Dash to Pieces – 11.12
Author: Wildbow

Dash to Pieces – 11.12 | Pale

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“I kind of want to say or do something,” Lucy said, “but it’s awkward because I wasn’t there.”

“Do you think Declan would have been responsive to your input?”

“It’s not about Declan, it’s about Avery, and their dad might’ve acted different if there were more people taking a stand and grouping against him.”

Dr. Mona nodded, sipping her water.  Lucy knew Dr. Mona timed her sips and puffs on her cigarette for when Lucy was saying stuff, always maintaining eye contact and nodding, always paying attention.  It was like the stout, slightly chubby First Nations woman with the serious no-nonsense face and half-lidded eyes needed to supply herself.  Cigarettes for the Self, maybe, water to keep her voice from getting too rough.

But Lucy hadn’t talked as much as Dr. Mona seemed to assume, so there was a pause as she finished drinking, the woman’s eyebrows flicking up, like she’d had a thought.

“Some people dig in their heels more if there are more people against them,” Dr. Mona said.  “Do you think Avery’s father might have?”

“I hate that, I hate that idea.  I hate that it gets used as an excuse for people who should realize that the entire room is against them and go, hmmm, maybe I should reconsider my ideas.  Because then you challenge a person one on one and they find some excuse to invalidate you, but if you find a consensus and challenge them as a group, they go ‘too many people, digging in my heels’, right?”

“People who go looking for excuses are going to find them.  I could see Connor seeing the three of you taking a stand and finding less reason to listen to Avery, if Avery’s voice and opinion didn’t disappear in the midst of it.”

“Ugh.”

“I’d like to think of it as a survival mechanism,” Dr. Mona told Lucy.  “A large portion of our emotional makeup, our instincts, the patterns we fall into, they’re there for a reason, you know.  Even digging in your heels when outnumbered.”

“Some of that stuff we evolved is outdated, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s timely.  We’ve talked about history and being a person of color, Lucy.  If we didn’t have the mental tools to be obstinate and hold our ground against the majority, what would that mean for one black man in a roomful of white colleagues expecting him to keep his head down?  Or one indigenous woman standing up for her rights?  We would trend toward majority rule, more than we already do.”

“This is different though.”

“It is, but-”

“But he’s wrong!” Lucy said.  “He’s holding crummy views.”

“You said this was about supporting Avery.  Now it seems to be more about challenging her father’s views.”

“Can’t it be both?”

“You tell me.  Can it?”

Lucy put her elbows on her desk, hands on her cheeks, her expression tortured.  Her pinky fingers pulled down on her lower eyelids.

Dr. Mona smiled a rare smile.  She was a no-nonsense woman with a very relaxed vibe, which Lucy really liked.  Someone being no-nonsense tended to mean they’d learned to deal with nonsense, and anyone who had learned to deal got points in Lucy’s book.  Lucy dropped her hands from her face, but remained hunched over her desk, at eye level with the webcam at the top of her laptop screen.

“We’ve talked about de-escalation,” Dr. Mona said.  “A lot of that deals with figuring out where you are, where your emotions are taking you, and re-assessing.  But that’s something that happens in the moment, when you’re already engaged.  Here, we have a situation where you’re not immediately involved, you want to have a say, to support Avery or confront her dad and confront Declan’s behavior.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t?”

“I’m saying you should ask yourself if you should.  Figuring out which battles you want to fight or join is an important skill to learn.  A good step past managing the battles you’re already a part of.”

“Well, I mean, I gotta, don’t I?”

“Do you gotta?”

“I’d be…” Lucy floundered a bit.  She watched as Dr. Mona took a drink from her glass, eyebrows quirking for a second there as she looked over her hand and glass with half-lidded, heavily made-up eyes.  The big drink, as if Dr. Mona expected a big response.

Lucy waited for her to finish drinking, because she didn’t have a great answer.

The woman put her glass down, paused a second, and then said, “Take your time.”

Lucy took her time, thinking.  “I’d be… betraying myself?  Betraying Avery.  Everyone.”

“Is that a betrayal in something fundamental, a betrayal of a promise you’ve made?  A real promise or an implied one?  Or something else?”

“It’s-” Lucy started, stopped.  “The world sucks a lot, a lot of the time.  How does it get better, if we don’t challenge the people who are doing the wrong thing?”

“How does it get better when you do challenge the people doing the wrong things?” Dr. Mona asked.  “What’s your intent?  What’s your goal?”

“A good chunk of it is making them stop being wrong,” Lucy said, hands going to her cheeks again, fingertips and nails pulling at cheeks, mouth, and lower eyelids.

“Okay, alright.  I want to be absolutely clear here, because I’m getting more of these reactions…” Dr. Mona indicated Lucy.  Lucy dropped her hands again.  “And because I’m challenging you on something that’s, correct me if I’m wrong, very close to your heart.”

“Not wrong,” Lucy said.

“Good.  To be clear, when I’m asking you if you want to pick this battle, I definitely don’t mean you shouldn’t.  When I’m talking to you about managing anger and frustration, I don’t want to dampen those emotions or tell you not to feel those things.  Anger can be necessary.  Frustration is valid.  Wanting someone with harmful ideas to stop acting on those ideas is so, so important, and it’s good of you, and it’s good you want to support your friend Avery.”

Lucy nodded.

“When I’m talking to you about anger management, it doesn’t mean anger suppression.  Anger is fuel, anger makes change happen, anger gets things done.  The trick is to do things constructively while angry.  Aim it, channel it, find healthy outlets and vehicles for it.  Yes?”

“Yeah.  Makes sense.  Anger can be good.”

“So when I ask if you want to confront Avery’s dad, I want you to think, okay, confrontation, what happens?  What’s the goal?  What can you do before, what can you do during, and what can you do after, that gets you what you want?  If you can’t outline to me if you’re doing this for Avery or to confront the wrongheaded ideas of her dad and brother, is there a chance that when you confront him, you split your energies between the two things and fail to accomplish either?”

“Is it that impossible to do both?”

“I think it’s possible.  But it seems some of the moments and scenarios you’ve struggled with are ones where you were divided.  You say you’re articulate when angry.”

“Kinda.  My friends said that, I repeated it.”

“But you don’t often get people to listen.  You described the Mr. Bader situation, your gym teacher repeatedly called you out, made an example of you, didn’t listen about your hair and showering in gym, and escalated things further than he did with your other classmates.  Emailing your mom, sending you to the office to talk to the vice principal.”

Lucy nodded.  “Yep.”

“You said you struggled to get your meaning across, and it was often hard because classmates were watching.”

“I didn’t really mind that they were watching.  I’ve been called the class bitch before, because I don’t care about calling stuff out in the moment.  What sucked was not winning the argument while they were watching.”

“How much of that was because you were trying to argue or outline all the ways you were in the right?”

