Summer Break – 13.5
Author: Wildbow

Summer Break – 13.5 | Pale

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Six more days of this, then the end of summer.

A dog much too large to be yapping was yelping and yapping at maximum volume, the sound carrying across downtown Kennet.  Verona stood just outside the store, leaning against the wall by the big display window, where the store had proclaimed to be closing or going out of business for most of her lifetime.  Gashwad and Peckersnot peered out of the trash at her.  Gashwad was a medium sized goblin, just a bit bigger than Nat, Doglick, Butty, and those guys, smaller than Toadswallow, but less than half the size of Bluntmunch, who Verona termed ‘big’.  She was sure some goblins were bigger.  Peckersnot still wore his battle wounds from the cat house, some slashes in his very skinny arms with visible notches that parted and closed as he moved and breathed.  His sole eye was bloodshot.

“Shut your fucking mutt up, you fuck!” a deep voice hollered out from a good two blocks away.

The yapping resumed.

“Well?” Gashwad asked.

Verona scrolled through her phone, then tapped out the cadence against her leg, tap-tap-hard tap, ‘semi’ tap, tap-tap, hard tap…

The dog went on, but she had the sense of it.

“Alternating emphasis, leaning right?” Verona asked.

“That’s an ass way to put it, but yeh.  Which means?”

She put her hand out, gauging the direction the voice was coming from, then pointed up, and drew a diagonal line through the air.  “They’re… heading from my three o’clock to my twelve o’clock?  About a block away?”

Peckersnot gave her a thumbs-up.

“Fuck off, dog!”

Hard tap, tap, tap.

“Declining emphasis.”

“You’ve gotta find a better way to say that,” Gashwad told her.  “It’s overcomplicated.”

A woman’s voice joined in: “Stop, you’re just egging it on!”

Verona paused, unsure.

Peckersnot tilted his head to look at her.

She shrugged, and Peckersnot nodded.

The ‘dog’ yapped.  Verona paused, then tapped against her leg in response, eyes scanning her phone.  Tap tap-tap, tap tap tap tap.  Yeah, she was pretty sure that didn’t mean anything.

“What good is this communication system if you guys are going to go off on tangents to be annoying?”

“What good is a system if you can’t, huh?” Gashwad asked.

“Fair.”

The ‘dog’ went on a fresh spree, like something had excited it, ar-ar-ar-ar-arf-rooo-rooooo-ar-ar!

Verona sighed, and didn’t even try to type it out as it continued, chalking it up to declining emphasis, which, in turn, meant the opposite of what one would imply.

When goblins used the broader patter of swears and shouts, taunts and jibes, it served a purpose, signaling to others in their group the movements, plan, even pushing up against one another to see who got to make the first move.  If you couldn’t get in position to deal with the target, come up with a good hearty series of taunts and swears that beat out the next guy, and effectively communicate, then you didn’t deserve to have the spotlight.  Of course, if you got the spotlight you had to earn it.

This applied to goblins playing stupid games, to navigating the streets of the Warrens, and raiding parties like Liberty’s.

Each group with its own patterns and discourse.

Declining emphasis, the start being attention-grabbing, front-loaded, then tapering off in strength, meant the target was moving away.  The effect on the target was that wherever they were going, there was intense swearing, howling, and noise behind them, making them want to turn around.  If they did turn around, then the goblin got their confrontation, a reward for being really effective in that way.

Each group subtly different, of course.

“Motherfucker!  Some of us are fucking trying to fucking work, shut up your fucking dog!”

One single ‘arf’ followed in response.

Gashwad looked up at Verona.

“Motherfucker is a compounded cuss-word, that’s a multiplier, with a steep slope, alternating emphasis means engagement, the on-off of it is distinct from the off-on…”

Gashwad grunted out a single syllable, expression not changing.

“Leaving fast, going thataway.”

Peckersnot made a small one-note sound.

“And ‘arf’ as the sign-off.”

Peckersnot stuck out both hands, thumbs up.  Verona dropped to a quick crouch, putting out one hand, and high-fived him with her hand in ‘devil horns’, index and pinky fingers extended to meet his hands.  She wiggled them, while he made an expression that, with his droopy-beak face, came as close as it ever did to a smile.

Peckersnot ducked out of sight, as did Gashwad.  Verona straightened quickly, and a man walked past the alley, giving her a weird look.

Just a teenage girl, standing near alley trash, trying too hard to look innocent.

“And the woman?” Gashwad asked.  He didn’t emerge.

“I think that’s a really annoyed civilian, not one of you guys.”

“You talking about empresses and declines and crap, it’s not right, but you’ve got the spirit, and you got the right answer,” Gashwad told her.  “Listen for it.”

“This is going to have me paying special attention to anyone who randomly cusses or makes a lot of noise.”

“Good,” Gashwad said, simple, one word.  “Your mother.”

“What?” Verona asked, bewildered.

But Gashwad was silent, and Verona caught on a second later.  She stepped out of the alley to see her mother had left the store and was looking around.

“Oh good, I thought you wandered off.”

“I was talking to trash goblins.”

“I hope you weren’t bored.  I just wanted the one thing while we’re out.”

Verona put her hands on her hips.  “Was that the real reason you wanted to come here?  Visiting your daughter with a secret shopping item in mind?”

“Of course not.”

There was the sound of a car with a broken or intentionally-tampered-with muffler tearing down the street.

“Fuck off!” the male voice in the distance hollered.

The dog started yapping again.

Verona made a mental note of approximate locations and possible targets – a witch hunter downtown- then looked at her mom, “what was the thing you wanted to get?”

“Boots,” her mom replied, pulling some faux-leather boots out of her bag.  They were black and mid-calf, with gold zippers running diagonally from the back to the outside ankle.

Verona reached over and looked at the underside.  “I’m not one to talk, since I wear, like, skateboarding shoes until I have to switch to something else for winter, but those don’t have treads.”

“I think they’re best for fall and spring.  Winter if I really try to cheat it, going from my car to the office.”

“Hmm!  They’re kinda neat.”

“What do you want to do next?  We got your fall clothes a couple weeks ago.  Do you know what you want to do for winter?  Do you have a coat?”

“I think I’m set.  Umm.  I need a lot of really random, minor stuff.”

“We can do random and minor if you want.  What sort of thing?  Art stuff?”

“More random than that.  Uhhh.  Global Sustainable?”

“Sure.”  They started walking.  “Is this random like buying the water bottles?”

“They’re more like thermoses than water bottles, but yeah.”

“I have the recurring feeling that you’re going to reveal a complete art installation in an abandoned building somewhere.”

“You might be overestimating my talents as an artist,” Verona told her mom.

“Maybe you’re the one underestimating your potential.”

Potential.  Frustrating.

They checked for cars and crossed the street at a non-intersection.  If she was out with Avery and Lucy, they had a way of leaving her behind, where they’d go to cross the street and they’d start crossing, and with Verona as the slowest, she’d react late, then be slow to cross, and what was a clear opening for them would be an awkward crossing for her.  Lucy had been better about that after Verona had remarked on it, with the occasional reminder, but Avery would probably always pull ahead like that.

In this, at least, her mom and her were on a bit of a better level.  It was kind of nice.

Global Sustainable was the sort of store that Verona wasn’t entirely sure she trusted.  Just a bit away from Killaloe Dough, it had pieces of art and decorations from Africa, India, South America, and other countries like that. But the pieces of art were… she hesitated to say mass manufactured, but there were a lot of samey pieces, carvings of elephants and gazelles, bead bracelets and necklaces, woven wall tapestries, wooden masks to be hung on walls, and sheafs of rustic, old-fashioned paper with ragged edges, bound in ribbon, with tags indicating the type of tree and where they came from.

It would be ironic for a place calling itself ‘sustainable’ to be predatory, exploiting third world countries to mass-produce some of this stuff, but-

She could hear a muffler-less engine squeal.  She paused, listening.

-But who was checking?

“What are we looking for?”

“Ummm… something long, and pretty.  I’m thinking a necklace.”

“Long?”

Verona nodded in the affirmative, finding the wooden pegs on the wall with necklaces strung on them.  “Also something mechanical, and, hm, something a guy would like.  Like, forty-something man’s man kinda guy.”

“Why?”

“For stuff!  I did say it was random.”

“What’s your relationship to this forty something man’s man?”

“Uhhh… not actually forty-something or a man, I’m just talking about tastes.”

“This isn’t Matthew?” her mom asked.

Verona startled a bit.  “Matthew?”

“Matthew and… Edith, was it?”

“That’s a pull.  Are you reading my texts?”

“No.  It came up in conversation a month or so ago.”

“Good memory.”

“Should I be reading your texts?”

Verona shook her head.  She picked a neat looking necklace of what looked like shards of bone or seashell and long pieces of carved wooden dowels.  “They were more a presence in the spring and early summer.  We probably annoyed them some, but Matthew’s going through a whole thing right now, really depressed, keeping his wife prisoner in his basement, you know.”

“Can you be serious, please?”

“I’m just playing around,” Verona said.  She picked up a wooden puzzle and wondered if the engine-head spirit would like it.  Maybe not, if it was wood?

“Verona.  Can you give me your undivided, no-playing attention for a minute?”

Verona put the puzzle down and turned to her mom.

“I want to know what’s going on with you.  Jasmine has been wonderful about trying to keep me up to date, but there are gaps I’d like to fill in, just a bit, and you have a tendency to make those little jokes when you’re stressed.  You made them less when we were on vacation and you hung out with Tasha, then you started making them more as we drove back to Kennet.  Now you’re making a lot of them.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or say.  This is me.”

“Fill in the blanks for me.  Who are you spending time with?  What happened with them, how are things now?  I know you’re having a fight with Lucy-”

“Ugh.”

“-and I want to know how you’re feeling about going back to your dad’s.”

“More ugh.”

“Is that a verdict?  Is that a concern I should bring to people?”

“It’s an ugh, about a thing I think ninety nine point nine percent of people in my shoes would feel ugh about.  I don’t know why people are crawling up my ass lately-”

“We’re in a store.  Mind the language and calm down-” her mom looked around.  A few heads had turned.

Verona fumed.

“Do you have more you want to buy here?  We could go get Killaloe Dough and talk about it.”

“Just this for now I guess,” Verona said.  She paused as she saw a hand-bound book with a snake embossed on the leather cover.  “And this.”

“Alright.  Let me pay for it-”

“I gotta.  Or it doesn’t have a point.”

“Is it a gift?”

Verona nodded.

“For Jasmine?”

“No.  But I should get something for her, for sure.”

“Maybe a bottle of wine?”

“I’m thirteen, almost fourteen.  She’d know you bought it, that wouldn’t be good.”

“I’m going to buy her wine anyway, so perhaps to make it something from both of us, you could draw on the box or do a card?  I know she loved that piece of art you did of her.  She sent me a picture.”

“Ah,” Verona said.  She wasn’t sure how to reply to that and she felt a bit guilty, like she’d betrayed her mom or something, somehow.  She fled the conversation and hurried to the counter before the store’s sole employee could duck out to go stock shelves or tidy up.  She fended off her mom’s attempt to pay.

If this was a payment to the spirit of Long, who she owed after burning through a lot of its powers while dealing with Maricica, then she had to buy it herself, like how they’d brought their own stuff for the awakening ritual.

“So,” her mom said, as they left the store.  “People are getting on your case?”

“They’re crawling up my ass,” Verona said, mostly to annoy her mom.  “Lucy isn’t letting go of this fight, Dad wants to meet, you’re bugging me about some people who gave us advice back when we didn’t have a lot of options of adults to talk to-”

“This is Matthew and Edith?”

“And it’s just like, yeah, I’m stressed, I’ve got a bunch of stuff fighting for priority in my head, and you know how I deal with that?  I do the exact opposite of this, I back off, I go do my own thing, I draw, I mess around, and I sort stuff out in the back of my head.”

“I do something very similar.  Too much, maybe.  It led to me being hours away, still processing, when you could have had me closer.”

“And- and yeah!  That’s… it takes a while, you know?  I’m not going to say I’m super good at the whole processing thing, it takes time.  So I’m not like, really mad at you for it, but also like… ugh.  I kinda just want to not deal with half this stuff so I can do what I gotta do.”

“Unfortunately, I think some of this stuff is automatic.  Going back to your dad, the CAS plan and schedule…”

“Ugghghghhh.”

“Can we start with that?  How are you feeling about that?”

Verona turned the ‘ugh’ into more of a deep-throated gurgling sound.

“Worried?  Mad?  Frustrated?”

“I’m processing.  That’s what you called it?  Processing?”

“Yes.”

“Yep.  Processing.”

“Can we talk about the fight you and Lucy are having?”

“Can we not?  I’m processing that too.”

“Speaking for myself, I’ve found there’s a fine line between stepping back, processing and then fixing the problem, and the other possibility, which is to step back, process, and letting it become procrastination instead.”

“Okay, but what if, just gonna say, what if the line between the two things is like, me getting the time to process?  What if jamming my week full of a meeting with dad and shopping, and sitting down and trying to resolve stuff with Lucy and her mom is filling up my time, and that’s what screws me up and makes it so it looks more like procrastinating than actually dealing with it?”

Her mom nodded.

They stood at the end of the line for Killaloe Dough.  There were a bunch of signs put up, advertising hot dogs wrapped in the Killaloe Dough fried pita things, and various chilled drinks and frozen confections.  It really was the sort of thing that went along with skiing, not the middle of summer, but they were adapting okay.

In the distinct non-conversation, Verona’s thoughts cycled back through their recent exchange.

“I didn’t mean the shopping was a bad thing,” she said.

“No, no, it’s fine,” her mom replied.  Too quickly?  Verona wasn’t sure.  She wasn’t sure and she wasn’t sure of that lack of sureness was because of how she’d had to juggle her dad’s feelings, reading into silent treatment.

“It’s really cool that you came.  It’s just… like… a lot of people were really cool and supportive after Dad… flipped out, I dunno.  And I’m glad we’re in touch and spending time together, but at the same time, I feel like everyone’s like… like, I’m glad you came, but…”

Verona trailed off.

“You don’t have to spare my feelings.  I’m just… processing,” her mom said, flashing a smile at Verona that Verona couldn’t read.

