Dash to Pieces – 11.13
Author: Wildbow

Dash to Pieces – 11.13 | Pale

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Toils, sicknesses, deaths, dooms, pains, discords, fears, ruins, madnesses, and disasters.

Lucy frowned.  She had already crossed out deaths, pains… she paused.  Sicknesses?  She crossed out sicknesses.  Sicknesses spread, didn’t they?  What about ruins?

The music blasted throughout the house.  Avery had brought an old boom box that, weirdly, worked to put music out there when a phone was plugged in, though it referred to ‘pods’ and not phones.  Lucy’s leg and fingers tapped in time with various parts of the music, even as she frowned at the screen in front of her.

“Uh, guys?” Lucy asked, looking up from her desk.  Avery was sitting in the living room with her phone, Snowdrop sitting so her back was to Avery’s front, half-asleep.  Snowdrop roused a bit as Lucy called out.

“What’s up?” Verona asked.

“What do you need?” Avery asked.

“I’ve got a list of categories of curse, like toil, doom, discord, fear, ruin, madness, and disaster.  What’s ruin in this context?”

“Ask Nicolette?  She knows about curses,” Verona said, from the repurposed kitchen.

“I don’t want to bother her while she’s already helping us, and I don’t want to make too many outgoing calls if our targets might intercept somehow.”

“I think we’re okay,” Verona said, matter-of-fact.  “Hmm.  Ruin.  Broken home, lose your business, maybe?”

“Broken bones, maybe?”  Avery asked.

“I think those things would be…” Lucy looked over the list.  “Discord, disaster, then for the broken bone, pain or doom?”

Verona walked over from the kitchen, pulling off rubber gloves.  She stepped up onto one of the supporting bars between the chair legs and leaned over and into Lucy.  “Hmm.  The vibe I get from disaster is, like, natural disaster.  Nothing aimed at you, just… like discord, there.  Discord would make relationships fall apart, breaking up connections, divide important people.”

“That’s my vibe,” Lucy said.

“So maybe disaster is the same thing, but for things?  Shelves falling down, cars crashing.  Putting them in the way without targeting them directly.  That’d be the kind of thing you could use to get someone scrambling.”

“What’s ruin though?” Lucy asked.

“I think Avery’s right,” Verona said.  “Not pain, but something heavier hitting, break a bone or whatever.”

“But Melissa had an agent of Doom after her, sent by Nicolette, and she snapped her ankle,” Lucy noted, a bit frustrated.

Verona reached past Lucy to scroll a little.  “I think the Doom is more like… fate.  A disaster can break your leg, just like a bad bit of fate can.  The question is how you get there.  Even sickness could break your leg if it weakens your bones or something.”

Lucy frowned, then turned that frown into a withering stare that she aimed at the screen in front of her.  The text, scanned in, had little artifacts and partially-erased pencil marks and notes.

As if a harsh enough look could make it fix itself and make more sense.

“Like I was telling Declan, study the text, y’know?” Verona asked.  “Don’t get something?  Skip ahead.  Look for stuff labeled ruin-”

“Enyo, or Choreezo?  I don’t know how to read these symbols.”

“Sure, see what it says.”

Lucy checked for the appendix, then found ‘Curse, Enyo’, and picked a page.

Enyalios’ Turn – Spoil Victory
Curse, Enyo / Abstract Pendulum / Impudent Enyalios / Duels, Domestic

When the practitioner knows she will lose a battle, she may choose to make the mark of Enyalios, son of Enyo, with her own spilled blood.  Best done early in the engagement, while turned away from the foe, lying sprawled, or both.  Every blow struck or wound inflicted against the practitioner, especially those blows struck unfairly, will help to set the curse.  Three at a minimum is recommended.  The practitioner must survive, stay conscious, and the practitioner must keep the symbol intact.  The larger the symbol is drawn, the larger the space that must be protected, but the easier it is to draw.  Then, to bring the curse to life, a retaliatory blow must be struck.

While a practice originally used in duels, Enyalios’ Turn is sometimes used in other situations where violence is rampant.  The wife or child with a violent boor of a husband or parent may use this curse to put an end to the violence.  We note this now because it is important to stress that the blow should be struck confidently, with no fear for what retaliation may follow, and this is rarely an easy task.

Once set, the tables will have turned, and the structure of the aggressor will be altered so that flesh is akin to butter and bone akin to brittle clay.  Their violence will only harm them, if it is met confidently, and at this stage the practitioner may deliver a single blow sure to bring her foe low, she may break or deform the individual, or, as we recommend for situations domestic, she may fend off all harm, let the aggressor leave bewildered and weak, and exert will and power at the next opportune moment.  With the will of the cursewright at work, an afflicted man is sure to break or deform his own legs or feet as he takes a step down the stairs, and shatter other bones in the fall, but he shall not die, for Enyalios is the son of Ruin, with no direct connection to Death.  Seal the curse by picking one wound inflicted by the aggressor and aggravating it, digging fingers into gouges or pounding a hand against the ache, then smearing the blood over the curse-mark, closing it.  The target’s flesh and bone will set as it has been rendered, all maladies will be explainable by innocent medicine, and every wound of the practitioner’s but the one selected will quickly heal.  The selected wound will scar, catch, or otherwise go unhealed, in such a way it plagues the practitioner every day for the remainder of their living life.

Enyalios’ Turn may be foreshadowed with the display of Enyalios’ sign; see the Foreshadowing section in chapter 4 for more details.  Doing so will help the retaliatory blow to find its target in a timely fashion.  Taking time to host or participate in the Impudent Orgy under Enyalios’ sign will help make the curse and its side effects favorable to the practitioner.  Not detailed in full here, the simply titled Enyalius, by R.E. Diggs appears to be a good resource for hosting the ritual, or should help in finding one of the regular annual or semiannual festivals.

Cautions: The mark, if broken before used and sealed, will see the curse rebounded to the one who wrought it, and it will take some time to end.  If the curse is not driven home thoroughly by receiving blows, then the countermeasures (see chapter 10) will be easy or accidental in canceling the curse and sending it back to the practitioner.  If the true mystical nature of the curse is made obvious, modifying the victim’s structure or form, then it is recommended their mouth be removed or altered enough or they should be confined in a place where their words cannot reach anything living, or else innocence will be invoked and the curse rebounded back to the practitioner.

“Badass,” Verona said.  “What’s the mark of Enyalios?”

“No,” Avery said, reading over Lucy’s shoulder.  She’d approached when Lucy wasn’t looking and had apparently just finished reading.  “Nope, nope, nope, that’s not okay.”

“It is badass, and no, it isn’t okay,” Lucy said.  “Why do you want to know the mark?”

“Because I’m wondering how easy it is to draw.”  Verona leaned harder into Lucy, reaching for the trackpad on the laptop.

“Get off, you’re such a pest sometimes!” Lucy complained.  “Don’t you have your own stuff to do?”

Verona hopped down off the back of the chair and pulled out her phone, not really going back to her own stuff.

“You’re not doing this, right, Lucy?” Avery asked.  “I think that violates oaths.”

“I’m not doing it.  We swore not to harm and even as a defensive thing, it’s mean in a way that’d mess us up really bad if the person we used it on had any excuse or whatever.  I’m going over the list of curses and trying to reduce it down to things I’m willing to do.  Starting with the big categories.”

“Start with the basics?” Avery suggested.

“Well, yeah, but there’s a lot of basics.  Twenty four curses and nineteen different vehicles for the curses that don’t have a vehicle built in.”

“Vehicles?”

“Like, you can make items that hold the curse, or draw it, or put it in an animal and have that animal stalk the target and deliver the curse…”

“So not like tiny cars, but ways to get the curse there.”

“Yeah.”

Verona cleared her throat.  “The Impudent Orgy is a festival, often several days and nights long, where custom elixirs are given to each participant, mind and mood altering concoctions to help the process of role reversal along.  Each may take as much or as little as they want, depending on their confidence as to whether they can wholeheartedly participate.  During the ritual, all norms are flipped, the wise are made fools, the proud humiliated, drunkards remain sober and the sober stay soused.  Meek maidens brawl, shout, and drag burly soldiers in flowing dresses to-”

Verona paused, eyes tracking her phone as she read.

“We’re wasting time on that,” Lucy said.

“Go meek maidens,” Verona said.  She put her phone away.  “You know what you’re doing then?”

“I will figure it out.  You do your thing,” Lucy told her.  “I might have to find another text.  This feels pretty extreme.”

