir Toadswallow will go to Matthew himself.”

“Could work.  Under the pretext of learning the ropes, getting tips.”

“Could work, yeh,” Bluntmunch replied.  “Where are you going?”

“Downtown,” Lucy said.

“Good, about time.  We’ll be there too, Ken’s letting us in.  It’s going to be dense with the bastards.  Less now that Monty’s workin’.”

Verona nodded.

Butty was lying on his stomach, and Nat shoved on his foot, making him spin.  His disconcertingly smooth, blemish-free, hairless skin was pretty frictionless when dry, but now that he was wet, he acted much like a fidget spinner.

“Got a plan there?” Bluntmunch asked, while Verona watched Butty pick up speed.

“For downtown?” Verona asked.

“For all this.  For summer.  For Edith.”

“Stop the culprits,” Lucy told him.

“And?” he asked.

Verona looked away from Butty and up to Bluntmunch.

“What comes after?” Bluntmunch asked.  “You’ve broken one leg of the table, stuff’s sliding off the corner, sure, but it’s mostly upright and we can deal with that, yeh.  But are yeh sure you’re ready to break off another?”

“If we gotta,” Lucy said.

“Arright,” Bluntmunch growled the word, nodding.  “So long as yeh know.”

“You’re saying we should try to build something or set something up in anticipation, before our next arrests?”

“I’m a goblin, you know that, right?” Bluntmunch asked.  “What the shucks do I know about building or setting crap up, that isn’t covered in spikes and meant to dish out the hurt?”

“I guess,” Verona said.

“Was just wondering,” he growled the word.  “Don’t let me keep you.  I’ll be on your heels, as soon as I’ve organized the riffraff.”

Bluntmunch had a way of looking like he was always narrowing his eyes at them.  It was hard to figure out.  Verona liked to think her time with Lucy would help with that, since Lucy wore a glare a lot of the time too, but right now, in this lighting, it was especially difficult.

“Come on,” Avery said.

They hurried off.

Into downtown.  Which was barely what another city would call a downtown area, more a collection of the various restaurants and stores.  There was no nightlife, not usually.

Tonight, the streets were busy enough with Others that Avery ended up taking their hands and taking them up to a rooftop, to get them clear and give them a better vantage point of it all.  Echoes and spirits took shelter from rain, and the ones that ventured out were dangerous looking.  Wraith amalgamations and Wraith kings, dark spirits and complex workings.  Echo flickers danced like hologram images over areas of the street, painting pictures of pain, sadness, shock, and anger.

A car pulled out from the alley by a building, heading toward the highway, and the ephemeral Others slipped out of sight before they could be caught in the headlights.

“They’ll go away in the daylight, right?” Avery asked.

“Mostly.  The days are long so long as it’s summer, too,” Lucy said.  “So there’s that.”

It wasn’t much.

Twelve or fourteen captured, couple more defeated or scared away, Montague’s stirring things up and making life harder for them… and there’s still easily a hundred more of these guys to deal with, Verona thought.

“Let’s pace ourselves,” Lucy said.  “Take five, redraw diagrams, fix up mine, kay?”

“Absolutely,” Verona told her.  The four remaining boxes of salt and two hundred dollars of her mom’s money she’d spent on eco-friendly containers didn’t feel like nearly enough.

“Matthew’s right, we work until two in the morning and then we should call it quits, no matter the situation.”

“I won’t run any messages or anything,” Snowdrop said.

A spirit roared.

We’ll be trying to keep this manageable until the whole Carmine situation is dealt with.

Next Chapter