But processing is… you don’t process the stuff that’s working out great.

“Do you know what you’re ordering?”

“The usual.  Fried sugardough with lemon juice.”

“I thought you didn’t like sweet things.”

“Making it sour makes it ok.”

“And to drink?”

“Lemonade.”

“That’s a lot of lemon.”

Verona shrugged.  “Water then.”

In the distance, she could hear the engine rev, followed by barks.

Bangnut and Doglick standing guard, keeping tabs on intruders.

The intruder that had their focus wasn’t all that far away.

Would the next six days be like this?  Stresses piling up on stresses until she couldn’t handle a single one of them?

She felt bad because she was worried her mom’s silence right this minute was because she’d offended her.  She liked seeing her mom but she got the feeling that her mom hadn’t really come out of the marriage with her dad as unscathed as they pretended.  Maybe he’d been a bit like he was now, or he’d been that way on the bad days.  Maybe her mom had learned to deal with it, but then that stuff she’d learned kinda applied to Verona.

So… Verona tried to say something, maybe a little heated, or annoyed, or something, and her mom would see that heatedness, annoyance, or whatever and bam, defenses activated.  Like Ray.  Lucy had run into that with Ray.  Except Verona wasn’t related to Ray.

Or she’d seen stuff in Verona’s dad and she’d made conscious efforts to go the other direction.

Or, third option, they were just ridiculously different people and they’d become more different in the course of the thirteen or fourteen years they’d been together, and now Verona was stuck in the middle.

This isn’t silent treatment, she thought.  Mom’s not trying to give you the silent treatment, she’s just processing.

It felt like silent treatment.

Which had her thoughts boiling up, cross-matching, searching for solutions, reaching out for things to reference… in her very not-efficient kind of processing way.

She glanced back in the direction of the most recent noises.

Her eyes fell on an Other who was standing in traffic.  She had one blue eye, and then two dark brown eyes that overlapped one another.  Her face looked like a blood clot, her hair so matted with blood the point skin stopped and hair began was impossible to tell.  The eyes and one ear were clean and bloodless on that mass, and white teeth were pressed into the vaguely head-shaped bloody mass, some with traces of blood on them, others pristine, approximately where teeth should be, a leering ear-to-ear grin.

Tattered skin caked in clotting blood was indistinguishable from ragged and torn clothing, and the woman stood at a slight angle, leaning just enough to the right that it looked doable, but like a fall in the next moment wasn’t impossible.  There were traces of echo-ness at the edges of her, dark and faint.

A dark, grisly image for a slightly overcast summer afternoon.

And she was staring at Verona.

When the echo-thing blinked, the two left eyes blinked simultaneously, the right eye following a split-second later.

“Hey, since the line looks long, do you mind if I run into the thrift store real quick?” Verona asked.

“I thought you didn’t like thrift stores.”

“I like the stuff, thrift stores are great, it’s just-”

“You don’t like the ethics of shopping there when you don’t need to shop there.”

“Still going to take a look!”  Verona gave her mom the thumbs-up, already walking over in the direction of the store.  It meant she could turn and keep both her mom and that Other in view.

“Keep an eye on the front window, I’ll knock or wave when I get there.”

“I hear you,” Verona said.

The Other lost its balance, tipping over.  There was a flicker, a splatter of blood, and it broke into a run, weaving just behind a passing car.

Fuck you, you’re making me run?

She glanced behind herself as she approached the corner, making sure the echo wasn’t stopping to mess with her mom.  It paused for one heart-stopping moment there, head turned, looking at her mom, then came after her.

Verona grabbed the corner with one hand and used it to help turn the bend.

Messing with me while I’m trying to live my life?

Who was this?  Musser stood out as likely.  Maricica?  Would a Witch Hunter use something like this?

She contemplated running down the street, but she wasn’t sure she’d win that foot race.

The thrift store had been painted in sky blue at one time, but time had been unkind.  Streaks of rust ran from the metal that framed the window to the sidewalk, and the blue had faded to off-white, cracked, or both, depending on how much sun and weather exposure a particular bit of building got.

The bell jangled as she let herself in.

The echo thing hit the door as it closed.  It rattled violently, the bell clacking hard against the upper door, but not really jangling.

“Careful!” the woman at the counter called out.

“Wasn’t me!” Verona replied, slowing.

The thrift store had a lot of clothes, but there were aisles and corridors.  It might have been intended as a living space once, or else the owners had used the carpet and lighting normally intended for houses for cost saving reasons, but it didn’t look like a business.  It looked like a very cluttered house with very little in the way of livability, areas organized by type.

The Other let itself in.

Verona was still gainsaid, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been.  As far as she could figure it, it dropped her down to a bare-minimum kind of power level, where her practice worked, it just didn’t have much oomph.

She had other stuff, too.  Clem had sent her package.

The Other wasn’t all ‘there’, Verona was pretty sure.  Being inside the building and navigating the aisles seemed to be slowing it down.  About five times, as it passed by a massive collection of house plates with the various house numbers arranged and the boards for them to be mounted on, it paused, turning its back on Verona.  Almost like it had when examining her mom.

It rounded the end of the aisle, and when it had a clear path to Verona, broke into a sudden run.

Verona moved under a table, and the run stopped.  The Other walked down a bit, then looked at plates.

“What are you?” Verona whispered.

The old woman who managed this store was around the corner, in an area that would maybe be called the front hall, if this were a house.  She sat in a small room with a hole cut out in the wall, cash register beside her, perusing a paper.

She didn’t seem to care Verona was around.  Probably figured that if stuff got stolen she’d have more room.  And besides, if some addicts or whatever raided this place, what would they even get?  A bunch of fifteen dollar decorative plates?  Some old dresses?  Where would they even sell them?

Refuge in inferiority.

The Other stalked, and the more it made its hobbling way toward Verona, the more it felt like she was dealing more with a robot than anything alive.  When the set paths were clear, the Other was fast, fierce, and alert.  Unfamiliar environment, changes of pace?  It slowed down a lot, got distracted.

She could hear the goblins making noise, faint.

Her lessons in the noises goblins made and how they communicated let her know that there were other unfriendlies coming.  But Bluntmunch, Peckersnot, Gashwad, Doglick, and the rest didn’t necessarily know that she was here, specifically.  Even if they did, this wasn’t necessarily a goblin friendly space.

She got out her cell phone.

The Other came at her.  Verona nearly dropped her phone in her haste to duck under a table draped in neatly arranged tablecloths, only to realize it wasn’t the escape route she thought it was.  Tupperware filled with small cigar boxes or something was piled up beneath the table.

She reversed direction, almost rolling in her hurry to get away.  The Other dropped to a crouch, low to the ground, and blinked out-of-sync, teeth moving through bloody blood-clot flesh at speeds that didn’t match the teeth next to one another, until top and bottom teeth met.  Almost a grimace.

Teeth parted again, ‘mouth’ opening, and strings of blood stretched between them.  Instead of the interior of a mouth, tongue, or throat, was a dark void with a lot of echo flickers lining its edges, stretching down to the far end of the Other.

The Other reached out, hand pawing at the ground, slapping at floorboards covered in old, well-trodden rug.

“Miss?” the old woman at the counter called out.  “Everything okay?”