“Luck,” Avery said, giving Lucy’s shoulder a light tap with her fist.

“Thanks, Ave.”

Half of the curse categories remained on the list, after she’d crossed Ruin off.  She tried to visualize a generalized fear-causing curse and it was hard to imagine Maricica not doing pretty well in handling it.  She was friends with Alpeana, a nightmare.

Discord?  If discord upset connections and alliances, then what would that do?  It might make a huge difference, or it might make none at all, if Maricica’s primary allies were minor like Lis and Cig.

There was also the aspect where, if Lucy dwelt on the Spoil Victory curse, the curse could be seen as a gamble.  Against a warrior with a huge skill difference, like herself against Guilherme, there was a very good chance the mark could get seen or targeted, or that she’d never be able to land the blow to drive the curse home.

She put the consequences of that particular curse out of her mind.  A single strike, cutting through flesh and bone and warping it, leaving them disabled and deformed- no.

Maricica wasn’t a warrior, but she was adept at the social stuff.  There was a chance that anything like discord could be tricky to use on someone too good at managing discord.

What didn’t fall in that category?

Toil, disaster, maybe madness, if she wanted to dent Maricica’s confidence.

Disaster could be dangerous, but she’d look.

Basic toil.  She opened the table of contents and selected the basic practices.  There was a lot to sort through, but she found one.

Sisyphus’s Stone – Shouldered Burden
Curse, Város / Basic Curses / Foils, Hobbles, Physical
Focus: raw stone, hewn into a rough cube shape or a pyramid prism.

Sometimes set upon a cocky apprentice by a master, or against a rival in work.  The author of this text was once invited to investigate possible curses at work in a ballet troupe in eastern Europe.  A lovely dancer took to the stage before a crowd of two hundred and it was obvious that this particular curse was at work.  Every spin and every effort took more effort than the last.  Watching from the audience, this author could not interrupt the show to stop her, and watched as she exerted herself further, pushing herself to the point that sweat streamed down her body and veins stood out against arms and legs.  She persevered, and blood vessels burst, spreading purple-black bruises across her neck, arms, and legs.  It was perhaps the most beautiful, raw performance I’ve ever had the grace to see, though certainly not what the troupe’s director had intended.

When she gave her grande reverence, she bowed, and lacked the strength to rise again.  This author hurried to be the first to attend to her, had my blackguard claim poison, and used the time to bid her to help me find the focus of the curse, for I could not touch it myself.  A week later, when this author had figured out the cursewright, the dancer was instructed to pass the stone back to the culprit, a rival dancer, pressing it into her hands.  We then hurried to go far from the reach of the culprit, who would want to pass it back, and this proved an unnecessary if pleasant step.  To pass the focus back the holder must first carry it to the peak of their particular mountain, and the cursewright was not strong enough.  The brave dancer and I retired to illicit romance on the shores on Spain for the two additional months she was told she would need to recover, but because the effects were phantasmal and psychological, not truly physical, the healing was quick.  She kept my company for those two months regardless, I think, to thank me for being her heroine, rescuer, and supporter.

The curse sets a physical weight to deeds and designs, and this weight compounds easily.  For the model presenting clothing to the camera, the clothing may take on a physical weight.  The writer’s pen may grow heavy, their hand tired, then the arm may be debilitated, and ultimately the body may become stiff.  The considerations in the writer’s mind may become heavy enough it bows the head and makes standing difficult, the sum total of ideas big enough in their mind that they may not notice.  Whatever the subject desires, actions taken toward those ends take on physical weight, growing as they draw closer to obtaining what they desire.

The curse does not prohibit action, but taxes the one taking the action.  The strong of will can see it through.  Should they manage to accomplish their goal, they can pass on the token of the curse to another.  The subject may also discard the token, but if the cursewright is canny or effective in setting the curse, the token may reappear, stronger than before.

Sisyphus’s Stone may be used with any vehicle that can deliver the token.

It looked like any curse could be returned to the sender, and this one had some barriers to that.  The trick was deciding the vehicle, and figuring out a way to make this tricky enough that their target or targets wouldn’t just throw it away.  It created a kind of limit on what she was willing to apply that went beyond the restrictions of the oath.

If it could get thrown back in their faces, in her face, or at someone she cared about, then was she willing to endure it?

Her casual browsing turned up a disaster curse that would humiliate by way of targeting someone’s wardrobe, which didn’t make a lot of sense when Maricica was naked a lot of the time, clad only in wings, and one that hampered fast movement, throwing lethal and vehicle-disabling traps into the way.  There was a madness curse that would plague a person with voices from the past, and a curse of madness and sickness that would draw an individual into the throes of addiction.

Not a lot of it fit very well.  The stone curse didn’t seem to cause permanent harm, which might make it easier for someone like Maricica to avoid, but that made it a lot easier for Lucy to justify applying.

There were maybe ways to customize or ease up on the most severe parts of the curses, but Lucy didn’t have a ton of time.  She flipped forward to the sections on securing curses, making sure they landed.

Was it Right?  Was there a way to point to Right?

Right and Toils.  There were segments about how to justify the work.  Toils curses could be justified in use if one had been promised a position or powers in a company or group, then short-shrifted.  There was also a term that kept coming up…

“Sorry to interrupt again,” Lucy said.

“Please do,” Avery replied.  “What’s up?”

Verona poked her head out of the kitchen.

“Blood, sweat, and tears?  Any way we could each contribute one?  That might mean we get a serious burden type curse spread out among us three, but…”

“I did something using blood sweat and tears with my barometer,” Avery said, still sitting with her back to the wall.  “Something about the Self?”

Lucy looked at the screen.  “I think it’s like… saying your Self has certain Right or Rights, because you’ve shed the three things and the person you’re cursing hasn’t.”

“So we want blood, sweat, and tears that come directly from this whole Kennet thing?” Verona asked.

“Ideally.”

“I got you covered,” Verona said, pausing inside the kitchen before stepping out.  “Hand out.”

Lucy frowned but put her hand out.

Verona deposited a purple stick-on bandage in Lucy’s hand.

“Gross!”  Lucy went to put it on the table, then stopped and put it on a clean white piece of paper instead.  “So gross.”

“It’s what you asked for,” Verona said, laughing, then she turned around and showed Lucy her ankles.  “Tore up my heels walking around with shoes that aren’t good for walking, with all the hikes to the shrines.  I’ve been using those to keep it from rubbing as much.  Bit of blood there.

“Alright,” Lucy said.  “Avery, any chance you can help me out with sweat or tears?”

“Sweat’s easy, I think.  It’s summer and I’m going to be running around a lot later.  If you don’t need it right now?”

Leaving tears.

Lucy paused, considering.

She was hoping to put a burden on Maricica, but so much of what they were doing felt weightier.  The masks they’d chosen were heavier, with the nails and things added to them, and because the masks weren’t theirs.  There were more things to do, all meaningful and important, and there was the consideration of going on the offensive, and everything that meant.

And, with the switched roles, Lucy was in a position that eclipsed roles that Verona and Avery had occupied before.  Verona as the backline, the member of the group keeping an eye out for trouble… it would be Lucy in that role.  Lucy putting on the goat’s mask, with its keen nightvision, its ominous intent.  Lucy was used to being the one in front, challenging the bad guy, the Wrongdoer.  She was ceding that role to Verona, letting Verona be the group’s fangs.

Avery was normally the one to support from the side, both in a crisis and as a good person and friend.  There was something in a parallel between the goat and the deer, two horned herbivores, that made Lucy feel like it tied into that identity.  She had to support an angry, frustrated Avery and a very Verona Verona.

None of that even dipped into the other stuff, like how so much of this was bait, multi-layered.

But to start with…

“I’m going for a walk,” Lucy said.

“You sure?” Verona asked.

Lucy got her phone and put on the headphones, misaligned so only one ear was covered.  “I need a cube-shaped rock or something close enough I can get it to that shape.  Going to go walk by the water, check on some stuff, get my head sorted. I’ll be back and I’ll hopefully finish up the curses later.”

“You’re outta luck,” Snowdrop told Lucy.

“Why?” Lucy replied.

“I can’t help ya.  You’ll probably have to find the rock you want on your own.”

“So I should look, but…?”

“Go with her,” Avery told Snowdrop.

“I can, I will, I can be helpful that way, somehow,” Snowdrop said, getting to her feet.