“Enhh, dunno.”

“Or were you, for example, defending your bodily autonomy at the same time you were trying to call him out?  Or trying to describe what happened while also trying to tell him he was wrong?”

Lucy thought back.  “Some.  Mostly I remember a lot of ‘ugh, why won’t he listen?”

“Do you ever find yourself wishing you’d said other things, or phrased things differently?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Or do you ever find yourself saying ‘that didn’t work at all, now I’m more frustrated’?”

“You know I do.”

“Then that’s what we can work on.  Having a plan going into a confrontation, what you want to say and accomplish, staying level in that confrontation- we’ve been working on that.”

Lucy nodded, then because the internet in Kennet wasn’t the best, vocalized, “Yeah.  Sure.”

“And then follow-through.  There are other parts of it too, like deciding if you want to confront someone in the first place, and doing effective follow-up.”

“This is starting to feel less like a therapy session and more like a lesson in how to win arguments.”

“It is, I hope, a lesson in how to be the most effective, healthy Lucy you can be.  We’re drawing to the close of our session, so is there anything else you want to share?”

“I’ve got an ice cream date.”

The smile on Dr. Mona’s face caught Lucy a bit off guard.

“Or not a date, like, in terms of exact date, haven’t actually scheduled it, we’ve talked a bit by text, but it’s Wallace from my class.  I don’t actually know him that well, despite him being in my class since kindergarten, but Verona says he’s nice to his mom.  I guess that’s what the date is for, getting to know him.”

“That is in fact what a date is for.  Hmm.  I would imagine a lot of what I was just talking about would apply to this date, doesn’t it?”

“I guess,” Lucy said, shrugging a bit.  She thought for a second.  “Sure.”

“We don’t really think about it, do we?  But society conditions us to handle dates a lot better than it conditions us to handle arguments.  We prep, we think about what we’re going to wear and say, we strive for healthy expressions of emotions, try to connect to the other person.  But in the movies, people go into confrontations hot and unreasonable, don’t they?”

“Yeah.  So a confrontation should be like a fight-date?”

Dr. Mona smiled again.  “If you want your confrontations to be fights, I suppose.  But that’s really great, Lucy, congratulations.  Did you ask him or did he ask you?”

“I asked him.  We met at the end-of-year party and kissed as part of a party game…”

Lucy watched Dr. Mona, studying her, seeing if she had any strict views or signs of disapproval.

“…met recently and I asked.”

“Have you told your mom?”

“Not yet.”

“Or your friends?  You mentioned Verona said something.”

“Yeah.  I told them.  Feels weird, talking to Avery about it, but that’s a whole other thing.”

“I’ll make a note of that, if it’s okay.  We can talk about being an ally, next session.”

“Please.”

“Do you want to tell your mom?”

“Yeah, I guess, yeah.  Yeah.  There’s just been distractions.”

“You seem hesitant.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I can’t help but notice.”

“I think about the Paul thing, that’s all.  She hasn’t really dated and I don’t want to poke sore spots.”

“I think your mom would be much happier to gush with you and share that stuff with you than she would be upset at the vague reminder of Paul.  She could help you prepare, if you wanted.  Do your hair?”

Lucy nodded.  “I don’t not want to, it’s just there’s that little thing and then the distractions, like I said.  It’d be nice to do my hair different.”

“See the look on his face when he sees you put in that extra effort?”

Lucy bit her lip, nodded, and then smiled.

“Perfect.  For your between-session homework, first, optional but strongly suggested, make the date, before it slips away from you.”

Lucy nodded.  She took a note.  “I’ve got some stuff to do in the next short while, but ok.”

“And less optional, I do want you to put thought into this-”

Lucy made a face.

“-Think of a fight you regretted, that you haven’t told me about.”

“So not Paul.”

“Not your stepdad.  Think back to the event, try to recall if your instincts were flashing any warning signals you avoided, or if you had any doubts, or if you didn’t like the outcome, why things might not have gone the way you wanted.  Try and write down some of the highlights.  Quotes, lines, anything stand-out.”

“A play-by-play.”

“If you can, that’d be great.”

“Oh, I think I can.  I’m thinking of one scenario, I think you might find it interesting.  You might rethink how I’ve handled things and stuff in the past.”

“Perfect.  I look forward to it.  Shall we handle the next appointment the same way?  I’ll fire some dates at your mom and you can pick one?  The sooner you pick, the more likely it’s free.”

“Yep, sure.  Thanks, Dr. Mona.”

“Take care, Lucy.”

Dr. Mona signed off.

That was done.  Necessary, in its way.  Getting grounded, making sure her head was working.

It was time to face the day.  One heck of a day.

Toadswallow hadn’t left them much time.

Lucy picked up some of Verona’s things, tossing them onto the cot by her bed.  The room was darker than normal, the blinds closed, papers up to protect their privacy.  On her bed were clothes, laid out in preparation for today.

She put that off.

She’d heard Verona come in and head straight to the shower, but she hadn’t entered the room.  That raised the question of where Verona had gone.

Downstairs, in the living room, Verona sat in the armchair, cross-legged, wearing Booker’s old bathrobe, which was about eight years old and still oversized on Verona.  Her hair was barely dried.  A sketchbook lay in her lap.

Lucy’s mom sat on the couch, trying to hold a position while keeping an eye on the television.

Lucy walked around and looked over Verona’s shoulder.  It was an ink drawing of her mom, head and shoulders.  Really very good, with sketched out images to the left and right, one kind of done in ink smears with a hole in the middle, one in wispy lines, each wearing different expressions.  The ‘meaty-thing’ Verona had described, that Lucy had seen when borrowing Verona’s sight, and the gossamer?

Man, that was pretty good though.  Lucy felt weird about it.

At Lucy’s ankle, the anklet of inscribed wooden beads ticked over.  Someone was watching.  Going by the direction… front window.  A woman Lucy didn’t recognize was walking down the sidewalk.  Lucy didn’t look directly at her, to avoid giving anything away, but that was their spy.

“How was it?” her mom asked, disturbing Lucy from her thoughts.

Lucy looked up and over.  “Good.  Changing topics a bit.  Less me venting and more… learning skills, I guess?”

“I do like her,” her mom said.  “First impression wasn’t so great, but she’s won me over.”

“I think I liked her more in the first five minutes than I ever liked the first guy in all of the five sessions,” Lucy said.

“Why didn’t you like her?” Verona asked, somewhat absently, still working on the art.

“I think she reminded me a bit of Lucy’s Uncle Martie’s wife, who I am not a fan of.  Tiny woman smoking up a storm, sour expression?”

“I might have a role model now,” Verona said, absently.

“No you do not,” Lucy’s mom told her, at the same time Lucy jostled the chair, “Don’t be an idiot!”

