Summer Break – 13.11
Author: Wildbow

Summer Break – 13.11 | Pale

Next Chapter

“Zero, nada.”

“Nothing?” Lucy asked.  Her eyes were downcast.  She sat on the rooftop, gravel poking at the sides of her thighs, bag, hat and mask beside her.  The light rain periodically tapped her skin.  The roof was flat, giant shingles nailed in and dusted with sparse gravel and the periodic bit of trash that had probably been blown up here in high winds.  The lip had a plastic cover on it, like house siding, but black, and she’d done some chalk markings on it, before putting clear sandwich bags down over them so the rain wouldn’t wash the chalk off if it got more intense.  Hopefully.

Connection blockers, mainly.  To stop outside parties from interfering too much.

Zed replied, “Durocher doesn’t think her hounds got anything, Ray’s got tracking software watching through public cameras, Estrella put that call out to the Winter Court.  Don’t tell her this, but I think Estrella’s a bit embarrassed she got cursed.”

“Okay,” Lucy replied.  She got the impression Zed was trying to inject some levity into things, but she wasn’t quite up for that.

“Jessica is still in the Ruins, heading back to the Blue Heron, last I heard she said she’d try to pick up on any disturbances in the force down there.  Echoes, trace spirit stuff, incarnations, see if there’s any sign.”

Lucy nodded, then remembered she was on the phone.  She struggled to think of how to voice a reply that wasn’t another dismissive ‘okay’ and stalled out a bit.  She sniffed.

“You alright?” Zed asked.  “We’re on our way to you.”

“Worried about John.  Worried about- about this.  Outcome and stuff.”

“I hear you,” Zed said, quieter, more serious.  “This entire thing started with the Choir, for me, was always this thing in the background, longer than I’ve been a practitioner, you could poke at it around the edges, try to see what you could figure out, but yeah.  Even with Brie and finding out this is all interconnected with Alexander, bunch of history there, your guy Charles, fighting the Choir- are you alone?  Nobody in earshot?”

“Nobody.  Why?”

“Just checking, didn’t want to ramble on about stuff and break our deal about me not talking about sensitive stuff.  Just Brie in the car here, driving.  Uhhh, yeah.  Where was I?”

Brie said something off to the side.

“The Choir.  Even after fighting it, hearing the Black Dog speaking to you, everything else, all of this stuff has always felt like a huge, massive background thing, you know?  So big I don’t feel like it could even involve me.  Even though it realistically has to, you know?”

Brie said something else.

“Yeah.  You catch that?”

“My earring doesn’t work so well across the phone, I guess.”

“We’re sorry about John, we’re rooting for him.  Brie said I’m rambling about me, should be sympathizing-”

“No.  It’s fine.”  Lucy’s nose was running and she found herself struggling to find something to wipe it with.  Her pockets were full of spell cards and stuff.  She dug in her bag.

“What I was meaning to say was I’m starting to get a sense of how big it is.  I really wish John the best.  For your sake, if he’s a friend to you, and because it’d sure be nice if the people who attacked Ray and the school weren’t in a position to do something to the rest of the area.”

“I hear you,” Lucy said.  She found a tissue in her bag.

“We’re on our way to you, Nicolette’s on the line, Jessica is going to try to ward off passage through the Ruins, though we don’t think Charles can deal with that kind of trip.  You guys okay?”

“Avery’s on her way back, Verona’s doing a quick patrol, touching base with the other groups and points of vulnerability.”

“You’re alone?” Zed asked, voice different.

“I guess.  For right now, anyway,” Lucy said.

The parking lot had expanded, the trees framing the west and east sides of the Arena were taller and curved slightly inward, and Kennet itself seemed distorted from where she sat on the flat rooftop.  The red of the moon and the wet blood that seeped into the indents and cracks of pavement in the lot cast the rest of Kennet in an ominous light.  Everything had a glitter or a bit of a shine to it from the rain – not totally, but enough that the light could really highlight the shapes of things.

Some goblins scampered across the empty parking lot, pausing midway so the largest of them, maybe Nat, could point and say something.  Nibble and Chloe followed after the goblins, walking more normally.

Chloe raised a hand, fingertips visibly pointed even from a distance, and Lucy raised a hand in response.

There were others at the perimeter here, but Lucy hadn’t been up for talking to them.  She’d spent about five minutes quietly freaking out, not sure where to go or what to do, then when she’d seen the Others, she’d retreated up here.

“Any word on your mom?” he asked, voice gentler.

“No.  I think Miss would come and tell me if there was anything.”

“You want to give me your mom’s number?  I’ll see what I can do.”

“Can you?” she asked.

“Gets tricky sometimes but yeah.  I won’t promise, I don’t know for sure, but tell me, I’ll try.”

“I gotta find it,” Lucy said.  She didn’t know it by heart.  She found her wallet, and pulled out the card with numbers for Mom, Booker, Aunt Heather, the neighbor, Barbie and Ran, Aunt Renee, Uncle Martin, her grandparents, and some emergency numbers.

She recited her mom’s number.

“Gimme a sec,” Zed said.

Lucy looked over the card.  Aside from the hospital and poison control centers being low on that list, it was in descending order of reliability, as her mom tended to see it.  Uncle Peter and Aunt Tess weren’t even on the list.  Uncle Peter had moved to the US and barely knew Lucy.  She wasn’t sure he’d recognize her face.  His family just sent a Christmas card every year, not personalized, just a family photo, a generic message, one to everyone they knew, always phrased in a way that assumed everyone was very Christian.  After one had arrived with a whole paragraph talking about the problem of immigrants, urging people to vote, they’d stopped keeping Uncle Peter’s cards on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.  It felt like Aunt Tess could be similar, but she hadn’t talked or reached out at all.

Lucy was grateful to have some people she could trust as backup-

-if something happened to Mom-

She pushed the thought out of her head.  Backup in general.  But the world was scary in general.  Hostile and unfriendly, unwelcoming, dangerous.  So dangerous.  She looked out at a blood-tinted Kennet and felt a bit of a chill.

Summer really was over.  It was faintly chilly, now.

“Be ready for video,” Zed said.  “Pictures, maybe.”

“Uh, what?” Lucy asked.  She hurried to rub tears out of her eyes, pulling on the corners of her cape to wipe.  She wiped at her nose again with the tissue, getting ready.

Zed hadn’t meant he was putting her on video.  Conversation, distorted and choppy, every other syllable missing, came through.  The image flickered, sometimes so fast that she couldn’t register what she was seeing and from what angle.  A lot of shots were of the ceiling.  Or darkness.

“Las- -rrah -ore –  -kids —”

One image appeared on the phone screen, a distant shot of her mother, sitting, talking with three other people.  It looked like some kind of gazebo or a fancy porch, woods and hills visible past the illuminated outdoor area.  White Christmas lights or something like them were strung along the fancy overhang above the people talking.

“-ant –eve that-”

Her mom was okay.

The beautiful man was standing right next to her.  They were talking with what looked like a couple.

The phone camera that was being spied through moved.

More images flickered as Zed searched for angles.  Some were only fleeting.

“It’s nice to know she’s safe, but this is giving me a headache.”

“I think your rationale for not going yourself was good.  You’d be playing right into the Faerie’s hands,” Zed told her.  “She’s safe.  Let me- one second.  I can’t search and work at the same time.  We’re not far from you, this gets easier when we’re in the same place.”

“Okay.”

Brie said something.

“Putting you on speaker with Brie.  If you need another voice.”

“Please.  I’m not sure what to say.”

“Hi,” Brie’s voice came through.  “Zed’s coding and loading up magic circles.  I’ve been around him for a couple months now and I’m not sure if I’m any closer to understanding that stuff.”

“Pretty complicated,” Lucy said.

“Going to school in September?” Brie asked.

“The Blue Heron?  I don’t-”

“Regular school.”

“Yeah.  I mean, yeah, I guess, that’s a random tangent.”

“You were talking to Zed about outcomes, a few minutes ago.  Doesn’t always have to be the worst case scenario.  Anyone you’re looking forward to seeing when school starts back up?”

“A boy.  We postponed dates because I was supposed to be grounded until the end of summer.”

“That’s nice.”

“He’s nice.  I might have an in with the cool kids in class.  Not sure how that works.  Verona’s going back to her dad’s.  That’s not great.  Really need to find Avery an online girlfriend she can go run off to, in Swanson or Tripoli.  If she can run to Swanson in less than an hour I think she could make it work.”

“Hopefully.”

“Get things normal here, work on the shrines.  Build up Other relationships again.  A lot of betrayals, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Brie said.  “Stuff got pretty hairy earlier this summer, Blue Heron and everything.”

“Keep on that topic and I’ll get mad at Ray again,” Zed commented, voice different now that he was on speakerphone.

“Let’s keep things lighter,” Brie said.

“What about you guys?” Lucy asked.  “I’m not sure how much lighter stuff I have right now.  Or like, are we close to having something, Zed?”

“Gimme a bit.”

“We’re thinking we might skip the coming semester at the Blue Heron, especially with Musser in charge, Ray busy, and Nicolette at work,” Brie said.  “Go back to Zed’s place, get the dogs.”

“Dogs?” Lucy asked.

“Bear and Trooper,” Zed said.  “Took Trooper when I left home.  Got Bear as a rescue later.”

“Where are they now?  You didn’t bring them to the Blue Heron?”

“They kinda freak out if there’s too many familiars and stuff around.  Besides, I’d worry they’d get out, get off campus, and get eaten or something.  I have a working arrangement with a neighbor.  Kid loves dogs but parents don’t want to commit to one.  She looks after them, takes them into her house for however long until the parents get sick of ’em.  She has a key so if it gets to that, she lets herself in and stays over, comes in five times a day.”

“They good dogs?”

“They really are.  Helped me a lot.”

“I asked John if he’d be my familiar.  I think he’d become a dog.  He said no.”

“Oh.  Oh geez, didn’t realize.  Sorry.”

“S’okay.  I understand what you want to do, cheering me up, Brie, thank you, but I really do want to think about what to do if things don’t work out.  For John, for us, for Kennet.  In general.  I think it’d reassure me more.  Help me find the grit I need.”

“Heavy stuff,” Zed said.  “Could hit the Blue Heron, affect families based in this entire region, not that small a region, could even ripple out and affect families way further out, depending.”

“Okay.”

“For us?  I don’t know.  Depends where we end up in all that.  Might interrupt my plans to go back to my little house if the Blue Heron gets thrown outta whack.”

“Again,” