False Moves – 12.7
Author: Wildbow

False Moves – 12.7 | Pale

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Lucy folded her arms, looking her friend over.  ‘Verona’ shifted her feet, fixed her hair and then messed it up again, strategically, before showing off a wicked smile.

“It’s the t-shirt,” the real Verona said, scrutinizing Snowdrop, who mirrored her movements.

“I mean, we know it’s Snowdrop so obviously that’s a tell to us…” Lucy mused.  The t-shirt showed a badly drawn opossum winning a fight with a badly drawn cat.

“I’d like to think that anyone who knew me would sense that there’s something off, even without directly noticing the cat thing.  A Verona who doesn’t love cats?”

“Hate ’em,” Snowdrop said.  “Hate their psychopathic tendencies, leaving dead birds and rodents everywhere, that they don’t even bother to eat.  It’s bad for the ecosystem, in my uneducated opinion.”

Verona indicated Snowdrop with both hands.

“How much do you even need to eat, Snow?” Lucy asked.  “Carnivores and protein eaters are supposed to have one or two big meals every week, aren’t they?  And you’re tiny in your opossum form.”

“I’m tiny in my human form too!” Snowdrop said.

“That does sound like me,” Verona admitted.

“You can’t go gaming the system like that, you know,” Snowdrop said, confidentially.  “Can’t screw with things so you’re filling a human-sized belly instead of an opossum one.”

“System-messing-up.  That sounds like me too.  It’s gotta be the shirt that feels off,” Verona told Lucy.  To Snowdrop, she asked, “You’re not becoming human to eat carrion are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Verona said.  “That’d get weird.”

“Wouldn’t even if I could.”

Lucy frowned, studying Snowdrop.  Was it the little expressions?  Little differences in how she held herself?

“Say something as Verona?” Lucy prompted.

“I’m good at drawing.”

“I am good at drawing, that’s true,” Verona said.

“Let’s pretend I’m my mom.  If I ask you what you’ve been up to all day, you say…?”

“I’ve been drawing, reading, and making productive use of my time.  Can I have snacks?”

“Maybe let’s not go hard on the snacks,” Lucy said.

“Right, I don’t deserve payment for my hard work and sacrifice, being here.”

“And can you make it sound natural?  What were you doing yesterday night, when we were out?”

“I wasn’t browsing opossum pictures or anything, I watched a movie about, uh, cars,” Snowdrop replied.

“That’s less natural,” Lucy noted.

“What happened in the movie?” Verona pressed.

“Uhhhh.  I didn’t fall asleep part way through so I should know this, uhhh.  I know what happens in these movies.”

“I think I’m starting to get why my mom was concerned about Verona,” Lucy said.

Flustered, Snowdrop huffed, “I spent time with a boy!”

“I like where you’re going with that,” Verona said.  “Art and boy time is a passable starting point for being me.”

“Except that gets us in more trouble,” Lucy said.  “We’re supposed to be grounded.”

“I didn’t eat any bugs!”

“That comes across as an oddly specific denial,” Lucy noted.

“Stop teasing her,” Verona nudged Lucy.  “I’d still like to think it’s the shirt choice more than anything.”

“I’m not sure I want to know what a Snowdrop version of me would be like,” Lucy said.

“Way harder,” Snowdrop said, settling down a bit.

“Easier how?” Lucy asked.

“Lots of similarities, like… Verona and I aren’t scruffy, but if I’m you I can be all… I take care of my hair, I care about wearing more than a t-shirt and shorts.”

“Again, you do realize this is about you pretending to be us?  If you’re pretending to be me and talking like that then my mom’s probably going to think I did drugs or something.  Or she might think I had a brain aneurysm.”

“I’m flattered,” Snowdrop said.

“Do you want to abandon this plan?” Lucy asked.  “I thought it was better to have someone on guard, I’m glad you were there, but this seems like more stress than it’s worth, when we can use a connection blocker.”

“You can use a connection blocker,” Verona groused.  “Want to come with, Snow?”

Snowdrop nodded.

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “I guess this is me doing all of this then.  Connection blocker, but I don’t want to not exist to my mom, I’d rather do something subtler…”

“Let me be the assistant,” Verona said.  “Connections and elaborations, different forms of connection block?  That’s what I’m looking up?”

“Sure.”

Verona went to get the laptop.

“Snow?” Lucy asked.  “Want to help or you want to nap while we get sorted?  I know you’re tired.”

“I’ll nap.  You don’t deserve help with all the abuse you give me.”

“I thought we were a bit abusive,” Lucy mused, as she pulled down her poster setup.  She’d cleaned the wall as thoroughly as she could and then she’d repainted it, because that one smudge of glamour from Maricica bothered her.  She used a ruler and penciled out the basic lines.  “Markers are on my desk.”

Snowdrop went this way and that, collecting things they needed and helping look for things that had gone astray.  Because this was Verona’s space too.

Lucy loved having one of her best friends around but she was going to be so glad when this was her room and only her room for a while.

Glad and sad, because she had no idea what that meant for Verona.

It took a few minutes to figure out what she was doing.  Verona turned her laptop around, showing the textbook file she’d opened to Lucy.  Swirlier lines and lines would weave under and around one another, before extending out.  There were options for all sorts.

She started to read about elaborations and the framing of the subtler connection block, putting a border around it, but Verona changed the page.

“Uh, hey?”

“Were you not done reading?” Verona asked, innocent.

Lucy changed it back, then used the touchpad to select the plus sign and zoom in a bit on the images.

Verona scrolled down a bit.

Lucy wrapped her fingers around Verona’s neck and mock-strangled her.

“I know what you were looking at, I’m keeping it on the page!”

“You’re moving it around.  You’re a bad assistant.  Hands off, off!  Let me figure this out.”

Verona made grousing and grumbling noises, backing off.

Lucy started penciling out what she was doing, etching it onto the wall, then went back to the computer, checking the border stuff again.

Verona’s head butted in beside Lucy.

“Really?” Lucy asked, before turning, then frowning.

“Not sorry,” ‘Verona’ said.

Lucy gave her head a pat, which won her a smile.

“You’re nicer to her than you are to me, sometimes.  I’m thinking that’s very rude.”

“She’s a wild animal.”

“I’m very civilized,” Snowdrop said.

Lucy resumed working, with Snowdrop sitting in her chair, handing her what she needed when she needed it.  Verona went over books and texted Avery to let her know their schedule.

A ‘triquetra’ flower, with clockwise-hand-side elaborations on each of the three ‘leaves’ for sound.  The nineteen-leaf ‘tree’ was the better diagram for this purpose, but it was so complicated that she would have been reluctant to put it on her wall if she was held at gunpoint.  Twelve segments at the top, mimicking the sun, seven at the bottom for the roots, a trunk and branches each weaving into and around one another… nah.

The triquetra had more room in the center for symbols and notes than the usual diamonds of cyprus did.  She’d do that later.

The trick was to specify the sounds she wanted the elaboration to mimic, and to key the length of each leaf to the distance she wanted to maintain- she cheated and extended out the diagram, with lines pointing to floor, ceiling, and walls.

As she got more into it, Verona perked up and stared paying more attention, offering some advice.  Snowdrop continued to hand over tools and keep stuff ready, despite being visibly tired.

Lucy gave it a border, then gave that border a border, a ring of ‘quality of earth’ symbols ready to destroy her diagram if the condition was met.  A set time limit.

She checked the clock.  It was noon.

“Ten hours?” she suggested.  “If we leave and we’re out later than that, it’s a disaster.”

“You could do, like, forty-eight,” Verona suggested.  “Then cancel it, destroying the diagram.”