“Aren’t we similar?” Verona asked.  “She’s tiny, I’m petite-”

“You’re not similar, she’s no-nonsense and you’re more nonsense than average, and don’t smoke,” Lucy told Verona.  “Don’t smoke!”

“Listen to my daughter about the smoking,” Lucy’s mom said.  “I’ve seen so many horror stories.  I’ve seen a smoker’s lung pulled from an autopsy.”

“What if I use, like, magic, and protect myself?” Verona asked, not looking up from the work in progress.

“Magic isn’t real and there is no medicine or treatment that will save you from the complete, total, and whole-body damage you will do to yourself,” Lucy’s mom said.

“You’ll stink,” Lucy told Verona.  “Stinky, smelly smoke, and I bet Jeremy wouldn’t like you as much.”

“I think that doesn’t work like you hope it would.”  Verona put the ink away, dropping the brush into a bottle with inky water inside, then capping it.  She gave it a swish, then put it aside.  “Because he might actually love me, which is awkward, and because I don’t care that much.”

Lucy looked at her mom, bewildered.  Verona uncapped a golden marker and began drawing in the background.

Her mom took another tack.  “You’ll care about your lungs when they only work half as well as they do.  Didn’t you say earlier you don’t have much endurance?  Do you want to be winded going up the stairs?”

“And Jeremy’s a friend,” Lucy told Verona.  “He’s been cool to you.  I think you’d be more bummed out than you’re pretending if you lost the friendship.  The love thing is… I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Okay, okay, okay.  You guys are distracting me.”

“From the path of considering smoking?” Lucy asked.

“One sec,” Verona said, absently.  She drew, filling in the circle in the background, and adding a touch of gold to various decorations.  The hole in the flesh-aspect became a swaddled baby, minus the baby, and then some slashes.  Drawing Lucy’s earring.

She retrieved the ink brush, and with watered down ink, outlined a baby Lucy’s face in the swaddle.

Lucy’s mother, like she was on the couch, front and center.  A partially visible golden circle in the background.  Then the dark cloud of dark ink, features there in the white space in the cloud, eyes, lips touched with gold, slashes of white to suggest the neck against the hair behind her, when she didn’t have long hair in reality, the collarbone, the arms cradling Lucy.  And then the wisp, barely there, filled in by long, thin lines, and framed in part by the parts of the golden sphere that didn’t extend past the thin lines.  That aspect of her was looking off to the side, both arms holding a staff with a snake twining around it.

“There.  Done,” Verona stated.

Lucy nodded.  “Now that you’re paying attention, first of all, don’t smoke.”

Verona sighed.  “Fine.”

“Second of all, be cool to Jeremy, okay?”

Verona nodded.  She got to her feet, adjusted the bathrobe belt, then put the paper down by Lucy’s mom and proceeded to skedaddle back to Lucy, because there were no other words than ‘skedaddle’ for that kind of hurried movement.  “There, if you want it.  Let it dry!”

“Hey,” Lucy’s mom said.  She got to her feet, still taking in the image.  “Wow.”

“I don’t know what I’d do for a thank you card or whatever and that’s art practice so it’s no big deal, I just figured you can have it,” Verona said, rushed.  “I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with it, but there it is.  Thanks for modeling.”

“Wow,” Lucy’s mom said, taking her time to react while Verona was hurrying the process and looking for an escape route.  Lucy’s mom looked up at Verona.  “Thank you.  Can I give you a hug?”

Verona shrugged and nodded.

Lucy took a small step back to make room and watched as her mom embraced Verona, wet hair and all, and then gave her a kiss on the upper forehead.  “Thank you.”

“Yuppers,” Verona replied.

Five different emotions warred inside of Lucy at that, with a gladness that Verona was loved in that moment and her mom was touched and that was really cool, but also jealousy.

Okay, three of the five emotions were brands of jealousy.  She was jealous because that was her mom, irrational as it was, and because she couldn’t do art in that awesome way, and it felt like a bit of a failure on her part.

“I’m heading to work in an hour, and I’ll be working until nine.  Are you girls okay fending for yourselves?” her mom asked.

“Hope so!” Verona said, brightly.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “What she said.”

“You have my number if you need anything.  There’s also the neighbor, and Avery’s parents.”

“Parent,” Lucy said.  “For a few more days, it’s just him.”

“Right, yes.  Her- father?”  her mom asked.  They nodded.  Her mom frowned.  “Yes.  Okay, then, it’s probably most convenient to call Mrs. Luis next door for any immediate emergencies or mundane issues.  Save calling Connor for if, I don’t know…”

“We need someone tall?” Verona asked.  “Reach a high shelf?”

“I was thinking more like… if there were police or lawyers involved.  He seems to know a lot of people and he’s good at navigating that sort of thing.”

“Yep, okay,” Lucy said.

“Be good, don’t do anything that gets lawyers or police involved,” her mom said, looking worried.  “Thank you again, Verona.”

“Yep!” Verona said, looking visibly uncomfortable.

Again, that pang of irrational jealousy.

On impulse, Lucy said, “Oh, um, before I forget again-”

“Is this an uh-oh before I forget or…?” her mom ventured.

“I kinda maybe might have a date with Wallace Davis, he lives between our house and Verona’s, he was in our class last year.  Some day later this week or next week.  Still need to coordinate that.  Um-” Lucy paused as her mom clapped both hands to her heart, pressing them there.  Lucy carried on, “I was thinking I could do my hair in a different style, if you could help me figure something- out.”

Her mom pulled both Lucy and Verona into hugs, one arm around each.  She gave Lucy a kiss on the forehead, then Verona, then Lucy again.  Lucy scrunched up her face.

“You give me life.  Yes, of course.  Whatever it is you want to do, we’ll figure it out.”

“It’s an ice cream date, I think.”

It took a bit to disengage after that, to answer the follow up questions, and Lucy pretended not to like the hug and forehead kisses and everything else as much as she kind of actually did.  Most importantly, though, the jealousy was… managed.  Not killed, but redirected to more positive ends.

Thanks Dr. Mona.  Both for the idea and the reframing of what ‘anger management’ and the management of other emotions meant.

They entered Lucy’s room, and Verona shucked off the bathrobe to get dressed, while Lucy turned her back and sorted out her things.

“Clothes,” Verona said.  “Nice choice.”

Lucy nodded.

Changing tacks.  Changing approach.  She’d picked out clothes she’d bought but hadn’t been bold enough to wear.  They weren’t her usual style.  A little fancier.  Not quite as bulletproof.  An open-back top in electric blue, and shorts with a cut-out pattern at the bottom edge.

She’d sent an email to Booker and Booker had replied, meeting her request.  Music outside her normal tastes, that he wanted her to try.  He’d picked something up from a band at his university.  She tended to like experimental sounds and unique approaches to music, and this was apparently more classic rock, heavy on the percussion and electric guitar.

They had an hour before noon and then they had the afternoon and early evening to get sorted.

Lucy changed while everything downloaded to her phone.  Verona got dressed, and Lucy reached over to pull free a strip of transparent sticker stamped with ‘XS’.  Verona took the strip and encircled her neck with it, but it was too linty to stay.  Lucy rolled her eyes.

Verona had gone out at the crack of dawn, to go with Avery to the shrines for the morning check-up, watching each other’s backs, and then she’d swung by the house at Half Street, then had stopped by her house to get other things.

Verona opened the box.

They’d collected a lot of things they hadn’t had occasion to use.  There were also things they’d collected that they hadn’t had the opportunity to use.

Verona held the necklace of eyeballs.  In a certain light, it was just a cord.  In dim light, away from the view of innocents, it appeared to be eyeballs, all strung along the cord, not bloodshot in a red way, but with dense black veins around the puncture points.  Eyes dilated when and where their positioning let them focus on Lucy or Verona.

They had the fogged watch.  From the transients.  Nicolette had helped them ID it.  Lucy had put it on her wrist for a bit but now she put it on her ankle.  She hated having something cutting into her wrist whenever she rested her wrist on a surface, or getting in the way when she was moving paper around while drawing spell runes on a table.

The keyboard, wrapped in the old newspaper with sudoku and crosswords that Lucy’s mom had done a lot while waiting with patients after giving them their dosages, in her prior job.  The grungy keyboard summoned gremlins like Bangnut, of a number proportionate with the value of whatever was destroyed.

And they had the pickaxe.  Verona had snuck it into the house and now they’d have to sneak it out.  Too big to conveniently carry.  Lucy hefted it.  An elastic held some scraps of paper around the handle.  Verona’s cursive had the notes down by the collector diagram that highlighted certain areas.  It didn’t work like the dropped knife.  It had Puissance, or power, and an access requirement, meaning it had requirements they needed to figure out, in order for that power to be used, and the complex diagram linked it to brawn as its starting point.  A heavy duty weapon that could be heavier if they met the requirements.

There was the enter key, they’d figured that out, but sticking a key in a light socket could be dangerous and a lot of the simpler protections they might want to use would stop it from working.  They’d confiscated it from Brie back when she’d been spying on Zed’s behalf, and then they’d kept it with Zed’s a-ok.  A quick way to get away, but dangerous to use.  Lucy had worked out some notes on managing that electricity, with accompanying diagrams.

There were other things.  Avery had two of them.  The mood glasses, another confiscation from Brie, and the gloves.

Verona started printing out stuff from Raymond Sunshine’s online setup.  Other practices.

Headphones on.  She put on her music.  As the percussion came in, she began bouncing her head in time with it.

Her phone blinged and vibrated, interrupting the music before she could get into it.  It was set to silent, but because her headphones were in, she got the audio too.  She looked down, then turned around and frowned at Verona.  Who stood five feet away but had decided to text her.

She sent Verona the files.  Verona set her phone on the corner of the bed as the download bar filled.

Then Verona opened her bag.

Wooden masks.  A bit rougher than what they’d worn so far.  Three masks with three animals.  Not fox, not cat, not deer.

Lucy dialed Avery, while holding Avery’s alternate mask.

Verona turned on the music as it finished downloading.  It played through her earphones, which weren’t in her ears.

“Heya,” Avery replied.

Lucy switched her phone to speakerphone, and laid it on the corner of her desk.  “Ready to move?”

“Dreading this.  I got back from the shrine visit, my dad wanted to have a talk, I haven’t had time to shower.”

“It’s eleven.”

“I’ll be fast.  Can you guys stop by here?  My dad wants to speak to you.”

“Oh no.”

“We’ll come!  Scrub!” Verona raised her voice.  “Deep scrub, Ave.  Until you’re pink!  No traces of dust or anything, ‘kay?”

“But my checkmarks-”

Verona shook her head, approaching and leaning over Lucy’s phone.  “The checkmarks on your skin probably rinse off when you shower normally.  Running water and glamour?  It’s what inside that counts and if she can touch that then you’re screwed, okay?”

“Okay.  Yeah, that makes sense.  Has me a bit worried.  Okay, I’m showering.”

“We’ll be a short bit, gotta get organized, do some initial practice!” Verona said.  She’d walked back to the other side of the room.

“Okay!  I’ll wait!  Snowdrop should be by the bridge!  Pick her up!”

“Will try.  I’m sending you music, okay?” Lucy asked.  “Put it on while you’re in the shower, as loud as you can.  Hit play at… eleven twelve, okay?  That should give you time to download.”

“Okay, but why?”

“Because we’ll be listening to it too.  Let’s get on the same wavelength, on the same page.  You and us together, adopting a new style for today and tonight.”

“On it.  Already have clothes picked out.  Send me the music.”

With that done, Lucy ended the call.

She logged into Raymond’s online library for practitioners, and read through the various files.  She glanced at the clock.

Eleven ten.

Verona was on her cot, reading the printouts, and Lucy took her phone.  She unplugged Verona’s headphones, then held one phone in each hand, waiting.  She hit the play buttons for each playlist, timing the start of the music so their phones were in near-perfect sync, then plugged Verona’s headphones back in.

Then she put her own headphones on.  Her head bobbed in time with the music.

When the electric guitar sting came, she tilted her hips, reversed the tilt for the next sting, then reversed again for the third, head still nodding in time with the drums.

Verona was on her feet, pacing, holding the print-outs.  Verona began dancing.

Melissa hadn’t been lying.  Verona could dance pretty naturally.  She swayed and got wholly into the music, her eyes not leaving the page.

Lucy did much the same, if a little more measured, leaning over her desk, paging through the options on her laptop.

She’d never really decided on a specialty.  Now that they were trying to figure out what to sling at Maricica that she wouldn’t expect, the trick was to figure out something that worked, that still fit them and felt somewhat natural.  Their most common tools really needed to go away, especially those things that they’d glamoured up too many times.

That meant no weapon ring.  It meant, probably, no John.  It meant they were better off if Verona didn’t lean on using her spell cards, and Avery her black rope and augmented hockey sticks.

As Lucy moved her hips and head in time with the music, hands resting on the desk, Verona came up behind her and peeked past her at the screen.  Verona’s hip touched Lucy’s and she matched her movements to Lucy’s.

The Maledictions Manifest.  80 of the 100 pages were available.  Some of the higher-end stuff required she get permission and sign a pracitioner-written set of terms of service first.

Deleterious Practices and Curses.  Various approaches to curses.  Law-based curses, Immaterial curses.  The Visceral Malison.

Verona nodded with enthusiasm.

Lucy pointed at Verona.

Verona showed Lucy.

Yeah.  That had always been something Verona was interested in.  It was always going to be something she wanted to experiment with.

Verona spun away, resuming dancing, turning the page as she stepped briefly up onto Lucy’s bed, then stepped down.  She grabbed her mask, which she’d made for herself.