“Seeing what’s under the tables,” Verona said, looking at the Other under the table.

That woman heard you smack the ground.

An echo-like Other that was more solid than any echo Verona had met, out of sight, but… solid or powerful enough to be heard?

Maybe solid or powerful enough to do more?

It wasn’t radiating emotions or anything either.

“Let me know if you need any help, dear.”

The older woman who minded the store now stood at the entryway to that little hall that separated the back rooms from the main front room, watching, smiling patiently.

Verona eyed the Other as it stood.  The old woman didn’t seem to see it.

Act casual.

This Other wasn’t intelligent or free-willed enough to really corner Verona, which put Verona in a position where she could keep it at bay for possibly forever.  Bait it this way, bait it that way, keep furniture between them…

Except her mom was coming and she kinda needed to wrap this up.

Okay, options.

She had four items from Clementine, on top of the usual stuff, like the Enter Key, the Dropped Knife, her glamour from Guilherme and the spell cards with the usual effects.

Item one: Goblin Matchbox.  To be used with care, it set fires very easily as matches were lit, in random places nearby.  If there were already fires, it also made fires nearby abruptly bigger and harder to manage.  Good for distractions, if there wasn’t anything especially vital nearby.  Her own limited diagnosis told her there were ways to get more control over the end result and what got set on fire.  Better relationships with goblins, maybe.  She’d run it by Toadswallow before meeting her mom, but he didn’t know for sure.  Which had gotten her started on talking to Gashwad and Peckersnot about the goblin signaling and how they were coordinating across downtown.  The matches naturally replenished themselves.

Toadswallow had been interested in borrowing the matchbook, but it was technically a loan, and she didn’t feel right loaning something given as a loan.

Item two: Sanguine Stone.  No longer would they have to share the Hot Lead between them.  It was a power source.  Simple enough to use.  Squeeze, it dripped blood, and dripped blood enhanced any practices it touched.  Continuing to squeeze produced more concentrated blood, which increased the enhancement over time.  It could, as far as Clem or Verona’s diagnosis had been able to figure out, provide steadily improving enhancement for a long, long time.

Except there was a drawback, of course.  Several.  Gripping the stone meant a white-knuckle squeeze that was hard and painful to keep up for ten seconds, let alone the minutes needed to get the super concentrated blood to really boost a practice.  That was one thing.  The other was that when the squeeze stopped, an intelligence tied to the stone got a chance to push back, wrest control, or do something with any and all affected practices.  Sometimes that meant lashing out, back at the practitioner holding the stone.  Other times, it just destroyed whatever had been powered up.  The more power put into the object, the more power and time that other intelligence had.

She kept her distance, walking down the aisle, letting the Other do its best to close the distance by the rules it followed.  She was careful to look like she was browsing while watching the Other pace.

Clementine had apparently sold the Sanguine Stone to four people who were probably practitioners.  Three of those customers had come back to return it, leaving Clem with only the vague impression the fourth member of that quartet had been killed or badly injured.

Third item: The Odd One Out. It liked sets, and hid among sets, though it was pretty bad at hiding.  It could be the third joker in a deck of cards, a coin of a different country in a pocketful of change.  If the objects were magical, it would evidence a little bit of tricky magic itself.  Mostly it had a habit of springing up at inopportune times for its owner, getting players accused of cheating in poker, a letter confessing to cheating that appeared in a bundle of romantic mementos, or becoming a false page that ruined the ending of a book partway through.

And the fourth item: the Temporary Tat.  Or, alternate title, How Clementine Accidentally Became a Lieutenant in an International Drug Cartel.  Slap that puppy on a visible location and it gave easy membership in an appropriate group for the audience at hand.  Except, uh, it didn’t work on practitioners and she was pretty sure it didn’t work on Witch Hunters, it wore off at inconvenient times, and feigned membership came with drawbacks.  Instant enmity with opposed groups, groups tended to insist on initiating the bearer of the Tat into the group, sometimes violently, and they’d do it every time the tattoo was reapplied, forgetting the prior times.  There was also the fact that if the tattoo faded at a bad time or if the paper-thin guise was seen through by a failure to play along, the person bearing the Tat was seen as a traitor, with dangerous consequences.

She reached for a fifth thing.  Her phone.  She hesitated long enough that she was pretty sure if someone were there to see and remark on it, they’d call her an idiot.

Her eyes darted from phone to Other and back again.  She had to move quickly as she looked up and saw it striding around the end of the aisle, retreating back and weaving between racks of old clothes.

‘Thrift.  Help.’

That would hopefully signal Avery, who could maybe come help, or call the right people.  Zed, Brie, and Jessica were in town but they were trying not to get too involved.  They would, after all of this, probably have to go back to school and deal with Musser again.

Or if they didn’t, then the fact they helped and Musser didn’t come back would be a problem.

She could hear the distant howl.  It was a sound that intensified at the end.

If the declining sound, intense at the start and falling off, meant something was leaving, then this meant something was approaching.  By the sound and the distant engine noises, she had a bad feeling.

Okay, okay.  What the heck do I do?

What factions do you belong to, thrift store owner?  A knitting club?  Verona reached into her bag, found the mottled, unreadable blob of tattoo on a slip of adhesive plastic, backed by more plastic, and peeled it apart.  She pressed it against her upper arm, rolling up her sleeve so she could roll it down and cover the thing when convenient.

She tore it off, and then looked.  A Scottish flag?  Okay.

She was careful to put the plastic away.  She didn’t want to go dumpster diving or anything like Clem had, to find the plastic so she could take the thing off or reapply it while deep in dangerous territory.

The Other leered at her.  The mouth had closed up and the empty space was no longer there.  The blue eye was drifting slightly on her face.

“Miss?” Verona called out.

“What can I do for you?  Are you curious about a piece?  Oh!  I certainly hope that’s not a real tattoo, even if I can approve of the subject.  My!”

While the woman talked, the Other’s face stretched long, jaw pulling down, face tearing with strings and gobbets of the clotted blood stretched between teeth.  It made a low, rasping sound, and a faint clamor of voices leaked out with the sound, like multiple televisions with the sound turned off.

It bumped a table as it took off running down the aisle, not even avoiding the obstacles. Verona hurried to round a table.

“It’s temporary.  I hope,” Verona said, freaking out internally as the Other moved, a little more aggressive than before, more animated, more eager to get at her.  She glanced at the table and the Other.

“I think that table might need a tweak.  I’ll have to make a mental note,” the older woman said.  “What do you need?”

“Any chance I could browse in private?  I feel like I’m being watched.  It’s kind of awkward.”

“Of course, of course.  I don’t suppose I could ask, before I go-”

“-Have you been to Scotland?  Does your family hail from there?”

“No, no.  I have a friend from there.  She’s a character.”

The older woman laughed.

Go away!  The tattoo is supposed to get you on my side, not make you cling.

Why couldn’t the rest of the world just leave her alone?

“She must have made an impression on you.”

“She… definitely does.  My parents are from just outside Inverness.”

“Huh.”

The Other yawned its mouth open, like it was trying to get its face ready to be able to bite.  More voices leaked out, faint.

Don’t panic, don’t panic, stay calm, figure out a strategy, like Zed said.