“I think that weakens things a bit.  Even if you have the intent.”

“Right, but I don’t like being locked in,” Verona said.

“Yeahhh.  So, ten hours?”

“Sure.”

Lucy put that in the center of the three-leafed knot with the curls and symbols worked into it, some of those curls reaching out to the border.

Then she signed her name.  The end of her signature took on a red glow, pulsating.

The overall effect was to paint a connection blocker that made it feel like they were present, sometimes talking indistinctly between themselves, but that there was no need to intrude.  A sense of familiarity and positive sentiment that made it so they wouldn’t be missed and thus, there wasn’t a big fat imposition being made.  No big ‘don’t think about us, don’t approach us, don’t bother us’ rule put in place, like there was with the cyprus diamonds.

“You too,” Lucy told Verona.

Verona signed her name on the wall as well.

The glow wasn’t as prominent.

Lucy pressed fingers to the tail end of Verona’s signature, “On Verona’s behalf, for Kennet.”

The glow was there when Lucy pulled her hand away.

“I want to practice againnnnn,” Verona groaned.

“Speaking of… bird form?”

Verona nodded.

“Guess I’m doing that too,” Lucy said.  “Come on, Snow.  Do you have a preference?”

“My last choice is the noble seagull.”

“Seagulls are bigger and we don’t have that much glamour,” Lucy said.  Especially since we’re avoiding using Maricica’s now.  “We could do three people but then we’d be running a bit low.  Any second choices?”

“Anything but a pigeon, then.”

“Cool,” Lucy said.

Verona opened a page on the laptop, giving Lucy a reference image to go off of.

Head-pats with glamour on her hand became fingers running through short, dense feathers, which became broader shape changes.  The residual Verona glamour crumbled up into large chunks that Lucy used for color and structure before working the smaller bits in.  She made sure to keep the right images in her mind throughout.

“My name is Polly and I don’t want any crackers,” Snowdrop said, as the form settled.

“That’s parrots.”

“We might as well do a snack run, make sure we’re set for a long day,” Lucy said.  Raymond’s coming.  “Maybe a fight.”

“Let’s hope not,” Verona replied.  “I don’t think we’d win, even with the Others here.”

“Let’s hope not,” Lucy agreed.

They left Snowdrop preening feathers on the windowsill and headed down to the kitchen.

“I’m off to work,” Lucy’s mom said, as she walked by them raiding the cupboard.  She was already wearing her nurse’s scrubs.  “Can I trust you two?”

“We’ll keep our heads down, be good, and stay put, unless we have to leave in event of fire, a dramatic magical incursion of wizards and monsters and stuff like that, home invaders, or anything like that,” Verona said.

“Mm hmmm,” Lucy’s mom acknowledged.  She approached and put a hand on Verona’s cheek.  “Are you doing alright, honey?”

“Could be better, could be a lot worse.  At least I’m here with my best friend and the best mom I know.”

“You’re not going a little stir crazy, being grounded with the other pressures?”

“Was I acting that weird?”

“You were acting- yes.”

“Oh, uh-”

“If you need to talk, let me know.  If you can’t talk to me, we can try arranging an appointment with Dr. Mona.”

“Could we consider putting her in an institution, instead?” Lucy suggested.

Verona gave her arm a push.

“She’s doing better than she was, so I don’t think we need to worry about going that far,” her mom replied.  “Thank you for being good.”

Lucy accepted the forehead kiss from her mom.

Was this what it felt like to be Avery?

“I’ll be back this evening, you have my number.  The neighbor may come and check on you, I’ve asked her to keep an eye out, she has a key and she has my go-ahead to come in if her instincts tell her to, so don’t panic if anyone comes in.  I worry about-” her mom stopped herself.

“About the woman who came by the other night, pretending to be CAS?” Lucy asked.

“I forget you all talk among yourselves.  I don’t want you to worry about that.  Just be good.”

“Will try.”

Her mom pulled on her work clogs, got her bag, and pulled a lanyard over her head, identification card dangling.  She made a face as she looked at them.

“Have a good day at work, Mom.”

“I can get through just about any day if I know you’re here, safe, and being good.  I love you.”

“Love you too,” Lucy replied.

“Love love love,” Verona said.

Then Lucy’s mom was out the door.  The lock clicked.

“Guess I’m adding a bit of extra security for the neighbor check-in,” Lucy groused.

She got a thing of pepperoni sticks and chips, while Verona filled up four eco-friendly water flasks with tap water.

“Are those the same flasks that we used to hold the spirits before putting them in the shrines?”

“Yyyyyes.  They’re still good!” Verona told her, passing her one flask.

“What was in this flask?”

Verona examined it, and Lucy switched to the Sight, checking, and it looked mostly fine, but…

“Run-into-traffic ghost boy with the stupid hat.”

“I don’t want little boy ectoplasm in my drinking water.”

“I rinsed it!”

They bickered and joked a bit as they headed back upstairs.

“What bird do you want to be?”

“Anything small and black-feathered,” Verona said, when it got to be her turn.

Same idea.  It was easier to glamour Verona than it had been to do Snowdrop.  Part of that was that there wasn’t already a heavy application of glamour there already.  Part of it was that Verona had already laid a lot of the groundwork.  That path had been walked enough times that the glamour knew where to go as it surrounded Lucy’s friend.

Lucy packed a last few things, pulled on her bag, checked the map and satellite image with the marker on it, sourced by some collaboration between Snowdrop and messages from Avery, and then applied the glamour to herself.  She chose the form of a Cardinal.  It took a bit of doing to get past the hump of size and weight, especially with the full bag she carried and the fact she was reaching behind herself.

They flew out the window.

They flew up and out over Kennet, above the town that was squeezed in between two of the larger hills that were nearly mountains, covered grass, one dotted with kids who might’ve been attending a summer camp.

They flew together, a set of three odd birds, and Lucy made sure to watch out for hawks.  That would be a disaster.

Wind rolled off the hot rocks and pushed up, and they rode that wind, and they faltered a bit as they passed over water and dense woods.

Verona loved to fly but wasn’t super good at it, and Snowdrop’s approach made Lucy wonder if their possum friend would fall out of the sky or lose her glamour.

It was easier to keep the wings steady, make small adjustments, and figure out each new… windscape, as it came.  It let her pull ahead a little bit.

She spotted the cabin, set on a lakeside, and her bird’s eye let her spot Avery.

This wasn’t a location that really screamed ‘come vacation here!’.  The woods were too dense, the lake didn’t look good for boating or swimming, with more cat-tails, algae, and other greenery growing out than there was open water, and the cabins were too lived in.  There was one with fifty little statues of Jesus, painted wood and plastic, with a banner out from that was in such bad condition it was unreadable.  One had burned down and the tarp that was placed over it had been bleached by the sun, it had been there so long, moving less than tree branches did in the wind.

Lucy shrugged off the bird form in a flurry of feathers as she landed.  Verona followed soon after, frowning a bit.  Snowdrop went straight to Avery, left bird form, and tackle-hugged her.

“Heyyyy.  You came!  You guys didn’t want a decoy?”

“I might get a brief stay at a mental institution if we kept doing that,” Verona said.  “Which, compared to going back to my dad’s… dunnnooo.”

“Don’t do that,” Avery said.

“You okay here?” Lucy asked.  “You left early in the morning and you’ve been here for a few hours, right?  Snow came all the way to us and back here.”

“It’s okay,” Avery said.  “It’s quiet, but it’s a sun and trees and nature quiet.  I’ve been getting a feeling for things here.”