Verona had done up their masks in a crude way, from blocks of dense wood, hewing out rough features, burning them, and then cutting away at the burned material.  That had been a chunk of her morning.  The masks were crude, with sharper edges, blackened from the heat of the fire that had baked them and strengthened them.

Tonight, Verona wouldn’t be the cat, but the snake.  Or the lizard.  Or the dragon.  It looked reptilian.  The mask was the snake.  Verona wore a green top with spaghetti straps, simple and slim, along with a skirt with several overlapping layers.

The snake shed her skin.  To change up their methods, they’d be prepared to adopt different positions.  Verona couldn’t be their backline, because Maricica would expect that.  In the short term, it was an advantage, resetting everything to zero, both for themselves and for Maricica.  When Maricica had that many more things to adapt to, it would put her on the back foot.  In the long term, it would cost them to be offbeat, to have to relearn their paradigm.  In the longest term, it’d come back around to being a good thing, hopefully, that they’d broadened their horizons.

Verona would dip into the halflight practices that she’d always liked the idea of.  As scary as that was.

Lucy texted her friend, instead of speaking to her: Be careful.  Nothing you can’t reverse.

Verona only grinned.  Then as the music picked up, ramped up the dancing.

“Yeaaah!  Whoooo!” Ramjam danced without rhythm or sense, headbanging more than necessary or appropriate.

Of course usual ettiquete about music playing from phone speakers and headphones didn’t apply to goblins.  Ramjam was down for that.

The various goblins and Others were gathered on the shore under the bridge.  Various bits of garbage had been collected for a construction that had fallen apart.  The shade was nice, with the way the temperature was rising.

“We’ll see you tonight, then?” Verona asked Tatty.  “You and your guys?”

“Yeah,” Tatty said.  “I said I would, didn’t I?  You named Peckersnot, we do you a favor, as his gang.”

“Whoo!” Ramjam shouted.

“Ram?  Can you also help us out?” Lucy asked.

“I’m not with them!  I hang with Blunt!  And you!  We’re hanging right now!  Listening to some banging music, whoo!”

“He’s not with us,” Tatty said.  “Gotta go.  We’re raiding this cat lady’s house, she’s got so many cats.  It’s awful!  But one of their cats, it’s a goblin killer.  You can see it in its eyes.  Too much green.  Three goblins, we think.”

“Haven’t there never been many goblins in Kennet?” Lucy asked.

“Semantics!”

“That’s not actually semantics, I’m pretty sure you’re just wrong,” Lucy said.

“If we get the tag off the collar of the goblin killer cat, we can take it to the Warrens and we’ll be heroes!  So brave, they’ll say!”

Peckersnot and Bangnut nodded vigorously behind Tatty.  They had Doglick with them, which… made sense, considering the job.

Ramjam, headbanging violently, sprawled over some of the collected trash beneath the bridge, tumbling into the edge of the water.  He sprang back to his feet and resumed the all-out, senseless dancing.

Verona held her phone out for him, matching his dancing for a few seconds.  Then she frowned.  “To confirm: you’re doing a self-imposed job to steal the collar off of an unconfirmed goblin killer, in a super dangerous house which, if this is the same cat lady Avery was talking about, may be an Aware’s house, with way too many more-dangerous than normal cats.”

“Not that many cats,” Snowdrop said.

Peckersnot nodded with emphasis.

“So if you succeed, goblins probably won’t believe you that it was a real goblin-killer cat.”

“Its eyes are green!” Bangnut exclaimed.

“Okay… well, they might be confirmed goblin-killer cats by the time you’re done, just so you know,” Verona said.

“Yes!” Tatty said.  “We get the evidence while we’re there!”

“The cats will kill you, I mean.”

“Don’t you have really bad luck with felines already?” Lucy asked.  “The zoo thing?”

Tatty, Peckersnot, and Bangnut all stopped, straightened, then touched forehead, bellybutton, left nipple, right nipple, then did a crotch tug.

“Yes,” Tatty said, once she was done.  Then, like she remembered something, or came up with something on the spot, she renewed her enthusiasm. “That’s why!  That’s why we’re doing this!  We have to get back at the cats.”

“Do not hurt the cats,” Verona said, seriously.

“They’ll be sleeping!  We’ll go after lunch, which is why we gotta go now, and they’ll be tired from having eaten, all slow and napping, and then we get the collar, all sneaky like, tiptoeing past them all-”

“Cats don’t usually eat lunches,” Verona noted.  “I think it’s almost always two meals a day.  Or one big one, which usually isn’t at noon.”

“Semantics!”

“I think Avery guessed there were thirty or forty cats in that house,” Lucy said.  “Possibly supernaturally capable and dangerous guard cats, because of the Aware’s tie to the universe and her particular brand of lost innocence.  That’s a lot to tiptoe around.”

“Nothing close to that number,” Snowdrop said, quiet.  “Not that I’ve checked.”

“More semantics!  We’ll snatch up the collar and then we run.  Boom, reputations made in the shade,” Tatty said.

“Do us a favor?” Lucy asked.  “Can you ensure that, like, more than half your gang survives this time, at least?  Ideally, it’s all of you, but…”

“Spare Peckersnot?” Verona asked.

“My guys and me will be there tonight!” Tatty declared.

“And keep our confidence for the next while?” Verona asked.  “Don’t talk about this?”

Lucy checked her connection-sensing anklet.  There wasn’t anyone spying on them.  Probably.

“Two of these punks don’t even talk-”

Doglick yipped.  Peckersnot nodded.

“-and Bangnut’s smart, he’ll stay quiet, and I’m prolly gonna be too busy being the goblin gang leader who counted coup against a goblin-killing cat!  I’ll wear that collar like a belt!”

“Seriously,” Lucy said.  “Secrecy?”

“So sworn,” Tatty said, more serious now.  “You named my underling, I’ll keep your plans a secret an’ we’ll help you.”

“Swear it,” Bangnut said.

The other goblins nodded.  Doglick bent his head down, nipped his front claw, and then smeared blood at his throat.  Peckersnot did something similar, nipping a finger and then drawing a thin line at his heart.

“I think that counts,” Verona said.

Lucy nodded, tense already, even though it was barely past noon.

“Come on, we gotta go, or it’ll be too late to use the post-nap lunch!”  Tatty cried out.  “See you shlubs later!”

She led Peckersnot, Bangnut, and Doglick away.

“I still don’t think cats eat lunch!” Verona called after her.

“Semantics!” was Tatty’s screeched reply.

Then Tatty was gone.  Leaving them with Snowdrop and a dancing Ramjam, who listened to the music from the shitty phone speakers.

“What about you, Ramjam?  Help us out?  We could use some of that nails and spit.  Bit of goblinstuff.”

“Nails and spit is my thing!  One of my things!  I like smashing stuff!”