She used her Sight, and saw the Other as something very dark, blood and gauze in a vaguely human shape.  There was a wound or a mark at one side of its shoulder.

A weak point?

“I’ve got some books, just looking at the pictures will make you want to visit.  Let me go get them.  Oh!  And some language books.”

“Sure,” Verona said, wary and noncommittal.  Could she do the glamour trick, becoming an element?  Out through the display window?

She was worried about doing that while armed.

No really good items lying around.  The swords and stuff were behind display cases, pretty close to the woman’s little office, which she’d happily gone back to, talking a bit to herself.  They looked a bit unwieldy to use, anyway.

Dropped Knife to weak point, maybe?

She tensed, ready.

The door opened.  The bell jangled.  The Other didn’t move a hair.

“Hello!” the store owner called out.  “Busy this afternoon.  Ask if you have questions.”

“We will,” Cleo the Witch Hunter answered.  “Thank you.”

Cleo was slender, wearing a motorcycle jacket and a white top, skinny jeans and boots not all that different from the ones Verona’s mom had bought.  She was feeling the heat, which was no big surprise with long pants and a leather jacket on for even an overcast summer day, evident in a faint sheen on her skin, but she had a cocky sort of attitude that made it seem like she didn’t care at all.  A bag sat at her right hip, cube-shaped and zippered with a strap going to her left shoulder.

Francis followed behind Cleo.  A kid Verona’s age.  Slightly gaunt, slightly dangerous look in the eyes, clothes a bit scuffed, skin more than a bit scuffed.  All suggesting he’d been in fights recently.  Kinda cute in a coyote-that’s-growing-out-of-puppyhood sort of way.  Like, in the way that she’d want to pet him but she was pretty sure he bit and that risk would be there no matter how much she tried.

Verona backed up a bit more.

Cleo smiled at her.  “What is it?”

“What is what?” Verona asked.

Cleo’s eyes flicked over to the Other.

“I have no freaking idea.”

“Oh, really?” Cleo asked, quiet.

She and Francis moved in separate directions.

There wasn’t great cover here.  Obstructions for the Other, but… nothing that would really protect her.  Clothes and clothes racks, a few narrow shelves smaller than she was, with towels, dishtowels, and decorative drying clothes arranged within, ends draping out.

Cleo pitched her voice low, approaching carefully, eyeing everything between her and Verona.  “It came right for us, poor Francis was having a shower.  But you know, just like a curse, you can send these things back to the sender.”

Verona nodded, lips pressed together.

“Why did it come for you, then?”

“I think Musser made it, and Musser has tricks.”

“The big guy?  With the broken glasses?”

“Are they still broken?”

Cleo nodded.

“My friends did that.  I don’t suppose you’d let us fight this out, I can deal with the pesky echo zombie thing?  We go on our separate ways?”

Cleo shook her head.

Witch Hunter at her twelve, between her and the door, Francis at her three o’clock, moving to her four or her five, freaky zombie Other at her two, closer than either Witch Hunter.

Verona reconsidered the window plan, but she could imagine being only half-glamoured, the window shattering, slicing her to ribbons.  A lot of her options were like that.

“Cleo,” Francis said.

“Yeah?”

“Right arm.  Her tattoo.”

Verona pulled her sleeve down to try to hide it, turning her body slightly.

“What was it?”

“Lighthouse tat.  Like Samaniego and Lowe have.”

“Ballsy,” Cleo said.  “Stupid, but ballsy.  Now I feel obligated to kill you.  The Lighthouse has been good to me.”

“That’s actually a magic temporary tattoo.  I’m not actually pretending to be a member.”

“The feeling isn’t going away,” Cleo replied, making a face.  “Darn.”

“I didn’t think you were part of the Lighthouse,” Verona said.

“You’re well informed.”

“My friend’s a good listener,” Verona said, knowing she was volunteering vital information, but she wanted to keep up the patter, keep up the disclosure of information.

“I’m from the Montreal group, but we’re really incestuous.  Trade people all the time.  We lost a few the other night, the others are a bit lost, they’re waiting for reinforcements and marching orders, so I’m taking Francis under my wing.  Might take him back to Montreal for a bit.  Give him an education in our methods.”

Francis shrugged.

“Did Francis get any say in the matter?  If my friend heard right, he was already spirited away or something by the Fae?”

“Something like that,” Cleo said.

“Feels like a bad move to go and kidnap him again.”

“Got a say in the matter,” Francis said.

The fact the Witch Hunters were moving forward meant Verona couldn’t just circle around furniture and obstacles endlessly to avoid the Other, who seemed zeroed in on her.

The creature was adult sized, and Verona was small.  It moved around a circular clothing rack, and Verona moved around another, ducking low.  It didn’t seem to matter.  The thing was locked onto her.

Musser might be playing the game we want to play.  Pitting us against each other, then cleaning up.

“Are you okay?” the store owner asked.

Cleo glanced over her shoulder.

She looked at Francis, and Francis made a small gesture at his throat, fingers bent, a slashing motion at the throat.

“No,” Verona whispered.  “I’m okay!  Mind giving us a moment?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Verona said, watching the Other with one eye and Cleo with another.

“I’ve got the books at the counter.  I could lend them to you if you promised to bring them back.”

“Right,” Verona replied.

“Too nice,” Cleo murmured.

“What are you even fighting for, if you’re willing to hurt people like her?” Verona asked.  “She’s super annoying but she’s harmless.”

“She’s in the way.”

“Of what?” Verona asked, more intense.  Frig, would her mom show up?  What happened then?  They looked similar enough Cleo would probably catch on.

“Different reasons for all of us.”

“Francis got kidnapped by Fae, was it?”

“You can keep asking, I’m not sharing,” Francis said.

“Some of us have the tragic backstory.  The Lighthouse likes that sort.  Bit of hate and resentment gives them the fire to keep fighting,” Cleo said.  “Montreal is different.”

“Why are you telling her?” Francis asked.

“Because I know how they tick.  Practitioners,” Cleo said.  She took a quick step forward and kicked the Other in the behind.  It crashed into a rack, shoved the rack to one side, and lunged.  Verona moved quickly to evade it.

Now with only one flimsy clothes rack between herself and the Other, a window to her left, a wall behind her.  Whatever route she took, she wouldn’t get past Witch Hunters before they cut her off.

“What we do,” Cleo told Verona, in her heavy accent, “is we act like sports recruiters.  Go to schools, find the untapped.  The angry, the abused, the talented ones who’ve gone down the wrong track.  If you can run and hit hard and you’re a good little boy, you might make the lacrosse team.  If you can run, hit hard, and you’re angry as all hell at the world, or if you want more than chasing a ball, we offer.”

“What-”

The Other pushed at the rack.  Verona ducked left, saw the Other move that way, and ducked right.

“-what are the perks?”

“I could tell you about money, nice apartments, connections, sometimes you dial in a favor, and someone that’s really good at hurting people will take your abusive mom and pop into their custody, keep ’em for a few years to try their tools and techniques on.  But mostly?  Mostly, we all feel, deep down inside, it isn’t fair, and gosh…”

Cleo shook her head.  Verona couldn’t take her eyes off the Other to focus on her, but she could see it in the background.

“…Assholes like you are cheating and making it all more unfair than anyone else.”