“Oh yeah?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Like, uh, I think Matthew and Edith came here for an anniversary or something.  Charles’s stuff was sorted out and put away and there’s traces of them having been here.  I’m not sure, but I think- here.”

Avery reached down to the side of the rusty, weather-worn chair she’d been sitting on and pulled out a bag with cigarettes in it.  “Ummm… let me see, where did I stash this stuff?”

“Cigarettes?  Edith smokes, right?” Lucy asked.

“It’s Edith’s for sure, yeah,” Avery said, digging into her bag.  She pulled out spell cards, put them back, and then pulled out an envelope.  “Aha.”

There were slips of paper with eyeholes cut into them, and they were marked with the runes for the gates of whatever that Avery had gotten from the Garricks.  Lucy took one, and Verona did the same.

“For Kennet, my power, my Sight,” Avery murmured, eyes closed, holding the paper to her eyes.

Lucy felt the paper respond.  She lifted it up, and peered through the eyeholes.

She could see through Avery’s sight.

It was misty, and there were really clear connections, drawn out like bands of film in stark black and white, with no grey, or black, but with the white cut out.  It was hard to tell which it was in the fog.

“The cigarettes I found connect to…”

They followed Avery, Lucy stumbled a bit as she nearly tripped over the leg of the lawn chair.

At the corner of the property, there was a broad, flat rock with scorch marks on it.  The dirt around it had a lot of white mixed into it, that might have been old soot or… chalk?  It looked like the rock had been moved, and there was a freshly dug hole beneath.

“…Hiding place,” Avery finished.

“Edith came and hid the stuff?”

“In case Charles ever needed it again or something, yeah,” Avery said.  “On this vacation thing she did with Matthew, which sucks for Matthew, you know?  Like, ruins what was probably a nice weekend or week.”

“As a non-expert in many things trash, I rooted through the bins and I think they were here for at least a week,” Snowdrop said.

“Didn’t Charles lose his place?” Verona asked.

“I think he gave it away to them as a second property, not that it’s… it’s not marketable.”

“What’s the rock?” Lucy asked, indicating.

“I think he did practice on it.  Snow helped me move it earlier.”

To Lucy’s sight, pulling the paper away, there wasn’t a lot of hostility, badness, or negative energy staining the rock or the area around it.

This wasn’t where the Choir was made.  Probably.  Which made sense, because Charles couldn’t go far from Kennet.

They meandered up to the cabin itself, past a large fire-site that she attributed to Edith, in dire need of having pine needles and branches cleared away from its perimeter.  Lucy walked through it and nudged the bed of the fire-site with her toes, to see if there were traces of anything that had burned.  There was only charcoal that crunched to dust under her weight.

The cabin had suffered like Charles had suffered.  Aged prematurely, degraded, it had traces of that dark, oppressive feeling that had pervaded Charles’s nightmare.

“Makes sense that Edith had ulterior reasons for coming, because this isn’t… cozy?” Avery said.

“I can understand it, though,” Verona added.  “Like, you can’t make a stupid-huge fire in the city.  Or slip your skin and be the spirit and also, like, do stuff.”

“I guess,” Avery said.

“Seems like you’d spend three days cleaning, a couple days enjoying yourself, and then a bunch of time packing up and trying to make sure the place won’t fall to pieces before you come again,” Lucy noted, looking around.

There were traces of Matthew being around- he was fit and wore a bigger size than Charles.  It almost felt like a big brother and a little brother had been here, because Charles was narrower and smaller.

Charles’s stuff was more… all over the place.  Old jackets and things on coat hangers by the door.  Spare boots, novels, and other things he’d used to pass the time.  It looked like he’d eaten in the kitchen and used the portion of the living space that would normally have been a dining area as a workshop station.  The practice-relevant stuff was gone, at least to the point that Lucy could say that anyone coming by wouldn’t be exposed to practice and awakened, but the type and style of tool and the stencils and things made it clear to anyone who already had that knowledge.  This had been where he’d made stuff.  The proximity of a shelf for books, now empty of books…

It was like he’d retreated from everything and set up shop here.

The kitchen area was cleaner, and a sleek black countertop that jutted out toward the living space had some books and papers laid out on it.  Avery’s bag was sitting beside it.

Lucy picked up a badly scuffed book.

“Taken from his nightmare,” Avery said.  “Alpy agreed that what I was doing wouldn’t hurt him, but I think she was territorial.  He might find his memory of his hiding place a little foggy if he goes reaching for it.”

“Hm,” Lucy made a sound, pressing lips together, as she paged through.  It was half text and half diagram, and a lot of the text was in shorthand.  “This is… weird.”

“Probably a field of expertise for certain kinds of practitioner,” Verona said.  “Speaking the languages of spirits and memory?”

“Maybe.”

Verona took the book.

“This was in the hiding place,” Avery said.

The notes for making the ‘Red Heron Inveiglement’.  There were a lot of dense notes in tiny, tight script where Charles had mapped out what would go where, the resources he had.  There was blood on the edge of the page, and beads of blood elsewhere on the page, like he’d suffered a terminal papercut at one point.

As the writing went on, the writing got more frantic, still dense, but overlapping more.

There were books on basic summoning, the making of Others, the creation of an archetype or eidolon, which was a concept or an idea that wouldn’t exist unless summoned, and would pull in all the necessary spirits, power, and whatever to manifest.  More appropriate spirits and more appropriate situations, stronger summoning.  There were whole chapters on how Others could be ‘summoned’, and the logistics of taking an Other that existed halfway across the world and bringing it to a summoning site.  Some dwelt in a realm, others were like the Choir and existed over an area like a storm, manifesting elements within that area freely.  A note in the margin pointing to that suggested ‘Raymond’s Nex Machina?’.

A broken, old fashioned lantern, spent of power.

“It looks like he was trying to fix what happened,” Avery said.  Verona was reading papers and as Avery turned the papers around so Lucy could read them right-side-up, Verona moved around the counter, her shoulder bumping Lucy’s.

Notes on what had gone where, the elements of the Choir, its construction, deciphering it, trying to find weak points, and the preliminary research into how the Choir’s ritual worked.

It looked like the early stages had been a little more inconsistent.    People would sign up and then weeks would go by without the required number of participants showing up, so they’d only have fitful nightmares that eventually culminated in them being dragged into the ritual.

A sheet had names of participants, each with a series of moons beside them, the number of nights of the Choir’s ritual that they had completed.  A lot of names were crossed out.  Others had notes like ‘wants money’ and ‘trades information for support’.

There were thirty pages.  Many were just Charles trying to figure out what he’d helped create.  In the last quarter or so were plans and notes for something… trying to coordinate, pulling together names.  ‘Five of eight’ were trying to beat the ritual not by actually winning, but by trying to trace its origins and unmake it at the source.  Not practitioners, just… savvy horror-film watchers, Lucy liked to think.  Not that that worked in all kinds of horror.  Eastern horror films tended to have evils that triumphed, where Western horror films liked to have the final girl.  One champion who triumphed and maybe a hint at the end that the bad guy would go on.

The second to last page was a final draft for a message from Charles to the participants.  It was a sobering read.

He would give them answers and point them in the right direction- a direction that included Kennet and named Raymond.  And to deliver that message home, to avoid his forswearing tainting this or keeping it from reaching its intended targets, he pledged to sacrifice himself.

Except he hadn’t sacrificed himself, and the message hadn’t been sent.

Lucy paused, fingers pressed down on the bottom edge of the page to keep the wind from blowing it away, digesting that.

“I think they all died,” Verona said.

“You think?”

“Earlier page-”

Verona took the pages and picked through them, going back to the list of names.

She pointed at the names there.  “Wipeout.  Eight out of eight eaten by the Choir in one night.”

The back of the second to last page and the last page had writing on them, but it trended toward the incoherent.  It looked like brainstorming, or a struggle to find ideas.  A written expression of Charles finding his way to realizing there was no road forward.

“He didn’t try again?” Avery asked.

“I don’t think he thought there was a point,” Lucy murmured.

“I always hated on tv shows where the big bad guy would create a superweapon and they’d try it on the heroes and the heroes would make it out by the skin of their teeth, and the bad guy would disappear for a while before coming back with the next big interesting weapon, you know?  Like, why not just fix that big glaring flaw and try again?  You’ve done ninety percent of the work.  You’ve done ninety percent of the work here, Charles.”

“Work that requires him to sacrifice himself,” Avery said.  “I get why he’d take the discouragement of the plan falling through and not want to pick it up and give it a hearty second go.”

“I don’t believe in sacrifice,” Lucy said.  “Even for that.”

“I don’t either,” Snowdrop told her, peering between Lucy and Verona to look at the pages, before redirecting her attention to cabinets and things.  “Not that I have relevant experience.”

“I’m really sorry I was going to sacrifice you to the trail, Snow,” Avery said.  “We didn’t think you’d be like… aware.  You were just a dying baby.”

“It was uncool.  There wasn’t any greater purpose, you know?” Snow asked.

“Alright, with that reminder, I’m starting to think I hate the idea of sacrifice too,” Avery said, more to Lucy than Snowdrop.  Snowdrop fished in Avery’s bag and found a tennis ball, which she bit into experimentally.

“There had to be a better way,” Lucy said.  “I think Charles could have done a lot of things very differently, but I don’t think we should be, like, disappointed, that he didn’t sacrifice himself in hopes that they can read this thing and find the answers they need to destroy the Choir.”

“I’m disappointed if he and Edith aimed the Choir at the Carmine Beast and created this whole situation with Kennet,” Avery said.

“Yes,” Lucy replied, with emphasis.  “Agreed.”

“I wonder if we could, uh, borrow a few of these tools,” Verona mused, looking over the workshop.  “Some good stuff for diagram drawing.”

Lucy shook her head.  “Nah, doesn’t feel right.  I feel more righteous prying into his mind when we know he’s been lying to us and he promised to give us this Summoning stuff anyway.  Like… we went up against the Choir and him lying to us could have put us in the way of danger.  That’s messed up.”

“I guess I could buy it.  Just feels like a waste.”

“We could ask,” Avery said.  “Depending…”

Depending.

The idea sat heavy with Lucy.

Depending on what happened to Charles.  Depending on the Musser-Raymond situation over Alexander.  Depending on how the last weeks of summer went.

From the silence of the others, it probably sat heavy with them too.

“Ray is coming and he’s bringing people.  It’s pretty major,” Lucy noted.

“Pretty major, yeah,” Avery agreed.  “Gosh.”

“Charles offered to confess to take focus off of us.  I’m worried it’d go wrong, because things go wrong around Charles,” Verona noted.

“There’s also, like… Charles is forsworn, so everyone kind of dislikes him.  Even his friends are distant or… I dunno, they don’t want to spend time around him, with the vibes he gives,” Lucy said.  “And I don’t want to act on that.  I don’t want to let it influence us.  Even if that means going easy on him.”

“What if it means something else?” Avery asked.  “What if it means… hurting Kennet?  Or hurting relationships with outside practitioners?  How far do you want to go with that?”

“Is this a rare case of you being harder on someone than I am?” Lucy asked.

“I’m-” Avery started, and she shook her head.  “I’m- people are awful, a lot of people are, and the good ones leave and the bad ones force us to bow down and make concessions.”

“For sure,” Lucy said.  “I get that.”

“I get it when I’m out as a practitioner and I get it when I go home.  And now we’re like… what do we do about Charles?  Is it going to be one big concession, for a guy who, like, yeah, it was an accident, and yeah, it’s understandable he didn’t want to sacrifice himself for a maybe-“

Lucy nodded emphatically.

“But also like, there’s at least ten ways this is super not okay, like the lies and the ulterior motives and enabling Edith and Maricica, and lying to us, and a bunch of other stuff…”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.

“How much crap are we willing to shovel into our mouths for that?” Avery asked.  “Because I feel like I’ve been shoveling a lot of crap.”

“Graphic,” Lucy said.

“Spending more time with goblins?”

“Not my fault,” Snowdrop said.

Avery shook her head.

“You okay?” Lucy asked Avery.

“I’m not super great, but I’m not, like, not super great in a way that’s going to wreck things.  I can hold it together.  I’ll figure out what I’m doing after.”

“We can talk, you know?”

“We gotta deal with a bunch of other stuff.  I mean it when I say I can hold it together, okay?  I can deal with my Grumble being a bit of an ass, I can deal with my dad not getting it or even seeming to want to get it, and I can deal with Declan and I can deal with Kerry and I can deal with a quiet house and you guys being grounded and not around as much, and I can deal with feeling like I’m not getting the same chances everyone else is.  I can deal.”

“The longer you go on the less convinced I am,” Verona told her.

“Don’t gainsay me,” Avery said.  “Just back me up.  Just tell me… tell me you had a nice date, Lucy.”

“I did.  I told you that on the phone.”

“I know, but I want to hear it.  I want you to know I’m super interested and happy for you, right?  Give me tips sometime, about what to do and what not to do on a first date.  Because I’ll get there, but it might mean long distance, or going further afield than Kennet.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “First tip, right off the top of my head?  Don’t make it a group date, and definitely don’t make it a group date with Emerson and Xavier along for the ride.”

Avery smiled.  She looked around.  “We done here?  We scouted around.  Is there anything you can see with your Sight?”

“Don’t got sight at the moment,” Verona said.  “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.  You bit the bullet for us,” Avery said.  She walked over to Verona, who was hunched over the counter, reading the summoning book, and gave her a hug from behind, prompting a brief smile from Verona.  Then Avery went over to Snowdrop, and the pair of them wandered outside.

For all she’d been talking about being dealing with stuff and the accumulated stresses, Avery seemed like she was dealing with a lot and she was maybe a bit quieter and a bit quicker on the draw when it came to frustrations like conceding to Charles, but Lucy could believe she was okay at her core.

Lucy glanced over at Verona.  Verona was the opposite from Avery like that.  She could seem so fine until Lucy put the teeny tiny details together and realized that, like, Verona was walking over jagged bits of clay and plastic because her dad had ruined her art stuff and she was refusing to clean it up, refusing to deal with it on any level.

Lucy wanted to say something, and she had no idea what to say.  The dating conversation was freshest on her mind.

She hated the idea so much that Verona might really be happy dating if she only gave it a try, and by not trying she was possibly going down a road that would make her more like her dad, not less.

Because her dad didn’t date either.

It was very true that Verona could be right.  That maybe this wasn’t her thing.  But the thing with Jeremy seemed to be on a crash course and everyone could see it except for Verona and maybe Jeremy.

Wouldn’t it be better to try, experiment, and fail, and put the Jeremy thing to rest as a lesson for herself and a ‘loved and lost rather than never loved at all’ thing for Jeremy?

She’d told herself to stay out of it, to course correct, to nudge.  Anything else would get resistance.

Except that wasn’t all of it.

Verona’s nightmare had been falling into her dad’s clutches at the parent teacher meeting.  Verona’s dad had never talked like that at any PTA meeting, that had been an exaggeration for effect.  Her mom had never talked like that about ‘everything Verona was doing wrong’.

It just felt like that, to a teenager like Verona.

They were waiting, most of them- including Lucy’s mom, including Avery, including a few of the local Others, for the end of summer, when Verona was supposed to go home.  What then?

Just… hoping that Verona’s dad treated the entire thing as a reality check?  That he got therapy and fixed things enough that Verona could be happy at home?

Verona kept thinking she was so broken but it was the family that was broken, it was her dad that was broken on a level where it made the house eerie.  Lucy still remembered how it had felt, like she was doing something wrong by sweeping up the mess from the broken art shelf, when neither Verona or her dad had been talking.

Verona looked up at Lucy and then gave her an annoyed look.  “Stop.”

“Stop what?” Lucy asked.

“Don’t look at me with pity.  That’s screwed up.”

“Not pity, honest,” Lucy said.  “It’s… worry.”

“I’m fine, okay?  I’m pretty sure I can guess what you’re thinking, it’s about me and Jeremy, right?”

“Some.”

“You wanting to stick your nose into it and bug me about it is more likely to ruin things than anything, okay?  Your mom nagged me about it too, you know?”

“I just-” Lucy held herself back.  Nudges, nudges only.

“Please leave me alone on this stuff?  If you keep giving me sad looks or whatever I’ll- I’ll pack up my stuff and move into Booker’s room.”

“You’d hate that and so would I.  I do like having you around, even if you are messy.”

“Then buzz off, because I hate that I’m being treated like I’m a relationship train wreck waiting to happen when I’m being careful.  I’ve laid out boundaries, I let Jeremy know where I gotta stand, he’s deciding to play along, it’s nice.  We’re friends that experiment with clothes-off sometimes, that’s all.”

“I was thinking… Just to nudge you…?”

Verona tensed, glaring.

“…Wallace seemed surprised you and Jeremy weren’t an item.  It might be the case that you need to go over those boundaries with Jeremy again.”

“Thank you, then,” Verona said, terse.  “I will take that under advisement.”

“Sounds good.”

“Damn it,” Verona muttered.

“I’m sorry it’s tricky.”

“Yeah, well…” Verona replied.  She closed the book and scooped up some of the other stuff.  She went to the kitchen window and looked out to where Avery was playing catch with Snowdrop out front, tossing the tennis ball between them.

“Well?” Lucy asked.

“C’mon.”

They sorted out their things, packed up the things Charles had hidden away, and then secured the cabin, closing the door and windows.  They met Avery out front.  Avery threw the ball to Verona.

“We never really decided, how do we handle Charles, and this meeting with Ray,” Lucy said.

“Wing it?” Verona asked.

“That might be dangerous.  We should all be on the same page, but we should let Ray know what page we’re on too, so he doesn’t go and do it.”

“There’s something I was thinking about,” Avery said.

“Yeah?” Lucy asked.

“About like… well, like, we’ve got a bunch of stuff hanging over our heads, you know?”

“We do.”  Verona’s voice was quiet.

“Ton of stuff to do, but the big thing we haven’t figured out is like… at the Blue Heron, they said the number one thing you start with when you deal with an Other or a problem is labeling it.  Figure out what you’re dealing with.  And the end of summer is coming and what the heck is going to happen?”

Lucy nodded.  “I’m worried they come after my family to make me desperate enough to try to become the next Carmine Beast.  John being on the line would… I was thinking about it a lot, laying awake this morning.  This really awful situation that’s not as one thousand percent bad as it could be because I saved John and he’s there, you know?”

“Scary,” Verona said.  “I like your mom too much to be okay with that.”

“Right?” Lucy asked, a bit plaintive.  “Me either.”

“I’m dealing because I have options, still,” Avery said.  “And I could see stuff happening where, like, I don’t?  Nobody to talk to, no help, no support, just you guys in a pinch?  I don’t think that gets me all the way there.  But didn’t Maricica have this one ‘gift’ for me that was like, you’ll never find love in Kennet?  Frig.  What if that was like… prelude?  The whole thing being set up as early as this spring?”

“I really hope not,” Lucy said.

Verona opened her mouth to say something, and then she didn’t.  She looked off toward the water.

“Ronnie?” Lucy asked.

“Don’t want to talk about it.”

“If it’s about you becoming the Carmine Cat or something, like, I get it, but we should work out at some point what we need to do to play defense.”

Verona nodded emphatically, but she didn’t say anything else.

Avery said, “If we’re talking about showing mercy to Charles and figuring out what to do and how to handle him… Tashlit’s watching him right now?”

Verona nodded again.

“It might be worth thinking about, like, what if we got him out of Kennet?  What if we took some of these really problematic, key pieces off the board, got them out of the picture, and made it so they can’t be used against us?”

“He’s forsworn,” Lucy said.  “I’m really worried that if they start looking for other punishments, especially knowing there’s some big karmic prize for hurting or offing anyone forsworn, and knowing that these guys are power hungry…?”

“Oh,” Avery whispered.  “Yeah.”

“You know?” Lucy asked.  “So yeah, that’d take him off the board, but I kind of summoned John with this idea in my head that he might resolve the Alexander situation.”

Verona glanced down at her wrist, checking the bracelet.  They weren’t being observed.

“…I’m not sure I’m okay signing off on giving Charles up for execution.  Or sending him off into the custody of people I definitely do not trust to be kind.”

“Even if it means he stays in Kennet and gets involved in the big twisty Fae plot?” Verona asked.

Lucy shrugged.

“While we’re talking about removing things from play… do we give up the furs?” Avery asked.  “While Ray’s in town?  Ask him to take custody of it?”

Lucy shook her head with emphasis.

“I’m not settled on the idea, I’m not even sure as I ask, but why not?”

“Because they’re people who’d use that power, possibly put their own person in charge, and that’s… almost definitely a bad possibility.”

“Ken swore up and down that the working he did to hide the House on Half Street wouldn’t budge unless it was the kind of power that would stomp Kennet to the ground,” Verona said.

They thought for a little bit.

“Can I suggest something?” Avery asked.  “The way we’re doing this… remember Verona’s approach?  The big stopping point is this one thing, right?  We can’t deal with Charles because we’re worried about them killing him, so let’s address that, instead of scrapping the entire plan?”

“So no compromise?” Lucy asked.

“Do you want to compromise on that level?  Compromise Kennet?” Avery asked.  “I hate that I sound like this.  I hate that I’m asking, but… what do you do with a forsworn guy, especially when we don’t trust all the Kennet Others?”

“I don’t want to compromise,” Verona replied.  “But I’m also way cooler with saying he’s messed up, he kept practice from us, and yeah, he let us fight the Choir, we could’ve been stronger and better informed and I could’ve lost you guys, and when I think of that…”

“How much of this discussion is karma?” Lucy asked.  “How much is the Sable and Alabaster and Aurum consciously or unconsciously controlling things and managing this system of really old rights and wrongs, and nudging us this way?”

“I don’t know,” Verona said.  “But that sounds like another problem that shouldn’t scrap the plan.  Just… let’s talk it out.”

Lucy crossed her arms, thinking hard.  “I’m not saying no to any of this, talking things out is good, but how many times do we stop to go okay, that’s a really snarly point that we should talk over before moving forward?  Because this is the second one, and I’m not sure we’re getting anywhere.”

“Speaking of getting places, can we talk while flying?” Avery asked.  She tapped where her watch would be.

Lucy pulled the foggy watch out of her pocket and checked the time.  It was two in the afternoon.  They’d left a bit before noon.  It took time to fly, even with a relatively straight-line travel route, and it’d take time to get back.

Avery had a stash of extra glamour, and she chose to be small hawk.  Lucy chose the Cardinal, Verona the black songbird, and Snowdrop the pigeon.

All very different birds, trying to fly in formation.

The rest stop was set on a hill, and gave a view of the highway sweeping east to west and west to east, across the top of Kennet.  The road from here dipped under the highway and swept into Kennet proper.  There was a view of the two grassy ski hills, and the kids had cleared off, except for a pair of teenagers on Bowdler who were trying to climb the covered ladder that led up one of the ski lifts.  They were just far enough away that Lucy could make out the silhouettes.

Charles stood by, on his own.

They’d had a talk with him, letting him know they didn’t want him to turn himself in.  It was the best option, in the end.

Lucy finished drawing the connection blocker, then waved the Others over.

Toadswallow emerged from the trees, and he was followed by other goblins.  John was there, and Lucy was glad to see a face that… well, John didn’t exude friendliness.  A reliable face felt like a really crappy way of putting it but the fact he was there, still, really meant so much.

And Guilherme.  Guilherme wore his regular, muscular, over sized form.  He had a strand of hair in his face, and moved with confidence, but… it felt off.  The same way Snowdrop-as-Verona had felt off.

John was there, yeah, and Guilherme wasn’t.  Guilherme, who had called the witch hunters in.  Lucy had gotten hurt because of it.

Tashlit crossed the gravel lot to the grass, then crossed the grass to the picnic table where she sat beside Verona.  No words were exchanged, but Verona leaned her head into Tashlit’s arm, skin squishing around the top and side of her head.

This wasn’t all the others.  These at least, were the ones they’d asked for, minus Miss, who hadn’t wanted to show her… self.

Others came unasked for.  Bluntmunch loped in, and grunted as Toadswallow started blathering about presentation and being ready.  Ken came as well, which felt important, because Ken was vulnerable in ways but he was also the protector of Kennet and this was, in large part, about Kennet.

Lucy leaned against the table, watching everything, and watching the road.  Verona sat between where she leaned and Tashlit, and Avery stood off to the side, hands in pockets, strawberry blonde hair blowing across her freckled face without her fixing it while she watched the horizon.

“Thanks for coming, John,” Lucy said.

“Of course,” he replied.

“And for guarding my date, I guess.”

“Toadswallow wanted to interrupt it altogether, just in case.  I remember you were tense about protecting your mom,” John said.  “When we were exiling Maricica.”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied.

“You get the privilege of growing up, of living a full life.  I remember dates I never had, fragments of memory from soldiers who became a part of me.  You should experience something real, if you can.  As uninterrupted as possible.”

“Thanks,” Lucy replied, feeling like that was a really lame response to something meaningful.  “I dunno how profound we should be getting when it’s like, me sitting in the movie theater and being like…”

She struggled to think of an example, acutely aware that John and Tashlit were there.

That Wallace had teeny tiny hairs on his cheek and ear that glowed like a halo in the streetlight and that noticing had felt weirdly special, like a secret just for her?

“…really stupid little stuff, I guess,” Lucy said.

“I wanna know what stupid stuff,” Verona complained.

“Me too,” Avery said, looking over.

“I’ll tell you guys later, maybe.  Remind me.”

“Woo,” Verona said.

“Maybe there’s stupid little things,” Avery told Lucy.  “But the big picture?  That’s a first date.  If it went wrong because of everything going on, I bet it’d be at least a little bit annoying for the rest of your life.”

“Maybe,” Lucy agreed.

Tashlit gestured.  Verona pulled her head away from Tashlit’s arm to look.

“At least you didn’t fall through a… bench?  Chair,” Verona translated.  Tashlit patted the table of the picnic table.  “And table, and…”

Tashlit motioned with her pinky finger.

“Broke a finger?”

“You did?” Lucy asked Tashlit.

Tashlit held up one finger.

“First date,” Verona translated, putting her head against Tashlit’s arm again.

Tashlit made a so-so gesture, then put her hand down at an angle Lucy couldn’t see.

“Kind of a first date, she was very young,” Verona said.

“The little things are some of the things most worth protecting,” John said.  “The big milestones too.  I want you to have those milestones.”

John was expecting to make a bid for the Carmine Throne and he wasn’t necessarily expecting to make it.  She didn’t understand that.

“I want you to be around for those milestones,” Lucy told him, impulsive.  Then she flushed, aware of everyone else in earshot.  Tashlit, Verona, Toadswallow looked like he was caught up in conversation with Bluntmunch, Avery, Snowdrop…

“It gets complicated,” John said.  “I’m… I could be around to see those things, maybe, but would I want you to be around to see me, when I am what I am?  When-”

He stopped himself.  Not finishing the sentence.

She thought of the scene with Alexander, which they were here to confront.  A man laying face down-insofar as he had a face.  Head cracked open from the back by a high-caliber bullet, chunks of skull connected by torn skin and gobbets of blood.

John met her eyes and she felt like she should say something.  Then he turned, looking behind himself.

There was a second half to what she’d been intending to say, something she wanted to say even when that mental image of Alexander was firmly in her mind.

I want you to be my familiar.  Don’t take the Carmine throne.  Be there for the little things,

Verona lifted her head up again, off of Tashlit’s arm.

Rook approached.

“You’re attending?” John asked, before Lucy could.

“Things are involved enough that I think I have to,” Rook said.

Lucy walked away from them and around the table, finding a seat beside Tashlit.  She sat with her back to the table, watching the road.  After a bit, Avery came over, holding an animal-form Snowdrop.

A check of the time confirmed: 4:28.

They were half an hour late.  Avery pointed, and Lucy nodded.  She recognized Zed’s car.  It was part of a convoy.

It took another two minutes for them to come down the road, and at 4:30, the convoy of cars were pulling into the parking lot, with Zed stepping out of his car with Brie climbing out of the passenger seat, and Ray behind them in his own car, some fancy electric car.

Avery perked up as she saw Zed, then jumped to her feet as another of Zed’s passengers climbed out of the back.  Jessica.

“You came?” Avery asked, as they got close enough.  “You look… good.”

Yeah, Lucy hadn’t noticed right off, but she could see it.  Jessica was clearly uncomfortable with the company she was keeping, Zed and Brie excepted, but there was less tension there.  She looked younger.

“Did you find him?” Lucy asked.

“I told Avery.  I was either going to find him or I wasn’t going to surface again.  It had to be that one final plunge.”

“You found him,” Avery said.  “Why didn’t you say?  You could’ve messaged me!”

“It felt weird.  It’s my thing, my cousin’s thing, what would I say?  I succeeded, congratulate me?”

“Heck yeah!  Amazing!  And you didn’t tell me, Zed?”

“It was her news.”

Avery didn’t even seem to care about the answer.  “But he’s okay?  Your cousin’s alright?  You found his echo or-?”

“He’s alright.  He’s… better.”

Again, that look.  Avery pressed both hands to her heart, beaming.

“Congratulations,” Lucy said.

“I”m not really here for that,” Jessica said.

“Why are you here?” Verona asked.  “Not that it’s not cool, but…”

“You have a lot of enemies right now.  I thought you could use one more friend.”

Those were heavy words.  Lucy nodded, and mouthed a thank-you, but the others were showing up, and the focus that that demanded was an interruption of sorts between her and her forming the words.

When Alexander had first showed up here, he’d come with a bunch of his apprentices.

Mr. Musser came with Raquel and Reid, and their various familiars that hadn’t ridden in the cars as their humanoid forms left their animal forms.  Too many familiars for three people, especially considering Raquel didn’t have any.