Avery, sitting with her back to the wall, close to the cube, put her foot up and pushed at Snowdrop’s rump.  “Go on, then.  Keep an eye on her until you have to part ways.”

“Can I have the black rope?” Lucy asked.

Avery fished it out of her bag and threw it to Lucy.  Lucy caught it, then wrapped it around her wrist and hand.  Cool.

“I’ll let you out,” Verona told Lucy.  “You take the key, and… this.”

Verona held out a jar.  It was an opaque, tinted glass jar with a plastic lid, a makeup brand’s mark and labeling stamped on the top.

“Is there hair inside?”

“It’s empty.  But if you decide you’ve found your sweat or tears, you can store ’em.”

“Good call,” Lucy replied, taking the jar.  She took the key as well, then pulled on her shoes, because it was warm enough to warrant kicking them off and going barefoot whenever it was safe, and then left with Snowdrop at her side, backpack on.

“You’re not too tired for this?” she asked the yawning opossum-in-human-form.

“I’m okay, I’ve usually got great sleep management habits.”

“Any help you can give is great, then you can have an afternoon nap.”

Snowdrop yawned again.

They parted ways pretty quickly after their exit.  Lucy told Snowdrop where to meet her, so she could secure their re-entry while making sure they weren’t watched, and then let Snowdrop head downtown, while she headed east from the location.  When she was sure she was in the clear, she stepped out of view and emerged at a rooftop.  The wind had less obstructions up here, and it helped her to cool off a bit.

She found Reagan’s place.  From the rooftop vantage point, she could draw her eye from Reagan’s to the city center downtown.  The big clock.

Everything about today was the opposite of then.  The only people out were a few scattered elderly and people in their forties.  It seemed like most kids and teenagers were either down by the shore or staying inside.  Anything that wasn’t water or air conditioning was a bit too hot for walking around on hot sidewalks and pavement.  It was so bright out she had to squint if she was facing any direction remotely facing the sun.

Back then, it had been chilly, dark, and raining.  Children as far as the eye could see.  The clock had been glowing, the hands turning in rapid-time, and it had been violent, brutish, and messed up.

Standing here, she tried to absorb that, recollecting it.

Lucy moved on, using the black rope.

She hadn’t known Collins, except as a face in the group that night.  A guy with tattoos who had been too badly hurt to get his meal.  He’d seemed dead, but he’d been alive enough, apparently, to become a part of the choir, and an aspect of Collins was now part of Reggie, the composite kid.

Collins’s house was one of the more run down ones in the less taken care of end of the run down part of town.  There were houses tucked away that were practically falling down.  There were two cars in the driveway, and a standing toolbox with some rust collecting on it.  Nobody was working on the cars, except in the sense that they looked like the kinds of cars that were perpetually being worked on.  Collins’s family, presumably.

She skipped ahead.

The intention was to go to Gabe’s house.  In a way, being closer to the center of town, Gabe’s place was more out of the way.  A minute or two of extra driving to navigate to either bridge and loop around to the downtown area or school.  There were houses with pools and houses with stone exteriors that didn’t look like they were falling apart.  Lucy’s own home was, if narrow, one of the nicer ones on her block, but the worst house in this corner of the neighborhood was nicer than hers, and it wasn’t narrow.

As she searched the area for Gabe’s, a place she’d seen but forgot the exact address of, she saw a car.  She ventured closer.

The front door opened.  She almost retreated, then stopped herself.

Paul.  Her mom’s ex-fiancé.  When she’d last seen him she’d cursed him.

He saw her and recognized her as she saw him.  She saw him take a moment, and then he raised his hand in a wave.

“How are you doing, Paul?” she called out, from the street.  She used her Sight, and she saw the sword that had been struck through him, stuck through his ribs, roughly a few inches down from his right nipple.  There was a goblin edge to it, uneven and serrated, and a red sash bound to the end, that blew in her direction.

Again, it seemed like he had to take a second to consider his response.  Or if he even wanted to respond.  Her heart started to sink, and she braced for the flare of anger that would come if he just went to his car.

He responded, instead.  “Moving.”

“I’m not stalking you,” she told him.  “Looking for an old classmate’s place.”

“Who?” he asked.

“Gabe Necaise?”

“Mrs. Necaise lives at the corner,” Paul said, pointing.  “I don’t know a Gabe.”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied.  She paused.  She hadn’t expected that much of an exchange, so she hadn’t really remembered that Gabe didn’t exist in innocent awareness, for the most part.

She glanced back over her shoulder, in the direction of the bridge and Avery’s side of Kennet and the gas station closer to Avery’s.  She took in a deeper breath, then told Paul, “I’m sorry I flew off the handle.  I’m not sorry about what I said, except for one or two things, but I’m sorry I went off on you like that.”

“Okay,” he said.  Pause.  “I’m sorry about things too.”

“Okay,” she replied.  Frustration warred with the fact that he was at least talking to her.  It was such a vague, aimless apology.  Images of her and Paul and of Paul and her mom sat heavy in her mind.  Gentle, happy, family images.  Family was the one reliable refuge she had a lot of the time, and for a good while his absence had felt like an open wound in that refuge.  Still did, kind of.

She was still angry, but she had other places to channel that anger to right now.

“Got a month and a half left and then I’m getting out of Kennet,” he said.  “We won’t have these heavy run-ins anymore.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Wish it could’ve gone differently.”

“It’s up to you, Paul.  Still is.”

He looked away, off in the direction of the highway that led out of town.

Too much.  Too far, pushing him.  Why the fuck did she have to gently lead him on like an easily startled horse?  The fuck?  Fuck.  It was still too far.

She tried to figure out what else to say, to get to the place in the conversation she wanted to be.

The door opened again.

Uncle Brad, no longer deserving of the uncle part.  Paul’s brother.  A face Lucy had seen around town more than she’d seen Paul.  About five years younger, black-haired, scruffy-chinned.  Where Paul was skinny, with wrinkles in his forehead and a dash of gray hair evenly distributed across his black hair, his brother had the same features without the wrinkles or the gray, his hair longer and more styled, a bit more breadth across chest and arms.

The guy looked at Paul, then looked from Paul to Lucy.

“Are you shitting me?” the guy asked.

“Brad,” Paul said. “Get in the car, it’s fine.”

“How is it fine?” the guy asked.  “Hey, you little psycho!  You should be in jail!”

The guy advanced across the lawn, and Lucy held her ground.  Paul intercepted Brad, trying to grab his shoulder.  Brad shoved his hand away.

“You spread lies about my brother, told the guy at the gas station some outrageous shit!  What the fuck is wrong with you?  Did you tell others?  How long have you been saying that crap?  You should be in jail, vandalizing his car, ruining his name, our name!”

“It’s fine,” Paul told him.  “It’s my thing, mine to handle.”

“You’re a dickless fuck sometimes, Paul.  You let a kid walk all over you?  Hey, Lucy, that’s your name, right?  Psycho kid.  You cost him his job!  That shit you were saying got back to his boss-”

“That’s not what it was,” Paul said.

“It got back to the boss and he got fired for not being ‘management material’.  When you say this shit, it has consequences!  That’s grounds to sue!  Lost wages, because of your libel!”

“When you and your mom say the kind of crap you said when I was little, it has consequences too,” Lucy replied, not really raising her voice, her volume a little softer than usual, if anything.

“Fuck you!  Fuck that!  You’re a danger, acting like you did, you shouldn’t be out on the streets!”

“Brad!” Paul interjected.  He grabbed at his brother, was pushed away again, but grabbed harder, this time.  “Stop!  This is my problem to handle-”

“You can’t handle shit, you coward!”

“I’m sorry,” Paul said, not to Brad, but to Lucy.

“Don’t apologize for me!” Brad spat out the words.

Lucy’s heart pounded.  Because she wasn’t entirely sure how to read this situation, but if Brad won this confrontation, she wasn’t entirely positive he wouldn’t come after her.  A lot of her stuff that she was armed with wouldn’t work against an innocent.  Or it would, but the cost would be steep.  She swallowed hard.

Dr. Mona would have told her to walk away.  She didn’t walk away.

Paul wrestled with his brother for a second, until he managed to thrust Brad a few steps in the direction of the car.

Brad huffed and then walked away.  He didn’t get into the car like Paul wanted, but instead leaned against it, arms folded.

Because Brad was kind of in earshot, Paul approached a bit.  Lucy remained where she was, tense, eyeing the both of them.

A good fifteen feet separated them, further than normal conversations happened at, but the entire lawn didn’t separate them anymore.

“He’s protective of me,” Paul said.

“Aren’t you the older brother?”

“I-” Paul said, shrugging one shoulder, shaking his head a bit, not making eye contact, and he didn’t finish the sentence.

“Did you really lose your job because of me?”

“Nah.  You said I was a coward and… I dunno.  Turns out a lot of people agree with you.  Even Brad.  Even my mom.”

“It was the coward thing that got around, then, not the-”

“Mostly the coward thing, seems like.  Other stuff got comments but it was joking.  I guess the stuff you said about me being a mama’s boy definitely had me second guessing stuff I’d normally do, like rubbing her feet.”

Lucy scrunched up her nose.

He went on, rambling a bit, “I’d moved back in with her, you know, but… fact I wasn’t catering to her or being quite the fawning son didn’t go over so well.  It’s been tense.  So I’m moving.  It might not stick, just to warn, I might be around Kennet again, so don’t go… pulling a knife on me?”

“Not the plan,” Lucy said, quiet.

“Good,” he said, awkwardly.

“I’ve been in therapy.”

“Your mom told me.  That’s good.  I’m sorry if I’m the reason you’re going.”

“Some of it.  It’s a lot of things, you know?  Like I said back at the gas station.”

He gave her an apologetic half smile and a shrug.  Noncommittal, hard to read.

“If you’re talking to my mom about stuff, have you done anything to make it up to her, or… anything?” Lucy asked.

“We’re not going to get back together, I don’t think that’s-”

“That’s not what I want.”

“Okay,” he said.  He paused.  “I’d like to, I think.  When money’s better.  I know I put her in a bad spot with the house.”

Lucy looked off to the side, in the direction of Gabe’s.  “I think Booker’s moved on, mostly.”

“That’s good.”

“And if we’re… are we even?” she asked.  “I screwed up, I lost it, I scratched up your car, I said crap, I laid that coward and incest crap on you-”

Paul shook his head, glancing away as she made eye contact.

“-but you didn’t call the cops on me, you could’ve been meaner.  I really still do wish you’d tell me why, but-”

“I’ve thought a lot about that day, what you said, what I said.”

“What you didn’t say.”

“Yeah,” Paul replied.  “I don’t know what I’d do different.  I think anything I said would hurt you more than-”

“Not knowing sucks most,” she said.

“Ah,” he said.  He paused.

The pause became a silence.  He didn’t volunteer anything.

She swallowed hard again.  “If Booker’s square with you and you and I are even over the thing at the gas station, and if you really do mean it when you say you’ll make it up to my mom-”

“Gotta get the job at the new town, first.”

She nodded hurriedly, not wanting to lose track of what she was saying.  “Then, for what it’s worth, I’ll let it go.  I forgive you.  I hope you’ll forgive the gas station thing.”

“Already have,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.  “Then so long as you mean it about making it up to my mom, helping her out or covering-”

“I mean it.”

“Okay,” she told him.

She looked at him with the Sight.  The sword embedded in him was more feeble than it had been, metal rusting and structure faltering.  A piece of the handle dropped away and dissolved into stain.

“Okay,” she said again.

“Gonna go,” he said.  “Take care of yourself.  And your mom and brother, okay?”

“That’s the plan,” she told him.

“Have fun with your friend Gabe.”

She watched as he ambled back to the car.  She listened, earring in, then decided she didn’t want to hear what the earring picked up.

Paul still hadn’t dished the details.

Paul had still been her stepfather for most of the parts of her life that she could remember, and he still got in the car with his brother, who had been one of the people driving in the racism-laden wedges between Paul and her mom.

This wasn’t him being decent or good.  But she’d kind of come, hoping to find him, because the curse weighed heavily in the back of her mind.

She didn’t know if it had been constructive or destructive, good or bad, really.  The circumstances of her applying it had been bad, her losing it and all.  The untrained usage, bad.

But moving forward with the goat mask and curses had felt like something she couldn’t easily do, so long as that was unresolved.

The bracelet at her ankle ticked over.  Someone watched her.

She made her way over to Gabe’s house, at the corner, and the observer kept their eyes on her.  Gabe.  He hadn’t lived that far from her and Verona.  Close to the church.  Some of the houses up at this end of the neighborhood were nice, too.

She hadn’t really known Gabe.

She could remember the conversation, and she felt the regrets.

Feelings welled, and she held them down.  That wasn’t managing them, it wasn’t coming to terms with them.  Postponing them.  That was okay too.

She was being watched.  She was very tired of being watched.

She turned her head and she looked, and she saw a woman at the end of the street.  One she didn’t recognize, but felt was vaguely recognizable.

The woman straightened from tying her shoe, and then looked over at Lucy.  They were far enough apart they couldn’t really see the details of one another’s eyes, only the generalities of expression.  Neither of them revealed much.  The bracelet kept ticking over.

Could have been a person paying an unusual amount of attention to her.  A resident of this neighborhood who knew she didn’t live here, ready to assume the worst of her.

Could have been Lis.  Was most likely Lis, she felt.

Could have been Maricica.

Lucy won the staring contest.  The woman moved on.

Lucy turned her attention to Gabe’s house.  To the fact she’d failed him.  To the fact that, when she really took it in, Gabe’s family had lost someone like she’d lost her stepdad.  Like she’d lost her dad before her.

Like she was supposed to lose John.  Like she was going to lose Guilherme.

The darkness and pressure of the huge number of hostile faces around her on the night Gabe had been consumed by the Choir did not feel at all disconnected from this empty neighborhood street, or Kennet, or the world as a whole.

Too often, it was dark and it was ugly, and it was unreasonable out there.

She really wished Paul had been able to man up and change, in that conversation she’d just had with him.  As they’d talked and been more reasonable, when he hadn’t run, she’d let herself hope a bit.  She’d hoped that in a reasonable talk he’d meet her halfway, she’d extended herself, strained herself, trying to connect, and he hadn’t reached back, really.

When she’d left, she realized, she’d hoped to get angry.  She hadn’t spelled it out in thought, but now that she was here and the anger was so out of reach, she realized what she’d hoped for.

She didn’t get what she hoped for, very often.  Or she got it in half measures.

Paul probably would have been a really crummy stepdad anyway, she thought.  A drop of sweat rolled down her forehead and got in her eye, and it was like the key to floodgates, moisture escaping both eyes.

Partially blinded, she hung her head, stepped back a bit, and sat down hard, her back to some random’s fence, a fire hydrant beside her.

In a way, undoing the curse she’d laid on him, she’d let him go.  If she hadn’t, he might have been pulled back to staying with his mom, the label of coward chasing him.

Knees to her chest, tears still tracing down her cheeks, back to the fence, she thought of Gabriel and the missing and the dead, trying to summon up that anger.

It just hurt, instead.  And with that thought, tears came freely again.

Her bracelet ticked.  Ticked.  Ticked.  The cube of wood rotated against her ankle, and then it stopped.  Because the person watching her was close.  Within ten feet.

“Go away,” Lucy said.

“Will do, Avery’ll be proud of me,” Snowdrop said.  She walked around Lucy, then settled down at the spot where she wouldn’t be rubbing up against the fire hydrant, and leaned into Lucy, head on Lucy’s shoulder.  “When opossum babies are in distress, their mom won’t lick their buttholes, so they stay-”

“What?” Lucy asked, coughing out a laugh.

“Nah, see, I’m clarifying that if you need me to lick your butthole, I’m willing to help you out.  That’s the reason.  Okay?  I’m not trying to be funny.”

Lucy laughed.

“I’ve only told that bit to Avery once.  She loves it.  Always leaves her going ah, why did I pick you as a familiar, ugh, you put me in a bad mood, you’re the best, Snowdrop.”

Lucy sighed, and leaned her head against the top of Snowdrop’s.

“What’s wrong?” Snowdrop asked.

“Family.  All of this.  I came out hoping to get what I needed to set up some… stuff.  Ended up undoing something instead.”

“Hmm.  If it’s what you need, you’re crumb outta luck, Luce,” Snowdrop said.  She wriggled around for a second, getting into a position where she could dig into her pocket, then pulled out a stone.  A cube.

“That’s… perfect.”

“It’s one of the many stones in Kennet that haven’t been smashed yet by Cherrypop.”

“Ohhh.  Huh.”

“Smashing rocks against rocks is a way for her to get amped up.”

Lucy closed her hand around the rock.

“Did you get the stuff you needed?” Snowdrop asked.  She pointed at Lucy’s cheek.

“Oh, crap, I forgot, let me-”

Lucy started to get into her bag, then reconsidered, checked nobody was watching, and grabbed the papers instead.  She slapped them down.  Snowdrop helped.

Touching one face of the cube to her cheekbone, she let the stone soak up the tear, then did it with the opposite face.

“For Wrongs done, things lost, for tears shed, and tears that can’t be shed, because the victims have been forgotten.  We have lost and lost things for Kennet, lost a classmate, lost faith, lost a friend, lost time, lost a summer.  Can you say the same?”

She’d have to find a vehicle for the curse, and she had ideas.  But that was only part of it.

“We’ve bled for Kennet, gone to battle for Kennet, and you’ve been lax in your duties in defending us, holding onto the excuse of being wounded.  We’ve worked for Kennet until our hands were bleeding.  We’ve put life and limb on the line, to undo things you had a hand in.  Can you say the same?”

Lucy rubbed the dot of blood on the bandage against two opposing sides of the stone cube.

“I’m going,” she said.

“I’m coming,” Verona said.

“I’ll be out there,” Avery told them.  “Keep your phones on for Nicolette.  She says you shouldn’t talk to her directly, in case she’s being listened in on.”

“Business as usual until we turn the tables, new masks,” Lucy said.

Avery nodded.

They’d use their old kits until they wouldn’t.

“Still need your sweat,” Lucy told Avery.

“Later,” Avery said.  “It’s got to be sweat shed on Kennet’s behalf, right?”

“Yep.  Just so long as we didn’t forget,” Lucy told Avery, with a bit of a nod.  She threw the spare key to Avery.  Avery caught it out of the air, then waved with the same hand.

They stepped outside.  Lucy looked up at the sky, which was in the latter stages of sunset.  They’d taken the afternoon, and now they’d have the twilight hours and early evening to work.

“I tipped them off,” Lucy told Verona.  “Made eye contact with the doppleganger, I think.”

“Okay,” Verona answered.  “Once is fine, we can have them a little nervous, wondering if it was a coincidence.”

Lucy nodded.

“Ready?”

“Are you ready?  Did your thing?”

Verona grinned.  “Pretty much.”

“That’s vague.  What are you doing, Ronnie?”

The way opened up.

Verona grinned.

Verona watched as Lucy left to go get the cube and stuff, taking Snowdrop with her.

“She took your opossum familiar.”

“Snowdrop’s her own opossum first, then a member of the team-”

“Yeah yeah, but she’s yours, isn’t she?” Verona asked.

Avery got up from her seat, bringing a whole mess of sopping wet bandages with her, slung over one shoulder.  “I don’t like that way of putting it.  Too owner-y.”

“You’re hers, right?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.”

Verona sighed.

She had the pipes rigged and the setup was arranged so that there were pipes with wire wrapped around them, the wire supporting bowls and sieves.  It was a horribly, horribly kludgy arrangement, and even worse, it was hot, with a fire burning and a fire rune going as part of the temperature setting.  Verona wore a kitchen apron and had two pairs of gloves she was alternating between, with a set of rubber gloves for scrubbing the bathroom and work gloves for handling anything remotely hot.  She wore some swim goggles because she hadn’t had laboratory glasses.

“How’s my mad scientist aesthetic?”

“You get a passing grade.  C+,” Avery said, from the doorway.  “You need to color coordinate, do up the gothic mad scientist style instead of… scrounged-in-my-basement style.”

“I’m not goth.”

“You’re a little goth.”

“Cliques are so… they’re a thing in movies my dad used to watch.  I’m Verona style.”

Avery shook her head.

Six arrangements of collector, for six types of herb and berry.  Verona and Avery had left first thing in the morning to do the shrines for the morning, and while they were at it, they’d hunted down what they needed.  Avery’s eyes proved useful for finding specific flowers, as did Snowdrop’s nose, and Verona had added her own knowledge and expertise, with heavy study of her phone and various herbalism and foraging sites.

Every region was different, so the specific types of herb and berry were more of a broad set of categories, with some subsections listing the best options in each category.

Lucy’s music blared through the house, and Verona bobbed her head, swishing and swaying here and there as she checked the arrangement, ducking her head down to see how much was being produced from each collector.  It wasn’t perfect, so she adjusted some dials to increase the heat here, switched out a filter there for something a little more permissive there.  She tapped the filter with the crud piled on it against the side of the kitchen sink and then washed it down.

One herb, poisonous, reduced down by fire.  One berry sitting in water, electricity running into the water to oxidize it.  The steam was being collected up higher, fed into a diagonal tube and down past a set of filters of increasing density.  One was being heated gently, sitting on a wire mesh, and the dense droplets were collecting in a pile that looked like a tiny black turd.

Verona adjusted the wire that was handing the oxidization, using a gloved hand, and it sparked with a pop that could’ve been heard outside the house, making both her and Avery yelp and jump.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Avery asked, over the music.

“Pretty sure!”

“You’re putting that into your body!”

Verona gave Avery a thumbs-up.  Then she pointed at the wet bandage Avery held.  “Do you need help!?”

“I’m worried you need help!” Avery told her.

Verona grinned.

“Aaa!”

“Aaaa!” Verona replied, pumping her fists into the air, like they were Snowdrop and Cherrypop.

Water hissed as it overflowed and touched the edge of the flame rune.  Verona hurried to adjust it.

“We’re really doing this,” Avery said.

“We’re really doing it.”

“Big moves,” Avery said.  “You sure you’re up for it?”

I’m the one who had a vacation with my friend, you guys were stuck here dealing with a witch hunter.  You’re the ones who we should be worried about, Verona thought.

But what was even the point of acknowledging that?  Making Avery feel worse?

They had to get through this.  She wanted to start now, if only so they could have it out of the way and maybe give the others a bit of a break after.

To do that, though, they needed to win.

Verona used a clean spoon to mash some of the drippings through the filter, upping the concentration.

“Ronnie?”

“Yeah.  No, I’m looking forward to it.”

“At least one of us is.”

Verona smiled, to hide what she was really feeling.

Verona smiled.

She and Lucy had stopped at the edge of the city.  They turned simultaneously, and their eyes met Lis’s.  Presumably Lis’s.

Lis looked uncomfortable, and turned away, leaving.

This was becoming a pattern, now.  Lis was realizing she wasn’t as good of a spy as she thought.  She’d made three attempts at approaching, or finding subtle vantage points to watch them from.

“Pepperoni bite?”  Verona offered Lucy the bag of snacks.

“Sure,” Lucy said, taking the offered inch-long bit of pepperoni stick.  “Move in?”

Verona nodded.

Her phone rang.  Verona had music playing, and the ring and call interrupted the song.  She hit the button to answer.

“It’s me.  Don’t respond.  Lis is now a man with a white and blue plaid pattern on his shirt.  I’ve got eyes on him.  She’s trying to circle around behind.  If you want to intercept, you can turn right.  If you want to keep a distance, turn back and walk east.”

As Nicolette had said that, she’d typed something similar and texted it to them.  Both of their phones blooped.  Verona put it away with just a glance to confirm the message.

This was never going to be the hard part.  Lis was not a major physical threat so long as they could keep track of her, and for right now they could keep track of her.

Maricica was the challenge and the complication.  Getting to Maricica meant they had to get something out of Lis and Cig.

There were two angles for that particular plan.

Verona bobbed her head in time with the music, sound leaking out of her earbuds in near-perfect sync to what Lucy’s headphones were producing, from around her neck.  She pointed, leading Lucy through the path between fenced-in backyards.  About fifteen bikes were locked up around the back, some clearly abandoned.  They emerged about twenty feet in front of the man in the shirt.  The bracelet at Verona’s wrist clicked.

They made eye contact.  He glanced aside, then stepped into a store.

The music was interrupted by the next call.  Verona answered, keeping her phone down near her pocket.

“She’s a child now, it’s pretty chaotic.  Some kids are fighting.  White dress, pigtails.”

“White dress, pigtails,” Verona told Lucy.  “Go around back, don’t stand in the door, just-”

“Guide.  Sure.”

“Don’t let her get to the river too quick.”

“Look at you, all strategy mode,” Lucy said.

Verona smirked for a second, then dropped the smirk as Lucy headed out.