“And you’ll kill people like her?  Nice old lady who likes Scotland a lot?”

“We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, so… really, that’s on your head.”

“Screw that!” Verona replied.

The Other rasped, matching her volume.  Verona could hear boys talking.  It moved, Verona moved around, coming dangerously close to having her back to Francis, and she nearly tripped over a cord that ran from an outlet to a lamp by the display window.

“You were nice enough to send the woman away.  But you’re still cheating.  You’re still making deals with things best left alone.  Those Lighthouse guys, they train, they hone talents, they get really good if they can stick around.  But us?  We reclaim, we take back what you cheated to get.  I’ll snip off fingers and keep them because they have some power in them.  I’ll get your things, take ’em back, we’ll work out how they work, figure out who can use them best.”

Cleo reached behind her, and she pulled out her gun.

A water pistol, highlighter-yellow handle, red tip, blue bottle on top, with a zig-zag of a lightning bolt on it.

“Ditched the camera?”

“Your friend figured some of the drawbacks out.  I had to apply for permission to load up my stock of this baby.  Only a partial fill.”

“What is it?”

“A man tried to cheat, tried to beat Death and give his wife and kid immortality.  Baptism dunk in an artificial fountain of youth.  It worked.  Immortality, living forever, free of injury, death, decay, until the immobility set in, weeks later.  Living forever, skin turned to stone, eyes darting this way and that inside the shell, if they’re that lucky.  We killed him, a generation back, found him with his arms and hands turned to stone to the elbow.  Now we’ve got a swimming pool’s worth of the stuff we dip into.  We dredge from the bottom, for the faster acting parts.”

“I’m going to stand way over here,” Francis said.

“Yeah,” Cleo said.  “You’ve met Emile?”

“Nah.”

“You should.  Lost his face and upper chest to this.  Skin turned to an impenetrable helmet, one eye peering through, now.”

“I still think you’re telling her too much.”

“It’s part of the process of reclamation,” Cleo replied, and the accent really played up that last word.  “They have Fae friends.  Friends who live out stories and dramas.  You have to counter that.  Make your own story.  Stories where you can be the heroine.”

Verona reached into a pocket, flicking through for a card that might manipulate water.  Except… it couldn’t be that easy, turning the water back on Cleo.

And she really didn’t want to be wrong, trying to manipulate the liquid, and-

The Other shoved the rack.  Verona backed up, hitting the wall behind her.

It came at her, mouth yawning open, teeth turned to point forward, toward her.

She backed around the rack, toe scraping, trying to find the cord-

The cord she’d nearly tripped over.  She kicked it up as the Other came at her, Dropped Knife ready-

It tripped, and she was ready, plunging the blade into the weak point.

“Nope,” Cleo said, from a position that was nearly behind Verona.

It wasn’t a weak point?

Verona threw down a card, without even checking to see.  The Other reached for her, and the sweep of its groping arm didn’t do much more than bowl her over.

A blast of wind, in every direction.  The lamp fell from the table, clothes rattled on the racks.

“What is this commotion!?” the older woman screeched.

Cleo had been spraying.  She’d pulled her little leather jacket up, hand inside and gripping collar, and the leather was turning to beads of stone.

Verona scrambled.  The Other came at her, and it looked a little less Echo-ey than before, some of its flesh turned to stone.  It stumbled, pausing as its flesh tore, as if it was trying to disengage itself from the stone portions.  It couldn’t seem to manage the disconnect.  It fell over, back arched.

“It was marked with a family sigil or something.  Cut it away, gave it the boot, it went off.  Guess it wasn’t your family?”

“Musser,” Verona called out.  “Does that change anything?”

“No, and as effective as it is, I think I should put this away,” Cleo said, putting the water pistol into the zippered bag at her side.  She began striding toward Verona.

Why?  She was cocky, didn’t even care that Verona might be armed-

Verona made it about three steps before she remembered Francis, thought to check the direction she’d last seen him, and saw him close-up.  A matter of a step or two away from her.

He kicked her side.  She stumbled into a table of stuff that had been set up to be viewable from the window, and some of that stuff fell to the floor.  She opened her mouth in a wordless groan at the pain in her side.

“What on earth are you doing to that poor girl!?”

Cleo reached into her jacket and pulled out a gun.

“Are you utterly insane!?” the store owner cried out.

Verona groped for her bag, reached inside, and found the deck of cards.  She pried off the cord that she’d arranged and knotted using the ‘down to earth’ rune Avery had used, fingernails dragging against cord until it was pulled around the corner of the deck.

She hurled the deck of cards at Cleo.  Cleo shielded herself with her jacket again, then gave Verona a sharp look.

“Leave her be!  Put that away!”

“I’m so tempted to shoot her.”

“It’s not worth it.  The cleanup, the calls you have to make,” Francis said.

“You’re soft,” Cleo said.

“Yeah.  A bit.”

“We’ll work on that.”

“Sure.”

“Put the gun away!” the store owner called out.

Cleo looked down at the handgun she carried.  “What were the cards you threw at me?”

“Get bent,” Verona taunted.

Cleo smiled.  “That’s going to annoy me.  You have a gun, Francis?  I hope you don’t object to me using it on her.”

She put her actual handgun away.

“I’ve got knives.”

Verona crawled toward the door, Dropped Knife in hand, and Cleo moved closer.

Verona reached for her bag, and Cleo lunged, leaping, foot coming down- Verona pulled her hand back just in time to avoid having it crushed underfoot.

Her backpack was under Cleo’s foot- so she did the next best thing, and swiped with her knife.

Cleo was too quick to let the knife cut her across the middle, but that wasn’t Verona’s goal.  She cut at the strap, nicked it, and grabbed onto that square bag, hauling on it until it tore.  Cleo’s attempt to shift footing and hold onto it only meant Verona could run with with it.

The Witch Hunter had a lot of nasty, nasty tricks, but she wasn’t as scary good in a fight as the others.

“Oh fuck you!” Cleo called out.

Cleo had Verona’s bag, picked up off the floor, and Verona had Cleo’s.

She unzipped it.

“Careful,” Cleo said.  “She has the water pistol.”

“You’re insane!” the store owner called out.

“And armed.  Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m calling the police!”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Cleo replied.

“Stay put,” Francis’s voice could be heard.

The bag held the water pistol, ammunition, a bird’s foot, a sealed letter with illegible writing on the front, a rasp, a resealable bag of granny candy where the resealable bag was so stiff it didn’t even move when touched, a lens for a camera, badly scuffed up, a bunch of needles, and a bag that looked like it could be a pencil case.

The contents of the pencil case squished like something fluid.  She unzipped carefully, wary of making too much noise.  She saw what she realized was a moist tongue and zipped the bag closed again.

Cleo commented as she went through Verona’s bag.  “Matchbook, little skull with a wire sticking out the mouth, stone… that bleeds, lots and lots of spell cards.  Art, notebooks… mask in three pieces.  Gave me a splinter.”

Verona breathed hard.  The fact that woman had her bag- gods.  She’d been annoyed into fighting with Lucy, even though she hated getting that upset, she’d been irritable with her mom, but this- it came very, very close to making her lunge to her feet and improvise something stupid.