Wye was there too.  Wye had been there for Alexander and he was there for Musser.

Wye felt especially dangerous, as someone who was always there, waiting and watching, quieter than Alexander, and if he was as ambitious as Alexander, he kept it to himself instead of leaving it as a weakness.

“Heya,” Zed said, voice soft, as he joined them.

“Hey,” Verona replied.

“This is pretty serious stuff, you know,” he told them.

“We deal with a lot of serious stuff, somehow,” Lucy told him.

“You do seem to.”

“We need to have a word, uh, with you and Ray, before anything major transpires,” Lucy told him.

“I… sure.”

Mr. Musser started to approach, but Raymond Sunshine put up a hand, indicating for him to hold off for a second.  Musser hung back, about twenty paces of distance separating them, like he was here but not yet involved.

Papers on the table would keep him from eavesdropping, hopefully.

Ray approached Charles.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

“It’s been as long as it has for good reason.  I’m poor company,” Charles answered.

“Are you keeping well?  Are you safe?”

“I’m protected, at least for the time being.”

This entire thing felt like a powder keg, ready to blow.  A single off word, or one more person joining the conversation, something from Musser, or Charles stumbling into something that provoked the wrong response and disrupted the peace…

Everyone present was aware that the very sensitive matter of Alexander dying hanging over their heads.

“Broken, dead, and lost, so many of us from that night,” Raymond said, quiet.  “A triumphant night, wasn’t it?  But it’s felt like it’s been a steep decline from there, for all our successes and power.”

“I’m sorry about Hector,” Charles said, quiet.

Raymond winced, then nodded.

“Marie?”

“If Durocher was ever okay, she’s alright now.”

Charles glanced over Raymond’s shoulder, to where Musser was poised, tense, like he was ready to launch into a fight.  With a different tone of voice, voice slipping into an unintentional growl as he dropped his volume.  “Musser?”

“I don’t think he cares so much as he feels the need to act.”

It was a very different question, not about the past or old friendships, but about this.

Musser looked like he was losing patience.

“Mr. Sunshine?” Lucy asked.  “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

Raymond Sunshine turned to look at her.

She took a deep breath, glanced at Charles, and then reached into her bag, pulling out the papers.

Charles hadn’t seen these.  He hadn’t known.  They’d only told him to hold off on telling Ray.

Ray took the papers, adjusted his glasses, and read.

Because Zed was there too, Lucy felt the need to explain.  “Documentation about the creation of the Choir.  Or the creation of something else… that became the Choir.”

“That’s… partially for Zed,” Avery said.  “For Brie.  Maybe it’ll help decipher what she’s hosting inside her, and help deal with it.  Doesn’t practice start with identifying what you’re dealing with?”

“You figured out who made it?” Brie asked.

Lucy glanced at Charles.

“He made it?” Brie asked.  She looked almost disappointed.  “I thought they’d be powerful, or stately, or… something.”

Cutting words, for a man who was very close to being nothing, in the eyes of karma and the universe.

“They said they didn’t want me to confess,” Charles said.  “Because being forsworn, it could go wrong.  So they’ve turned me in.  They let me know just before you arrived.”

“It could have gone wrong,” Raymond said, frowning as he paged through it.  “This is better, but this isn’t…”

He paused, sighing, and turned a page, then went back  a page.

“…This isn’t good, Charles.”

Ray looked up at Charles, peering through red sunglasses, and Charles winced as if he’d been jabbed with a fork.

“I didn’t know you had those,” Charles growled, turning his focus to them as if it let him avoid facing Raymond’s examination.  “The books too?”

“Couple,” Verona said.

“I thought if you had them, you’d unravel things.”

“Got ’em now,” Avery told him.  “I don’t know if this counts as unraveling.”

“I don’t know either,” Charles replied.

“Raymond, the papers are yours, for Brie’s sake,” Lucy said.  “But we’d like you to take custody of Charles.  We’re not equipped to really secure him and we’re worried about what happens if he’s around, when he may be the pawn of Fae plots.”

“Fae?” Zed asked, making a face.  “You’re really sticking us firmly in the mud, huh?”

“We wanted this to be help for Brie,” Avery said.  “And a thank you to you for helping us out when you have, but…”

“It is, and I’m grateful, I’m glad,” Zed replied.  He ran fingers through his hair.  “Ray?”

“Taking him isn’t my jurisdiction,” Ray said.  “It’s not-”

He shook his head.

“It’s not Musser’s either,” Verona said.  “He’s not a Lord.”

In the midst of the conversation with Charles, Charles had touched on the subject of Lords, and in the midst of that, a few things had clicked into place.

Cig had done a lot of talking about assholes and losers, and Charles was a loser.  But Cig had, in his peculiar way, also talked about how the culprits would deal with everything.

There was no lordship over the Blue Heron, and there weren’t that many Lords over any of the nearby regions.  A few minor ones, over towns and such, more formalized versions of what Miss had been, then what Matthew and Edith had been, what Toadswallow was now.

But there were greater Lordships, with a lot more sway, and as Cig had put it, ‘They’ll go after each other in the process of deciding what the change should be and who should be the one to execute it.’

If it came down to it, some great play to mess with practice and everything else, then they’d have to pick Lords, to not be under the sway of a corrupt Carmine whatever that was trying to hurt practice itself.  And with what had happened to Bristow and Alexander, just over the Blue Heron, no greater stakes, everyone was pretty aware that that would be a disaster.  One way or another, if the plot went ahead, it’d do a number on everyone here.  More the Mussers, Alexanders, and Bristows than the Durochers and Raymonds who didn’t like to get involved.

But maybe even those people too.

That reluctance to make that big push for power with everything that it would involve… that was something useful to them here.  Because yeah, Musser had authority over the Blue Heron, but that authority didn’t reach this far.  Maybe if he became a powerful Lord and extended that reach, but how much would that complicate things?

So they had to do their best to give authority to someone who they trusted to at least not abuse it.

“We need you to at least keep Charles safe,” Lucy told Raymond, quiet enough that Musser shouldn’t hear.  “Find a way to imprison him, sure, deal with him, but… you can’t go killing him, you can’t go hurting him for karmic benefit.  You can’t let Musser.”

Raymond looked split, caught in the crux of the decision.

“Is it really that hard, to say you won’t torture or kill someone?” Avery asked.

“Or is it another one of those things where if you take a stance, you’ll get on the bad side of international powers?” Verona asked.

“Neither, exactly,” Raymond Sunshine replied.

“We could extend our protection to Charles through tokens,” Toadswallow said, joining the conversation.  “If it’s a question of expending the power or having the responsibility.”

Raymond shook his head.  Then he straightened, handing the papers to Zed.  He turned to Musser, and he gestured.

Lucy drew in a deep breath as Musser approached, familiars, family members, and Wye Belanger following behind him.

“Charles Abrams is responsible for the Hungry Choir,” Raymond told Musser.

“Is he?  Then we should-”

“And I’ve been asked to use my authority and power to look after that,” Ray told Musser.

“Have you now?”

“Is it a problem?” Ray asked.

This was the Lord thing being put to the question.  Lords of an area apparently had a lot of power over what went on in their territory, and a lot of that power extended out to surrounding regions.  Being the headmaster, at least, was a little different.

“And the matter of Alexander Belanger?” Musser asked.

“I would like to have input, where appropriate,” Raymond told Musser, “But I can leave much of that to you.”