Snowdrop had passed on word that Lucy hadn’t been so happy.  Apparently a Paul thing.

Avery was low, but that was a family thing too.

Why did it feel like when those two were happier, Verona was miserable, but when Verona was happy and things were okay, at least for now, things had to be screwed up somewhere else?

She’d tried to back Avery up but had only made things worse, or Declan had made things worse, using her.

Or things were just bad and the Declan thing was a clear indicator that she wasn’t making it better.

She entered the shitty toy store and scanned the room.  Except Lis was right there, ready for her to enter, trying to slip past and behind her.  Verona saw and reached out.

“Don’t touch me!” Lis raised her voice, bowling over a stand of books by the door.  Children raised noises of alarm, and a baby a mom was holding while trying to manage her five year old started crying loudly.  Little-kid Lis backed up, into the maze of chest-high shelves and things.

Go out the back way, Verona thought, as she remained by the door.

Her phone rang, but she already knew what the call would tell her.  A store employee stepped out between shelves and out through the door, not even glancing back toward Verona.

Verona turned around and went outside, predicting the path Lis would have to take.

“She’s a store employee,” Nicolette said, over the phone.  “Now she isn’t.  There are a group of kids down the way, biking, she’s-”

Verona ran, picking up speed.

“-on a bike now.”

She reunited with Lucy, and the two of them looked down the street, to where an older teen was biking, joining the tail of a family of two kids and two parents who were pedaling their way up the street, turning west.

“Good,” Lucy said.

Nicolette was on the phone, still.  “She’s heading straight for where Cig is.  She knows his exact location.  Either planned or organized.”

“Good,” Verona said, echoing her friend.  “Black rope?”

Lucy nodded.

Lucy held out the black rope, and Verona laid her hand over Lucy’s hand, where the rope was wound around it.  They glanced around to make sure they weren’t being watched, then punched forward.

There was an aspect to it that was kind of like a three-legged race, except it wasn’t their legs that were having to move in unison.  Verona stumbled as they arrived, and Lucy yanked on her arm to try and keep her upright.  They reassessed, took a second to adjust, then leaped again.  Catching up.

Verona could see the teenagers on the slope by the water.  Sitting on the rocks was uncomfortable, but sitting on the grassy slope just below the road meant an additional fifteen or twenty feet of walking with way more comfort.  Verona had been there.  Most kids in town had.  She remembered field trips.

They hadn’t smoked at field trips though.

“We need to figure out the right cigarette out of the bunch,” Lucy said.

“Working on it,” Nicolette replied.

“We’re ready,” Lucy said, in a very ‘need that info now’ way, except polite.

“Metal frying pan lid resting on the cooler, if six o’clock is the part of the lid facing the road, twelve o’clock the river, he’s at ten, beside the vape.  Furthest from any kids.”

“Teenagers,” Lucy said.  “You stay, get Cig.”

“Got it.  Want a snack for while you’re out there?”

“You’re ridiculous sometimes.”

Lucy jogged over to the rooftop’s edge, pausing there, while Verona remained behind on the gravel rooftop.  She winced a bit and checked where her shoes had cut into the sore spots beneath the bandages at the backs of her ankles.  She pulled her bag around and reached inside, grabbing a bottle, checking the contents, checking the coast was clear, that there wasn’t anything else too telling or obvious…

Lis was there, at the side of the road, getting off her bike.  Between blinks of Verona’s eye, Lis became a teenage girl, wearing a swimsuit top and denim shorts.  She paused to light up a cigarette, glancing around.

“Going!” Lucy called out.

“Luck!”

Lucy leaped off the roof and emerged from the bush by the group.  She veered in a curve behind the teens, three shirtless guys, two with nice definition in their chests, and two girls, one in a swimsuit, one in a t-shirt and denim shorts.  Hearing the noise, a few of them twisted around, saw Lucy as she ducked between their group, toward the cooler that they were using as a table.

Lis, startled, stopped in her tracks, looking down from the upper edge of the slope.

Teenagers audibly complained as Lucy swiped one cigarette from the lid of smokes, running down the slope toward the water.

Verona undid the cap.  Alchemy-created smoke billowed out of the container, and she held it high overhead.

“Come on, come on, come on.  Jump to the nice big obvious point of smoke…” Verona said, grabbing the other bottle.  She threw the first across the roof, then began unscrewing, watching Lucy.

Lucy, down by the shore, jerked her arm, giving it a sudden shake.

Burned down enough she had to drop him…

The cigarette appeared on the corner of the roof closest to Lucy and Lis.

Verona finished unscrewing the other cap.  The air was cleared.  All smoke in a wide radius was pushed away, including Cig’s.  He rolled a bit, then stopped.

She strode over, then drew a circle in the scant rooftop gravel and grit with her finger.  He rolled slightly away from her finger as she drew, but didn’t disappear.  She filled in the trench with poured chalk.  “With the permission of the town leader and acting in our roles as town practitioners, we’re temporarily confining you, ideally until we can question you about your part in the conspiracy, Cig.”

Verona hung up on Nicolette, then dialed Avery.

“Hang up on me if I should go,” Avery said, through the phone.

Verona hung up. The music faded in once again.

She wished she could fly.  Maybe if they dealt with Maricica, then Glamour could be in the cards again.  Instead, she waited for Lucy.

“Got him?” Lucy asked, behind Verona.

“Got him.  He panic-jumped to the biggest source of smoke around, I cleared the smoke, he had no paths to travel.  Circled.  Burn your fingers?”

“Just a bit.”

“And Lis?”

Lucy didn’t answer, but turned her head.

Lis was heading north, toward downtown.

“Too much to hope that she’d head straight for the cave, huh?” Verona asked.

“It’s okay,” Lucy said, voice firm.  “Just need to up the pressure and see if she slips up.  Avery?”

“On her way over.”

“Come on, then, we need to set her up.  Let’s get Cig secure and then hurry on.”

“Think we’re going to be dealing with Maricica soon?”

Lucy gave Verona a long look.

“Pepperoni bite?”

“You go ahead,” Lucy said.

Verona smiled, reached into the bag, and found the pepperoni bite at the bottom corner, wrapped in paper.  She pinched off the paper, then popped it into her mouth.

It was all she could do to not make a face at the bitter taste.

The Sixberry admixture was an alchemical preparation from the Halflight practices textbook she’d read in one of her first days at the Blue Heron.  It wasn’t her first choice for how to experiment with modifying and altering her Self, but it was the most readily available and flexible one.  Take twenty minutes before needed.

The bad taste filled her mouth, like it was altering every bit of her saliva.

They used the black rope as much as they could before they got downtown.  As they got closer, one punch made the two of them stumble.

There was no pain as Verona scuffed her knee on the grit beside the road.  Instead, it was like her knee tasted something bad.  Her body was a tongue and she needed to eat, to taste something that would clear out this background sensation, and that need was growing.

Her heartbeat was inconsistent, and her breaths came slightly heavier as a result, trying to catch multiple heartbeats worth of uneven circulation in each breath.  Not that it made sense, but…

Lucy touched her arm.  Supporting her.

They picked up speed.  Chasing Lis, taking Nicolette’s cues as Nicolette tracked the doopelganger, who changed forms and weaved into the denser crowds, using the bike and her headstart.  They let her think she was safe and that things had settled down, even as they closed the distance.

“Lis stopped partway down an alley.  She’s emulating a drunkard, stopped to pick up a bottle.”

“How many people are drunk at this hour, that she has a cast to work off of?” Verona asked.

“Don’t speak or respond to me.  If your Faerie realizes where and how I’m contributing, she can lash out at me.  Remember your nettlewisp, when I was forced to investigate you guys?  If I hadn’t used Zed’s tech, it would have done real harm.”

Phantasmal harm.

Verona fought the urge to apologize.  The taste issue was becoming a hollow pit in her stomach.  This was just the early stages, too, and it was only a single dose.  The book had talked about triple doses and molding the body after.

“She dropped something into a crack in the road, there’s a little flowering weed there.”

They traced Lis’s path, using Nicolette’s guidance, and Lucy watched as Verona bent down and found the crack.

The weed lashed out, snapping, with petals curving to bite into her fingers like little blades.  Roots curled and curved, reaching, grappling with her fingers, and grappled with the paper, tearing it, destroying it.  Lucy jumped back about a foot, but Verona was able to hold out, miming a wince.  She hadn’t thought the initial effects would hit her this fast, and she didn’t want to give anything away.