Or lunging to her feet and doing something unforgivable.  Using the water pistol.

Could she do again what she’d done to Bristow?

They had her bag.  They had- they had almost everything.  Art she was proud of, the magic arsenal she was rebuilding, that had been taken from her.  The magic items, the super cool things she’d been given as gifts.

She ran upstairs, up to the second floor with more antiques and thrifty stuff.  Appliances and bedroom stuff.

“Stay with the woman?” Cleo asked.

“Yeah,” Francis replied.

How fucking stupid was it?  How galling?  That she had this phenomenal power at her fingertips, tricks to blow people up, to turn them to stone and make them regret what they’d done forever, she had spells and the ability to control people, to blind them, to curse them.  She had everything at her disposal, and over and over again, she got doubted, she got treated as inferior, they stressed how bad she was at certain stuff, how she wasn’t living up to potential.  Except living up to potential was the worst thing she could do, here.  She held back, again and again, until she couldn’t, until someone too reckless and stupid to respect how much she was holding back just… threw themselves at the Brownies.  Or came charging at her, pressuring her, when they knew she had these kinds of weapons.  Playing chicken.

She was strong, she was good at this, she had access to great tools and powers, great advice, great everything, she had buddies she could count on.

Yet she felt powerless.

It was like the universe was daring her.

Daring her.  Be a monster.  She couldn’t be an Other, but she could be a monster.

She got treated like a monster, despite her best efforts.  By people like this.

She got treated like a child, by friends, by family, by Matthew.  Her life wasn’t even in her own control anymore.  Was out of her control more than it had ever been.  Because she’d asked for help that one time.  They held her hands, they protected her, they treated her like she was fragile, dictated her week.

She could change so much of that by using the water pistol here.  Cleo would expect it, but she could- she had options.  She had cards in her pocket.  A bit of wind, to help spray carry.

Her thoughts were panicky, for reasons that had nothing to do with the Witch Hunter that followed her.  Panicky because everything added up together, and because- she just needed time to think, to process.  Everything was on the line and she was so close to getting none of it.

Verona ducked between shelves of old appliances.

She just had to reach down, grab the water pistol, spray the Witch Hunter, helped by a burst of wind.  And Lucy would think less of her but Lucy was already pulling away.  Avery would think less of her, but Avery was stressing out about stuff.  And maybe if they stood by her no matter what, it was better if they stood by her while respecting and fearing her a bit, right?  Right?

She felt like she hadn’t had time to think one uncomplicated thought since the vacation with Tashlit had ended, and the fatigue was hitting her all at once like a freight train.  She’d enjoyed it at first, trying to catch up, trying to engage, but now she’d been kicked down a few too many times.  Things had gotten in the way a few too many times.

Like this, in the middle of her afternoon with her mom.

She did her best to control her breathing.

Strategize.

Instinct was absolutely the worst thing she could rely on right this minute.

What tools did she have?

The rasp- she lightly raked it against a shelf edge.  Nothing.

She looked at it closer in the light.  There was blood in the crevices.

This was a tool that had been used on flesh.

Gently, she moved it to the back of her hand, letting the metal touch the finer hairs there.

Skin crawled from the point of contact to elbow, in a really bad way.

She was pretty sure that was something else she couldn’t conscience using.

The candies?  How would she force those into the Witch Hunter’s mouth?

She couldn’t decipher a use for the bird’s foot.

Her hand reached down, into her pocket.  She pulled out her house keys from the mini-pocket.

The Enter Key was there.  A funnily shaped little key.

She found one of the wall lights that plugged into an ordinary wall outlet, and crouched down.

“Little witch!” Cleo called out.

Verona hauled the little bit of flexible, high-grip rubber at the base of the bag that helped keep the little bag rigidly cube-shaped, folded it, and used it to press the Enter Key into the outlet.

The lights flickered violently, flaring.  Some popped.

“She did something,” Francis called up.

“You think!?”

Okay.  Right, okay.

She looked up and around, trying to gauge where Cleo was.  Going by the recent bit of speaking…

Floorboards creaked.

Paper rustled as Verona dug through cards.

A silence card.  It felt heavy to hold, let alone use.  It reminded her of another point in time she’d felt on edge.  Worse than this.  In the space under the cabin, with the furs, silence runes active.  She’d blown up Edith, going by instinct more than strategy, using the thorn to turn the door’s trapped rune against Edith herself.

Silent, she moved on floorboards that made no sound, circling around as Cleo came her way, ducking out of sight just as Cleo stepped around to the light socket.

“A key?” Cleo asked, crouching.  She was wearing Verona’s bag.  “Hey, Francis!?”

“What?”

“You know the young lady we followed here?  Toothy?”

“Yeah.”

“Did she turn around, start acting funny?”

“Nah!  She wants to go upstairs, but she’s having trouble moving.”

“Right.”

“What are you talking about?” the store owner asked.

They don’t even need to worry about awakening people.

“Still here?” Cleo asked.  “Where are you?”

Verona marked a card with a marker, then stepped around the corner and whipped out a card.  She aimed for the legs, because she didn’t want to kill.

The card glowed, and Cleo backed off, but the glow became a splash of water.

Water connected the key in the outlet to Cleo, a splash from pelvis to ankle.

All the lights went out.  Cleo fell.

Verona ran over, leaping through the air, and landed awkwardly, one foot on Cleo’s head, smashing the Witch Hunter’s ear into ground, the other on her back.  She stooped down to grab at her own bag, pulling it away from Cleo.

The Witch Hunter grabbed her ankle, firm, then grabbed higher up on Verona’s leg.  Clawing her way up.  She was bigger, stronger, heavier.

Verona still had the Dropped Knife.  It was dappled with the moisture that dripped off of things, and when she cut the back of the Witch Hunter’s hand, it went through flesh like butter, scraping bone.

Cleo didn’t stop, and she didn’t let go.  Hissing, she reaffirmed her grip, grabbing Verona’s wrist with her other hand, and shoved the openly bleeding hand at the deflated cube-shaped bag Verona held.

Knife hand in the Witch Hunter’s grip, the other free, she acted on impulse.  She threw down the bag of granny candies, and plastic broke.  The candies rolled around.  She threw the bird’s foot.

She found the pistol.

She wouldn’t use it, but- even holding it where Cleo could see made the woman stop, eyes wide.

She hurled it against the ground, far enough away to be safe, near where Cleo was wearing multiple layers.  Plastic audibly cracked and contents leaked out.  Cleo rolled to the side, recoiling.

And Verona was free, free to drag her bag away, to stumble toward the stairwell, toward down.  Towards out.

The gaunt, worn-out looking kid faced her down, standing between her and the door.  He called up, “Cleo!?”

“She spilled the water.  Bitch!”

“At least she didn’t use it on you!”

“I wish she’d tried!”

“Protections aren’t absolute.”

So it wouldn’t have worked after all?

“Let me go,” Verona whispered.  “If you had mercy for that woman, just… let me run.  It’s not so bad to be sof-”

“Fuck you,” he spat the words.  He reached behind himself, inside his shirt, and drew a knife.

Verona felt that weariness again.  Slowing her down.  She wasn’t as quick on the draw with a spell card as he was with a knife, and now that she was that half-step behind, if she reached into her pocket, he’d throw.