“We know.  So can you help us with your thing?  As your gift to us?” Lucy asked.

“And headbutting stuff!  You can break stuff with headbutts and fix it with nails and spit!”

“Ram?” Snowdrop asked.

“Whoo!  What!?”

“Will you help, then?” Snowdrop asked.

“Uhhhh!” Ramjam replied.  “With what!?”

“The nails and spit?”

“What nails and spit?  Where?  If you see something with a lot of nails and spit in it, it’s probably my work!”

“No,” Lucy said.  “We’d like you to apply nails and spit.  Goblinify some gear for us.”

“I like this!  This is great!” Ramjam said, pointing at Lucy’s phone, then Verona’s.  “We usually have to take what we get.  Crap on the radio!  Stupid ads!  I hate ads!”

Lucy bent down and seized his shoulder.  “Is there any favor we could do for you?  We could use a hand!”

“A hand with the ads!?”

“We don’t care about the ads,” Lucy told him.

“I do!  I hate the ads!  Stupid ads!  Can you get rid of the ads on the radio!?”

“No,” Verona said.  “But we could get you another way of listening to music!  If you’ll help us out!”

“We’re listening to music right now!  It’s great!  Isn’t this great!?”

Lucy, Snowdrop, and Verona exchanged glances.

Lucy debated turning her music off, but she had a vague sense that ruining a good ‘go all out’ moment was one of the few things that would spoil Ramjam’s normally upbeat attitude.

“Help?” Lucy asked Snowdrop.

Snowdrop nodded.  “Hey, goblin who isn’t Ram!”

“What!?  I’m Ram!  Oh, and you’re Snowdrop!  I was confused!”

“You’re pretty lame!” Snowdrop told him.

“Thanks!”

“We just did you a favor, right?” Snowdrop asked, looking at Lucy.

Lucy nodded, grasping Snowdrop’s angle.  Did this work?  “Snowdrop said you’re pretty cool, I think.”

“Yeah!  You’re great!”

Lucy looked over at Verona.  “By the deals made at the meeting when we came back to Kennet, if we do you a favor we can ask for one.”

“Heck yeah!  You said I’m cool, so what do you want!?”

“We need some nails and spit!”

“Where!?”

“Come on, we shouldn’t do it in the open.  You can borrow one of our phones to listen to music while you work,” Lucy told him.

She gave him her phone, then placed her headphones on his head.  His eyes went wide as he got full fidelity sound, instead of the low-quality noise a crappy radio or phone speaker put out.

“Whoo!” Ramjam cried out.  He jumped into the slight ditch and the tall grass that traced the slope between the road above and the shore of the river.  He continued dancing, a mosh pit of one.

He checked the coast was clear, leaped out, snatched Snowdrop’s hand, and pulled her into the tall grass.  She became an opossum, and with him flinging her around as he followed parallel to Lucy and Verona, it was a mosh pit of two.

They handed over some nails they’d guessed he needed, then spat as instructed into some disposable tissues, which Ramjam treated with reverent care.  He grinned as he got the nails out and touched the sharp points, rocking his head out of tune with the beat, the sheer weight of his horns making the sway to either side too dramatic for his narrow neck.

And they gave him the masks.

“I like this one,” Ramjam said, tapping Lucy’s.  “I wonder why.”

Lucy smiled a bit.

The mask, like Verona’s snake mask, was crudely hewn out.  It wouldn’t have been her first choice or second choice.  Verona’s wouldn’t have been her first or second choice either.

The goat, for Lucy, who admittedly butted heads with others more often than she liked.  She’d picked the goat before reading the preliminary stuff on curses, but apparently it was also an animal with links to the deleterious practices.  Dark, offensive practices.  Curses.  Sometimes it was a sacrificial animal, sometimes an omen, for some lines of cursework, that appeared before the victim to indicate that they were well and truly boned.

“Watch him?  Make sure nobody looks in?” Lucy asked Snowdrop.  “If a spy comes sniffing around, keep this stuff out of sight.”

Snowdrop nodded.  Ramjam held a nail out, then headbutted it into the goat mask, near the forehead. It bent and most of it went into the wood.

“And make sure he keeps it wearable?  We need it modified, not dangerous to wear.”

“I know what I’m doing!” Ramjam said, overly loud, head swaying and swinging as he kept in time with the music.  With the heavier beats of the song, he drove more nails home.

Verona shared her earbud with Lucy.

They turned the music on their phones off at the same time Avery did.

They were all on the same wavelength, still.  Just… not a very rock music type wavelength.

“I’m sorry,” Declan said, perfunctory, his dad behind them, the three of them in front.

“Because…?” Avery’s dad asked.  “I think you should do more than that.  We talked about the things you could say.”

“I’m sorry I was a jerk.  It was nice of you to tutor me when you didn’t have to.  And I looked down your collar at your tits-”

“Declan,” Avery’s dad rebuked him with his name alone, tone sharp.

“Boobs?  Breasts.  Chest.  And I rubbed up against you and that wasn’t cool.”

He was flushed so red, now.

“It wasn’t,” Verona said.  “Thanks for apologizing.”

“Why now?” Avery asked.

“The sooner the better, right?  If Verona’s available to hear it and you’re here-”

“I mean why not yesterday?”

“Because I didn’t know what was happening yesterday, Avery,” her father said.  “Because I have to be fair to all of you but I can’t be one hundred percent fair in the spur of the moment.  On days like yesterday I take your Grumble to the bathroom and I help him wipe himself and then I help him wash, then I go get furniture, I bring everything home, I try to keep it all organized, give Kerry some attention and help her with reading harder language in her game, I take your Grumble to the bathroom again, and then you two have a fight.  I am not always going to be immediate or perfect.  I was asking and I will continue to ask for your patience, in the hours, days, weeks, months, and years to come.”

Avery didn’t look very happy.  She stared down at the ground, frowning.

“It’d be nice if you accepted Declan’s apology, Avery,” Avery’s dad said.  “He’s going to try to be better, right?”

“Yeah,” Declan said.

“Accepted, so long as you’re better from now on,” Avery said.  She looked frustrated, still.

Lucy thought about interjecting, challenging him, but… “Ave?”

“You look like you want to say something.”

“I want to but I-” Avery paused.  She frowned at her dad, looked away, in Verona’s direction.

“Avery deserved better than she got, yesterday,” Verona said.

“I think we all did,” Avery’s dad said.  “But we were tired, we’re dealing with a huge adjustment, that’s something we need to work on.”

Lucy itched to jump in, to add her voice.

“Avery?” Avery’s dad asked, ducking his head down to try to get a look at her face.  “Why do I feel like things aren’t resolved?”