This was the drawback, of negotiating for a release of Charles to more forgiving jailers.  Musser didn’t care that much about Alexander, his predecessor, he didn’t seem angry, but there had to be a ton of parents of children and other contacts who wanted answers and wanted something.  Maybe if they’d given him Charles, a trophy and an explanation for something major that had been going on for a long time, a sacrifice for him to kill, maybe he wouldn’t have needed much more.

Musser asserted himself, standing straighter.

“You three girls know why I’m here, don’t you?” Musser asked.  “The murder?”

“Was me,” John uttered the words, his voice a flat affect.  “I put a bullet in the back of his head, secured his body against augury, put him in the car and then drove that car to the water.  I do believe Wye found him.”

“The Dog of War.”

“I am,” John said.  “I go by John Stiles.”

“Why kill him?” Musser asked.

“He was an implicit threat to our territory.  He set a deadline before he’d be able to target us-”

“A ceasefire of sorts,” Wye cut in.  “One you betrayed.”

“It was not a ceasefire, but a changing of the terms of engagement,” John said, voice firm.  “Believe me, I know about ceasefires and the lack of them.  Alexander continued to involve himself in our events by action and inaction.”

“We were invaded by Bristow’s Aware because Alexander chose to let him find his way here, and found reasons not to stop him,” Lucy said.  “Alexander never took his sights off of us.”

“He intended to weaken us with that kind of game,” John told Musser.  “I was in my rights to weaken him.”

“You shot the man in the head, you said,” Musser replied.

“It left him very weak, yes.  He died shortly after.”

The image flashed through Lucy’s mind again.  She looked aside.

“You couldn’t even bring yourselves to invite us into the territory you protect?” Musser asked.  “No rules for hospitality?”

“I’m well aware of what hospitality counts for,” Charles said.  “You and Alexander both.  I know how you get some of those implements and familiars, from people who think the kind of power that makes you great makes you good.”

“A plurality of demesnes too,” Musser said.  “But I digress.  You’ve shown no hospitality, which shouldn’t surprise me, when you have an Oni in your midst.”

“Are you so prejudiced?” Rook asked.

“I’m alarmed at how organized you Others seem to be, and what that might mean in the context of Belanger and Bristow’s falls.  I don’t know if these children are pawns-”

“Teenagers,” Lucy said.

“-or if they’re a danger otherwise…”

“They’re friends of ours,” Zed said.  “Of mine, Brie’s, and Jessica’s, at least.  Cross them and you cross us.  If this area is a danger in some way, let’s work that out by studying the danger first, finding the best way forward.”

“How long did it take to drive in?”

“From the time you told me to mark the distance?” Zed asked.  “Forty-five minutes, roughly.”

“The area is knotted,” Raymond cut in.  “If that’s where you’re going with this.”

“It’s knotted and it’s getting worse.  It’s harder to enter than it is to leave,” Musser said.  “Visiting Bristow in some of his old haunts, I got an education in such matters.”

“It will be resolved,” Toadswallow said.

“Am I to take the authority of a small goblin?” Musser asked.

“It will be resolved,” John said.  “In a matter of weeks.  I intend to take the Carmine’s throne, to undo the knotting, to cleanse Kennet of the blood that soaks it, and deal fairly with Other and practitioner both.”

“Will you now?  You who killed Alexander?”

“Will you interfere in the accords of Solomon?” Rook asked.  “We have the authority to decide these processes, to put Others into places of power, to judge matters of Truth.  Just as you have your authority to practice.”

“A big get out of jail free card?”

“It’s already been arranged,” John told Musser.  “Other powers have acknowledged me as their choice.  Unless someone better comes…”

“Would you try it?” Rook asked Musser.  “Challenge him for the seat?”

“I could.  But I don’t want that seat.  I’d sooner take the hide off him and keep it as a trophy, with the power that entails.”

“Then in a little under two week’s time, you can try,” John replied.  “Take it from me or whoever bests me.”

“It is our prerogative to investigate, to look into your affairs, as the highest of you may judge ours.  Raymond, would you follow?  Reid, familiars, guard me.  We’ll look into this.”

Toadswallow glanced over.

“No,” Lucy said.

Musser glanced over

“It’s our job.  We’re looking into it,” Lucy told him.  “We just gave some of our findings to Raymond Sunshine.”

“We announced ourselves to the remaining Judges,” Avery said.  “They gave their permission.  They’ve overseen several of the major steps we’ve taken.”

“I don’t care,” Musser said.  “You’re not competent enough.  Give us all the information you have.”

“No,” Verona said.

He stared her down.

“I’m not admitting any blame or anything for Alexander, but an awful lot of Blue Heron Headmasters die around us,” Verona said.

Lucy elbowed Verona hard.

“You really want to be another one of them?  This feels dumb.”

“Trying to cross me would be dumb.  I’ll look into matters and I’ll discuss with the powers that be as necessary.  Reid?  Come now.  Raymond?  If you please.”

“You’d be trespassing,” John said.

“Act accordingly.  I will respond in kind.”

“Go if you will, Musser, but I can’t cross the powers that be,” Raymond told him.  “I’ll secure Charles.”

“I’m disappointed, Raymond.”

Raymond gave only a singular nod.

Raymond, Zed, Brie, and Jessica remained where they were as Musser and his group headed back to the cars.

“Jesus,” Verona whispered.

“It was worth a try,” Toadswallow said.  “It was why we picked you in the first place.  So you could have that claim.  He’s powerful and connected enough to get away with ignoring it.  Now we… find a way, hm?”

“A way?” John asked.

“Any ideas?” Toadswallow asked, sounding a little hopeful.  “Anyone?  I have the backup plan of throwing more goblins at the problem, but Musser doesn’t seem like the sort to respond to that.”

“He very much isn’t,” Raymond said.  “The goblins would die en masse.”

Lucy joined Verona and Avery in shaking her head.

“If I may, I have one,” Rook said.

“Well, isn’t that delightful?” Toadswallow said, rubbing his hands together.  “Or not?  The look on your face-”

“My face is largely hidden,” Rook said.

“I can see it in your eyes,” Toadswallow said.

“Miss is seeing after the Witch Hunters.  They’re not so far away.  With your permission, and the agreement of the Kennet Others, they could be thirty minutes behind Headmaster Musser.  It’s not beyond the scope of imagination that they could cross paths.”

“Always poised with a counter-move, Rook?” Toadswallow asked.  “You’d turn Kennet into a warzone.”

“It might be easier to manage a warzone than to manage Musser.  He’s…”

“Unmanageable,” Raymond said.  “Unbeatable in nearly any direct conflict.”

“That’s the plan?” Lucy asked.  “Seriously?  The regular people of Kennet-”

“We can look after them,” Rook said.  “Jabber can come out of hiding.  Miss and I anticipated this, we discussed-”

“You might’ve included us in that discussion,” Toadswallow said.

“-and we welcome any other plans, but this was the best we could formulate.  We think it might draw out other involved parties.”

“The Fae,” Toadswallow said.

“And that, Charles, may be our cue to leave,” Raymond said.  “Zed, Brie, you can decide if you stay.  Jessica, if this is too much for you, I’m happy to give you a ride back.”

“No hard feelings if you want to bail,” Zed said.

“Then you’re staying?” Avery asked.

Zed nodded.  “At least for a bit.”

Toadswallow looked around the group, then frowned.  “Communicate your plans and these moves of yours next time and the times after, Rook.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“Tell Miss yes, and tell her to stay away..  John?  If you’d tell the ghouls and the other ones in your care?  Let Matthew know, have Matthew bring Jabber.  Guilherme?  Talk to Montague.”

“We’re really doing this?” Lucy asked.

“We must,” Rook said.  “The only other option is to concede on every front.”

Next Chapter