She managed to get some.  She straightened, her hand bleeding, but again, not feeling any particular kind of pain, only more hollowness and a taste in her fingers that begged for something else to replace it.

She showed Lucy.

Cig caught, I’m probably next.
Got a glimpse.  They’re lightly armed but their bags are heavier than usual.

There was a partial third line, but the paper was badly torn.  Only part of a capital A was written there, the lower case letters were too short to appear above the tear.

They hurried after her, Verona clasping the paper, breathing hard.

Got a glimpse.  At some point Lis had briefly mimicked them, and had some sense of what they were carrying or had ready to use.

Okay.  That was okay.

But they had to keep the pressure on.

They ran down the alley and exited at one of the downtown streets with the restaurants and other stores.  A crowd used a combination cafe and bookstore as a hangout or date spot, the store’s display windows were removed or folded back, to allow the wind to blow inside.  Verona saw some of their classmates from the year prior hanging around.

And then there was fire.

It exploded out like a firework going off, and the crowd reacted like that was much the case.  Sparks flew, there were pops and bangs, but there was no firecracker.  Some cars on the road screeched to stops, and the crowd made noises of “Oh come on!” and “Fuck off!”

A spell card.

The bracelets ticked over.

“Across the street, corner.”

They looked simultaneously.

She was there.  Lis, wearing a mask that wasn’t a cat or a fox, but something between them, missing a good third of it, so one eye and ear were missing.  Her skin was a deep tan-brown, her hair in dark wavy locks that framed her face, a short bun at the back.

“Coyote Lis,” Lucy whispered.  “She can practice while she’s us.”

“That’s not fair at all!” Verona whispered back.  “Coyotes are not halfway between foxes and cats.”

“Your mask is broken though, so maybe it gets less credit.”

“Frig!  Lame!”

They hurried across the street, and Lis bolted, running.

A cloud of fog exploded out behind Lis, barring their path.  Lucy took Verona’s hand, reached into her bag, and they charged in.

The cloud had an odor to it.  This was something between smoke card and a goblin stinkbomb.  Verona felt nothing, no nausea, no reaction to the stink, barely any blindness, though she couldn’t easily see more than five feet in front of her face.

Lucy’s eyes flashed red- she was wearing her mask now.  She could breathe and see in the smoke with the runework she’d done.  Black rope in hand, she carried them out and across the street.  They gave chase.

Lis hurled more tricks and traps at them, then became someone else, weaving into the crowd.  She changed midway through the weave, and nobody was paying close enough attention to the faces and clothes of the people around them to accurately track the way the drastic change happened.

“Not on a busy street!” an old woman chided the two of them, apparently thinking it was some game or contest.  Cars had stopped in traffic.

Lis, now a balding guy, glanced back at them, saw they were on her tail, and ducked into a corner-pharmacy with doors on two faces.  In one door, out the other, as Lis, wearing the coyote mask.

Throwing more tricks and trinkets.

Verona tried to speak and couldn’t.  She remembered she had to breathe in first.  “If she emulates us, she resets to the average.  She can keep burning her tricks.  Our tricks.”

“They’re middle-of-the-road tricks,” Lucy said.  “Combining stuff we both have.”

Verona nodded, her eyes wide.

That was, in all fairness, cool as balls.

Frig, why couldn’t Lis be on their side?

Man, they really needed to get on top of this.

A bright sparkling flash threatened to blind them.  The paper burned up.

“Careful.  She ducked into a doorway twenty feet down.”

Lis lunged out as they approached, but they were ready.  Lis carried a club with a spike in it, swinging wildly at the air.

“Woah, careful!”

“Don’t!” Lis shouted.  “Why are you chasing me!?  Back off!”

“Lis,” Maricica said.

The two of them backed up slightly as Maricica flowed out from the shadows.  As she flowed, she settled into the appearance of a teenage girl in loose-fitting clothing, her top an off-the shoulder type covered in kaleidoscopic patterns.  She smiled a thin smile.

“Maricica?”

“You’ve spoiled it, haven’t you?” Maricica asked, not sounding upset at all.  “They found the note, they’ve reasoned too much of this out.  What good is a spy if she’s known to the people she’s meant to be spying on?”

Lis pushed up the coyote mask, licking her lips momentarily, breathing hard as she looked around.

Verona held out a spell card, ready to act against Maricica if she had to.

“You’re useless to us now,” Maricia whispered.

“Who is us supposed to refer to?” Lis asked, backing away from all three of them.  “These two were chasing me.  What did I do wrong!?”

“There’s no use hiding it.  They know,” Maricica said.  “Adapt.”

“I don’t know what they’re supposed to know, but too many of the people in this town are deranged!  I thought this was a sanctuary but you’re freaking me out!  And you’re supposed to be the good ones!?”

Lis sounded way too similar to how Lucy had sounded before when upset, how Verona knew she had sounded in those few moments that she’d really lost it and gotten vocal.  Like with her dad.

That was a double-edged sword, though.  Because Verona had known Lucy for a long time and she’d known herself for longer.

“I thought you’d be a better actor,” Verona told Lis.

“I thought you’d be a better practitioner,” Lis replied, before swiping at Maricica.

Tearing through Maricica’s face, through the glamour.  Revealing Avery, a bit shorter, out of reach of the swing.

Glamour had a way of creeping in, saturating, bleeding out.  Even her checkmarks had leeched their way into her deeper self.

The others had handled their advance preparation.  Avery, for her part, had done so as well.  Calling the right people, coordinating with Liberty, talking to Nicolette.

And then the awkward middle period, where the others were working, and Avery was left to try and stay centered.

Every practice they were engaging with were ones they’d been scared off from.  Lucy had started to venture into curses, but the Paul thing had soured that.  Verona had been venturing into halflight stuff, flirting with the idea of abandoning humanity, but she’d put that aside for a while because she hadn’t wanted to upset Lucy.

Avery had screwed up.  She’d acted like she had with Pamela because she’d wanted to communicate something genuinely, anonymously.  Pam, who was nice and cool and pretty and so, so underrated by the class.

And ever since, she hadn’t really mixed with the dark faerie glamour stuff.  She’d conceded to try Guilherme’s stuff, and she had kept going in that direction, because his glamour was better for flashes of light, and Verona had the shadows and darkness thing going.

Which had led to her avoiding using the dark fall glamour.  She hadn’t meant to stockpile it, and in its way it had become something of a rainy day fund.  She liked having it as a just-in-case more than she liked using it.  Using it gave her a bad feeling.

Today was the rainy day.

She used glamour on the treated bandage, because she didn’t want to use it on herself.  She waited to use it because glamour was insidious and it would creep into her, and she didn’t want it to have its hooks too deep in her when they faced off against Maricica.

“When I go to talk to Lis, pull, okay?” Avery told Snowdrop.

Snowdrop nodded.  “I’ll do a crummy job and hightail it out of there.”

“Thanks.”

She double checked her barometer, to make sure the dark glamour wasn’t affecting her, just from the manual hands-only manipulation.

Layers of glamour got a different treatment.  It was like reeling herself out.  She’d be Maricica briefly, the long length of bandage would help paint the wings.  Stretched out thin, decorated, made pretty and translucent… then she’d be Maricica in a form fit for public, still with bandages behind her, something angrier, if she needed to pressure Lis some.

One of many layers of trickery they’d need to employ.

Avery ducked and backed out of the way of the follow-up swings.  The tatters of glamour came away.  She shrugged it off, pushing it away as she moved to the side.

As wisps swept past her, Lis became the Lis they’d first met on the street, wearing the rabbit mask, skin lightly tanned and lightly freckled, hair a curly red-brown.  Difference was that the rabbit mask had a deep crack in it, forehead to one cheekbone, and was missing part of an ear.

She held a hatchet with a faint blue gleam to it.

Verona strode toward her, hand out, into reach of the hatchets.

Lis swiped, but didn’t strike home.

“She can’t hurt us, according to the deal!” Verona called out.

Lis bolted.  She tossed down another smoke paper, then something else.

It was one of the goblin firecrackers.

Lucy and Verona went after Lis.

Avery hung back.

“Snow,” Avery said.  “Like we planned.”

Snowdrop came to Avery, holding an armful of glamour-altered bandage, grinning.

Avery measured out a section, identifying which identity had been captured in that band, then wrapped it around herself, stepping through.  Snowdrop kept going forward, letting the material loose so it stretched out on the ground between Avery and her.  Avery picked some up as she went, letting it slip over her skin, putting images there.