“Why did you give Declan priority?” Avery asked.  “You asked him and then you asked me, and when you weren’t happy with how things were going you didn’t let me leave, you came after me, you criticized how I was dealing-”

“I do think we have to communicate wherever possible.  Raising Sheridan and Rowan, we pretty quickly found out that you guys are going to hold grudges very easily, and the best way to get out from under that is to talk, right away, before things can stew.”

“I’m not Sheridan, you know?  I’m not- I deal with things my way.”

“You’re not, but I think it’s still pretty good policy, Avery.”

“I think listening to your daughter is pretty good policy,” Avery answered, resentment heavy in her voice.  “And not picking Declan to give the first version of events each time.”

“Okay.  There are certain things we can talk about later, without your friends around, as far as how we approach this and what’s going on.  I’m not sure what Declan’s comfortable sharing, but-”

“Sharing?” Declan asked, looking up at his dad.  “You mean the ADHD?”

“Okay, I guess you’re fine with telling them.  Declan has ADHD and in my opinion, when he’s arguing with your mother and I, or when he’s arguing with Kerry, or Sheridan, or you, it’s very easy for him to lose track of the thread of the conversation.  Certain accommodations have to be made.”

“That’s not really fair,” Avery said.

“It’s not fair I have a disability, just like it’s not fair you have to smell like unwashed ass all the time.”

“Language, Declan,” Avery’s dad said.

“And the stuff you said about your friends and how it’s okay Declan acts like that because you used to?” Avery asked.

“I didn’t phrase it quite that way, but I think certain parts of development are natural.  Sometimes it’s awkward, there’s a reason we changed things around from Kerry and you sharing a space with Declan, the second time we shuffled all you guys around.”

Avery made a face.

Lucy wasn’t in the midst of this, and she was straining herself to try to be support for Avery, minding where Avery was at, instead of going on the offensive.  That strain was eased a bit by the fact that she didn’t know for sure what had transpired and hadn’t been there.

It was pretty clear that Avery was frustrated.

“Maybe, uh,” Lucy paused, touching Avery’s arm.  “Maybe this is a better discussion to have over several days?  It’d be good if you could bring your mom in.  And think about what to say and why you’re not cool with this?”

“I’m cool with- I’m glad, at least, that Declan apologized,” Avery said.  “I’m still mad at you, Dad.”

“Okay.  Alright, I… I wish you hadn’t walked away, Avery.  I wish you’d listened to me more instead of storming off.  If you want to call your mom later, when she’s not busy with work or your older brother and sister, we can do that.  It doesn’t look like anything’s going to fall to pieces in the meantime.”

Avery nodded.  “Can I go hang with my friends?  We had plans.”

“Okay.  Text me, let me know what you’re doing.”

Avery nodded.

Lucy kept a hand on Avery’s shoulder as they left the house.  Steering, pushing, supporting.

“My frigging dad, damn it, he’s- he doesn’t get it!  He’s sounding all reasonable but there’s no attention being paid to how I feel, you know?”

“Your dad is great!” Snowdrop echoed.

“I don’t- look, I’m really bothered that Declan was a creep to you, Ronnie,” Avery said, “don’t get me wrong.”

“Nah, I get it.”

“But Declan apologizing doesn’t mean that much, you know?  Because he’s ten and Grumble’s got crappy stuff on TV all the time and Declan picks up on that, and Declan Two and Declan Three both have brothers and there’s no filtering going on there, nobody telling them they’re creepy or budding woman-haters or full-blown woman haters!”

“They’re a great bunch, you’re so wrong,” Snowdrop said.  “I like listening in when they come over.”

“That’s where he’s getting it, huh?” Lucy asked.  “Friends and their brothers?”

“I think he’s getting it everywhere!  If you listen to some of the chat in the multiplayer games he’s playing, it’s there.  It’s on the websites he goes on and it’s his best friend and his second best friend and it’s so bad they scared away the super cool neighbor girl who makes games, and they scared away Declan Four because Declan Four actually respects girls, and it’s filtering down to this rock bottom awful stuff, and my dad’s backing it!”

“Makes no sense,” Ramjam said, as he sat on a bent tree.  It was just sturdy enough and bendy enough that his body weight held it a few feet off the ground, a bobbing seat.  “Girls are great.  I like girls.”

“He might not realize it, but you can do everything right but if you’re creating a dynamic that’s like, Avery shut up and let your brother speak, then maybe even if it’s still because he has ADHD, it’s still telling the girl to shut up and it’s still telling me to take a back seat and it’s still telling me to be quiet and play nice, because that’s easier!”

“Screw that!” Lucy chimed in.

“Screw that, yeah!  Thank you!  Validation!  Finally validation!  Frig!  Augh!  I’m probably such bad company right now, I don’t even get it, I don’t- ugh!”

“You going to be okay?” Lucy asked.

Ramjam rubbed tissue with Avery’s spit over the mask he was working on, then dusted off the little rolled flecks of tissue-lint.  He extended it out toward Avery, and Avery held her alternate mask, judging the weight of it.  “No.”

“I’ve got your back today.  We can do this,” Avery said.  “But nah.  Unless my mom can give my dad a clue, I dunno how to do this.”

Lucy nodded.

“How much worse does this get if I come out to Rowan, Declan, Kerry, and my Grumble?” Avery asked.  “I’m worried it’s going to be really similar.  Lots of little things and being pushed even further down the list of people who get a turn at being listened to.”

“You don’t have to,” Verona said.  She was leaning against a tree, holding her phone down near her thigh, waiting for replies to come in.  “Come out, I mean.  It’s brave if you do but it’s smart if you look at the situation and say it’s not safe, it’s not healthy.  Lots of people wait until they’re out on their own, or they never share with certain people because those people aren’t worth it.”

Avery frowned.

“Sorry.  I’m a weirdo girl with an admitted appreciation for how handsome a wang can be-”

“Heck yeah!” Ramjam commented.

“Handsome?” Lucy asked.  “That’s the go-to adjective?”

Verona grinned for a moment, then dropped the grin.  “And an appreciation for the male form.  Especially skinny forms.  I’m very into boys so long as I don’t have to date them or marry them.  I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about with what you’re dealing with.”

“You get some of it, I think,” Avery said.  “Not about boys and girls, but… parents.”

Verona nodded.  “Sure, yeah.  Anyway, point is-”

“I’m still stuck on handsome,” Lucy said.

“-point is, Avery can ignore me or tell me frig off if you want.  I just read stuff so I could maybe help you out down the road.  And I guess we’re down the road.”

“Thanks, Ronnie, really,” Avery said.  She fiddled with one of the bracelets at her wrist for a second, the hand of the arm with the bracelets holding her mask.  Avery turned.  “Thanks, Luce.  For joining me in being angry at stuff.”

“I wish I had answers,” Lucy told her.  “Or a fix.  Let me know if you want to strategize for that convo with your mom.”

Avery nodded, looking down at her mask.

“Ram,” Lucy said.  “We’ve got a lot to do.  Remember the deal?  Stay quiet on stuff?”

Ramjam nodded with enthusiasm.

“We’ll have a dance party another time,” Verona said.

“That’s great!”

He stood there, grinning.  It looked like he’d maybe hurt himself swinging his head with overlarge horns around, during his long stint of moshing, from how he held head and neck.  His forehead had a few bleeding wounds and gouges from how he’d used his head as a hammer.

“Oh, uh, go, Ramjam,” Avery said.  “Nice work.  Thanks.”

Snowdrop, hands on Ramjam’s shoulders, gave Ramjam a slight push, helping him on his way.  He carried on after she let go, checking both ways as he left the trees and jumped into a ditch.

Their masks had been redone.  Ramjam had hammered in a ton of nails, each nail bent and mashed into the wood, often sideways.  The inside of the mask was actually smooth enough to be bearable.  There were a few Ramjam-shaped dents on the inside, suggesting he’d smacked his forehead against wood or vice versa, until the interior was suitably smooth.

Dark wood festooned with metal, points and nailheads stuck out.  The snake for Verona, the goat for Lucy.  Sinister and dangerous looking.  Goblin made and goblin-influenced.

With luck, that would make it harder for glamour to stick.  With luck, it would bewilder.  With more luck, the symbol of the different masks would help disconnect them from the other ties.

But that in itself wasn’t enough.  They needed to have enough tricks.

The phone call Verona was waiting for came in.

“Easy enough,” Verona said.  “We really owe Nicolette one, don’t we?”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied.  “What’d she say to do?”

Verona bent down, got into her bag, then looked up and around at the various wards and protections they’d put up.

She pulled the eyeball necklace out of their bag, then, crouching, she heaved it up into the air.

The cord broke, and the eyeballs scattered.  For a moment, translucent, they looked like bubbles blowing through branches and leaves.  They floated up, paused, and it seemed like they would float down.

The irises changed colors, glowing.

With Sight, Lucy could see the shadows and stains around the eyeballs.  Each a test like those inkblot tests she’d imagined her therapist would show her, before she’d ever gone to therapy.  A reflection of the echo, what the echo the eye had been taken from had once seen and been.

And she could see past the eyes, like they were holes in the sky.  Much like when she’d faced down the Immure, that dirt elemental god thing in the trees, the door opened wider the longer she recognized it and paid attention to it.

Nicolette on the other side, getting clearer by the second, in a sea of dark staining.  Nicolette was in one of the school workshops, surrounded by a ring of her own set of eyes on a string, and a lot of chalk drawing.  As Nicolette turned her head to one side, the eyes in the air turned as well.

Nicolette looked up and made eye contact with Lucy.  Behind her eyelids was a crammed-together mess of spheres.  The phantom eyeballs in the air fixated on Lucy at the same time Nicolette did.

Nicolette picked up her phone.

Verona’s phone buzzed.

“All good?” Lucy asked.

“She can’t see us, because of the protections we put up against spies,” Verona said.  “She’s asking about that.”

“Is that a problem?” Lucy asked.  Halfway through the sentence, the eyeballs darted away, like birds taking flight, zipping out toward different parts of Kennet.

Verona typed something, then sent.  She double-checked the anti-augury stuff.  “She’s starting.  Eyes on our Faerie soon, we hope, and the two sub-targets.”

“And Pam?” Avery asked.  “Pam, right, we’re not forgetting-”

“We’re not forgetting,” Lucy reassured.  “Don’t worry.”

“Okay.”

“Eyes on Pam too,” Verona told Avery.  “We keep eyes on her so we can keep her as far away from anything and everything we’re doing here as we can.  Toadswallow said our wallflower doppleganger is scheduled to be downtown watching the motel right now, but the way things have been going, she might be trying to keep tabs on us.”

“We’re keeping an eyeball close to us, right?  Or several?”

“That’s the plan but it’s muddled as long as we have these papers up,” Verona said.  She held a hand up in the air.  An eyeball soared down, and as it came down, the eye clouded.  Verona caught it.  “When we get settled I can do up a better diagram with exceptions for Nicolette.”

“Good,” Lucy said.  “Should we go, then?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

Back to the House on Half Street.  Some final rituals, and then they went for Lis and Cig.  Nicolette would hopefully have eyes on them, and they could counter the usual elusiveness.

The goal wasn’t to capture or bind, not right away.  But as the tide turned and the two Others realized something was up, they’d have to respond.  Unsure, anxious, they might reach out to Maricica, or Edith, or someone else involved.  And that would be telling.  If it wasn’t telling enough, they could be bound and questioned.  Edith could be questioned further, with the added pressure of two more conspirators being caught and potentially confirmed.

Edith was still in Matthew’s basement.  They’d asked, but it was safer to not have to move her, and Matthew had said he preferred knowing she was there as opposed to worrying about her elsewhere.

He’d been betrayed on a deep level, but love didn’t evaporate.  Lucy knew that from her mom and Paul.

Cig, Lis, and Edith.  Then, succeed or fail, all of this prep, the masks, the outside contacts, everything else, would all come together.

They’d go for Maricica.  The real danger, the real challenge.  They had scraps, but this would work best if they had more.  Evidence, information, anything from Cig or Lis.

“Put everything away,” Verona said, to Lucy, Avery, and Snowdrop, but the glance at Avery suggested it was mostly aimed at her.

“Here, while you’re getting organized,” Lucy told Avery.  She passed Avery a top.  It wasn’t Avery’s usual style, and was kind of unisex, but the most important thing was that it was red.

The idea for the mask change had come from Avery.

They’d change up their tactics, and adjust their approaches.  Lucy would be backline.  It wasn’t a rotation of roles, either.  Verona would be undergoing a minor, reversible ritual to go a bit Other, so she could take Lucy’s usual position.  They’d traded.

Leaving Avery with her own adjustment.

Avery had been prey too often, the deer, a traveler of the Paths.  Giving chase, flanking.

Still a denizen of the Paths, Avery would be waiting, prepared, ready to challenge the errant Faerie who came to her.  Her mask resembled Lucy’s old one.  The angles were sharper, it was unpainted, burned, and the nails protruded, with a lot of points.

Avery thought it was important, for maximum impact, and Lucy wasn’t going to deny her friend’s instincts.

“Let’s hurry,” Lucy said.  “Less time we spend getting there, the more time we have to prep.”

“I’m usually down for a run,” Avery said.

There wasn’t a lot of time to pull the individual things together.  They had time for one or two rituals or quick preparations first, and then they’d be out there, after the first components in the greater plan.  Lis and Cig.  Then Maricica.  They’d bring out the masks around the time Liberty came storming in, turning the tables.

Wearing red, not flanking or chasing, but waiting, Avery would be the bait… until she wasn’t.  Wearing red and wearing a Wolf’s mask.

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