The older woman threw something at him.  He twisted- and Verona hurried down the stairs, reaching into her pocket.

A hand gripped her elbow, freezing her.

Cleo, behind her, pushing her down the stairs.  Verona kept her feet under her, but it was like being bulldozed, moving forward because there was nowhere else to go.  Witch Hunter in front of her, Witch Hunter behind, holding her firm, shoving-

The door opened.  Bells jangled.

Avery was the first one though, because of course.  Lucy followed, with John coming in right after her.

Verona stumbled as she hit the base of the stairs, too caught off guard by the scene to remember not to step down, expecting another stair below, but to go forward.  Avery caught her.  Lucy glanced at the old woman, while holding a pen in hand, and deferred to John, stepping aside so John could rush Cleo.

“This way!” Lucy called to the woman, eyeing Francis, who was backing off.

More careful than others, but still dangerous.  He could throw.

Cleo, face to face with John, drew her gun.  She pressed the gun against his middle.

“Bullets won’t stop me,” John told her.

“I’ve got a variety.”

She pulled the trigger.  Verona flinched, ducking low, so she wouldn’t get shot as the bullet punched through John and out behind him.

She pulled the trigger again, twice- three times.  Verona stayed down, ducking, flinching with hands over her ears.

Another shot- the sound violent in a different way.

A misfire.  Gun damaged, hand partially mangled.

“John!” Lucy called out.

“Get people clear!” John shouted.  “I’ll be fine!”

He overpowered Cleo, shoving her down into the stairs.  A lot of the fight had gone out of her with her hand ruined.

Avery pulled Verona toward the door.  Verona resisted, reaching.

A card floated through the air.  She caught it.  The mischievous Odd One Out, gifted by Clementine.  Cast out with the deck of cards, it had joined in with the other bullets.

They escaped outside, moving away from doors and windows.

“We came as fast as we could,” Avery said.  “Are you okay?”

“Barely.”

Verona hadn’t wanted to be saved.

She wanted to be alive, but she’d wanted to escape on her own strength.  She hadn’t wanted to need to be saved.

“We intercepted your mom.  Um, she’s going home early.  I hope that’s okay.”

It wasn’t, but Verona didn’t say that.  She’d kinda looked forward to a break and this had become the opposite.

Lucy brought the woman outside.

“Criminals!  I’ve been bothered before, but they had a gun!”

“Yeah,” Verona replied.

She felt shaky.

Frustrated.

Lucy hugged her, abrupt.  Verona froze.

Still frustrated.  Still like there were a thousand things she needed to do and things kept getting in her way that were just… too big to handle.

“You okay?” Lucy asked.

Verona wasn’t sure how to respond, but… she hugged Lucy back.

Avery joined in.

“I’m going to call Snow.  She’ll bring the gangs.”

“We’ve had enough gangs!  We should call the authorities!” the woman said.  “Oh, girl, I’m so sorry.  A fellow Scotland fan, faced with all that.  I’ve never thought I’d see such a thing!”

“Yeah,” Verona said, her mouth mashed against Lucy’s shoulder.

“Scotland fan?” Avery asked.

Lucy ended the hug.  “We’ll need Matthew to help clean up, clear up the uh, witness testimony?”

“Is he a cop?” the woman asked.

“And we’ll regroup?” Lucy asked.  “We’ll figure this out?”

The door opened.  They tensed.

“They left out the back.  I decided I’d rather not test their arsenal.  There’s one woman with a skin problem out front,” John said.

“They got away?” Verona asked.

John nodded.

“I’m going to go,” Verona whispered.

“Go where?  Do you want us to come-”

“No,” Verona said.  “Just… I gotta go.  I need to process.  I really just, um, I need to work through this.”

“We should give witness testimony!” the woman exclaimed.

“It’ll be fine,” John told her.  “Lucy, would you call Matthew?”

“I want to make sure Verona is okay.  Can we sit and talk and-”

Verona shook her head, pulling back.

“This was a bad day, okay?  But-”

“But there’s worse ones coming?” Verona asked.  “I’ve got stuff I really don’t look forward to, I’m freaked, I- I- can you please give me the space I need?  Please don’t make this a hassle?”

Lucy looked exasperated, worried, and Verona got that.  Yeah, she’d be worried if the tables were turned.

But she was really worried about how she’d react if Lucy didn’t-

“Yeah, okay,” Lucy interrupted her thoughts.  John put a hand on Lucy’s shoulder.

“Don’t be alone?” Avery suggested, making it almost more question than instruction.

Verona nodded.  “Just… yeah.  I’m sorry, Ave.  I wanted to focus on you, spend an afternoon bonding, do a thing with you after my mom left.”

“It’s cool.  I’m managing.  Just… when I have my turn to do my own thing you don’t necessarily get, maybe roll with it?”

Verona nodded.

She turned and jogged off, her side hurting.

Verona watched the sun set.  Her side felt better, freshly healed.  Bumps and scrapes attended to, in a use of Tashlit’s power that was probably unjustified, when they might need something more vital later.

The sky changed in hues, the fire burned, a good distance away because it was a cooler day than it had been for a while, but it was still summer, and summer heat plus the heat of a fire was way too much.

They sat on a bench that was pretty much just a halved log.  Her, Peckersnot, and Tashlit.  The air smelled like smoke, but in a good way.  Tashlit didn’t eat, so it would be Peckersnot and her eating the fish and stuff.

What did it say that two of her favorite Others were ones that didn’t talk at all?

Just her and her thoughts for about three hours.  Some texts came in and she replied to Lucy.  Lucy sent a string of heart emoji and she replied with the same.  Peckersnot drew dicks in the sand.  Tashlit got up and rinsed off in the water, letting her clothes soak through.  Verona walked over to poke the logs around the fire with a stick, kicked off her shoes, and stood in the water.  Her mom sent a text to say she’d gotten back to Thunder Bay safely, she was happy for the visit, and hoped to do more next time.  Connection blockers helped to smooth over the interrupted visit.  It felt bad, felt worse that the visit had been so unresolved, her mom’s questions so unanswered, but she put that feeling out of mind and heart.

Mostly she did her best to get crowded thoughts in order.  She took the time she hadn’t had while sharing a room, sharing a mom figure, squeezing in time, trying to prepare, trying to help the others.  Time she hadn’t had when thoughts butted up against one another, so she couldn’t think about the practice stuff without feeling like she was ignoring the looming deadline in real life, and vice versa.

After about three hours, she could say it.

“I’m terrified,” she said, quiet.

Peckersnot looked up at her.  Tashlit, clothes soggy, sitting next to her on the bench, leaned into her.

She could have elaborated.  She could have elaborated about nightmares she was worried were coming true about her best friends, she could have elaborated about inferiority, or about unfulfilled potential.  She could have told the two Others keeping her company about the paths ahead of her, the roads closing, things she’d seen so vividly and large-scale through the eyes of a Carmine Beast.  About the fact she scared herself sometimes, like with Bristow and how close she’d been to using that gun.  About going ‘home’.

But she left it at that.  It just about summed everything up.

And neither of the two Others that kept her company said she shouldn’t feel that way.  Neither of them said she should feel that way.

She heaved out a sigh of small relief.

Next Chapter