As she did, she changed.  As she changed, Lis changed.

Lis had to stop at the corner.  She couldn’t go out into a busier section of street while she was changing, and Avery was changing slowly, letting the bandage slip over herself.

“Surrender,” Lucy told Lis.

Lis threw out a light-paper.  It flashed, bright, blinding.  Until Verona stepped on it.

Lis turned, and she was the Verona-Lucy combination.  She twisted, ready to go-

And Snowdrop reached the others, throwing a length of bandage over top of Verona like a heaping of scarf.

Lis stopped again, breathing hard, her face and body transitioning as Verona’s did.

“Surrender,” Verona told Lis.

“Tell us what you know, cooperate-”

“Lis,” Avery said.  “What do you think is going to happen?”

Lis kept her mouth shut firm.

Avery approached, and she handed off things to Snowdrop.  Just to be safe.  Snowdrop took the things with a nod.  Lis watched.  She glanced over her shoulder.

“If you’re waiting for a group of people to pass by, I put down a connection blocker,” Avery said.  With her Sight, she looked at the connections, confirming it was suitably blocked.  With Snowdrop’s Sight, she glanced a bit around the corner, where the connection blocker joined other papers plastered and stapled to a telephone pole.

Lis’s eyes narrowed.

“They can still see you if you cross the street or go on the sidewalk,” Avery said.  “You’d disrupt their innocence.”

Lis raised her chin a bit, eyes narrowing.

She distorted, getting taller, becoming male.

Avery checked the connections again, glanced back over her shoulder.

Lis stretched out tall, at a height akin to Rowan’s or Avery’s dad, but athletic.  She tilted her head a bit.

She wasn’t emulating them, and they couldn’t interfere with that, so they couldn’t stop her from stepping back, breaking into a run, as she rounded the corner and dashed into the crowd.

“I’ve got eyes on Lis,” Nicolette reported.  “I can coordinate.  Everyone’s good to go.”

They chased.

Lis wanted self defense.  But she couldn’t emulate them near a crowd, or she’d be put in a tough spot.  It would take precious moments to recognize and pick the faces.  Or it was supposed to.  She’d- had she seen a bunch of especially athletic people in a window?

Avery shot one last look over her shoulder as she ran.

She was the runner, the chaser.  She had a sense of where Lis might want to go.

Away from civilization.  Toward the trees, which meant heading toward the river and the nearby trees, or toward The Bowdler ski hill.

Lis chose the water.

Lis was faster than them, but that didn’t really matter.  They’d hoped to corner her and get some answers, but it wasn’t super surprising they couldn’t.  Surprising that she’d had that particular trick, though.  Did it cost her something?  Was it always a capability?

“Does she get tired?” Lucy called out.

“I don’t know, but I do!” Verona replied.  “Could be she can refresh herself like she was doing to resupply on magic tricks!”

“She’s tired,” Nicolette replied.  “I’ll guide you to her.”

They followed the instructions.  As they approached, Lis moved between the trees, nimble, eyes glowing yellow, using the trees as cover and obfuscation for where she was going.  She held spell cards.

Lis made brief eye contact with Avery, stepping behind the trees.

She’d donned the coyote mask again.

She wanted to copy them to copy their tricks.  But Avery had given away her stuff.  She’d come lightly prepared and it hadn’t taken much to give stuff to Snowdrop.  And Lis could only emulate human bodies.  Edith James’s physical body, Matthew, Charles, all doable.  The three of them?  All doable.

She threw a firecracker card.  The fire ignited, and Lucy put it out with a paper marked with a water rune.

“How many of those do you have?” Lis asked.  “I’ve got a good number.”

“Maybe,” Verona replied.  “But you’re slipping.”

Lis, peeking out from the shadows, was slipping.  Her face was dissolving, the features getting blurry at the edges, eyes too large, widening.

She shook her head, and then closed those eyes, stepping back out of sight.

They fanned out to chase, press.  Lis had become a combination of Lucy and Avery.  With shitty half-tricks, now.

Verona had taken the admixture that tainted her humanity.  Avery was disarmed.

Lis pulled the same trick as earlier.  She chose another body, not using people nearby.

Muscular, tall, a woman, like some lanky athlete, picked from the cream of Kennet’s crop.

Pretty woo, honestly.  But scary, given the context.

“I think your Faerie is close.  Pamela O’Neill is safe and far away.”

“Snow, pass me whatever I can use!” Avery called out.  “Scarf and gear!”

Snowdrop threw a pack of spell cards, secured with a rubber band.

They hadn’t expected Lis to be able to copy their practice.  Now Avery caught the cards, checked, pulled one free-

Lis, moving with a long-legged body, moved between trees, passed behind one, and like Avery using her black rope, used the unexpected, emerging as Lis, combination of Lucy and Avery again.  Spell cards in hand.

Smoke exploded out, but Lucy could deal with smoke.  There was water, splashes, to knock them back or help them slide down the slight slope toward the shore and the water, and there was light, to blind.

This was a fight to debilitate.

“Lots of scarf left!” Snowdrop whispered, throwing.

Avery nodded.

The scarf passing over her helped to muddle Lis.  Lis switched between the athletic body and the spellcaster, stepping close to reach, only for Lucy to fend her off, then stepping behind a tree, with the person who emerged on the other end being their size, wearing a raven mask.

Verona was more free to be aggressive, but her practice wasn’t working as well.  She unleashed spirits, and some of those spirits didn’t want to leave the bottle.  They rushed past Lis, leaving smoke and images in their wake.

“You’ve got more than one scarf-image left!” Snowdrop shouted, as she let go of the remainder of the treated cloth.  She ducked, yelping, as Lis threw something that popped violently.  A goblin firecracker.

“Get to cover!” Avery called out.  The new form slipped over her, and she could see traces of it in Lis.  Male, her age, hair black, not red, but it was very close to being Kell.

“Girls,” Maricica’s voice echoed through the trees.  “Shapechanging, curses, and dark glamour?  Are you inviting me in for a good time?”

The wing swept over the background behind Lis, who stood a bit straighter, a bit more relaxed.  A curtain being drawn closed over the background, encapsulating their little copse of trees near the shore.

“I remember this one,” Maricica whispered, in Avery’s ear.  She embraced Avery from behind.  Moths and small fairy-type fae fluttered around them, some making mocking noises.  Lucy and Verona turned, looking, and froze.  Maricica whispered again.  “I made something so like it.  I could say it’s my design.”

“You can have it,” Avery replied.  “Wolf Hour.”

The rune at her chest detonated at the command word, casting off the scarf, the glamoured image, and the other scraps of glamour.  Maricica let go of her, and she hurried forward, catching the mask as Snowdrop threw it.  She put the wolf mask on.

Maricica laughed, tittering, rising higher up into the branches above.  Her wings continued to stretch out around them.  Curtains for the borders of their arena, perhaps.

“They have eyes on us,” Lis said.  “An outside contact, I think.  I couldn’t patch in, but the apparatus is there.  They’ve had headphones on or partially on through most of this.”

“I’m out,” Nicolette said.  “Going offline.  Sending people in.”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied.  “Thanks.”

Lucy threw her bag aside, pulling cards from her pocket and discarding them.  Verona paced closer to Maricica, crouching slightly.

“I don’t think I can help much,” Lis said.  “They’ve only kept self-destructive practices and things that can bounce back at the user.”

A hoot and holler cut through the woods.

There were other, smaller voices.

Maricica smiled.

“Surrender,” Avery said.

“Why would I?” she asked.  “Dear girls, we have no reason to be true enemies, in anything except mock combat.  I can tell you now, that with my current and full understanding from all my time in Kennet, it is my firm and full understanding that Edith James is more innocent than you think, I am innocent of all charges and involvement, and both Miss and Rook are dangers to Kennet and the region as a whole.  In fact, if you do not let me and my compatriots go promptly, Kennet may not survive the next several days, let alone this summer.”

“Who is ready for a freaking good time!?” Liberty asked, to the cheers of her accompanying goblins, as she stepped into the clearing.

Avery held up a hand, telling her to pause, not taking her eyes off of the smiling Fae.

“Aw no, don’t you dare,” Liberty said.  “We had plans!”

Maricica allowed herself a glance of disgust at the band of goblins and the goblin queen.

“It’s really quite obvious,” Maricica told them, with a smile.

Next Chapter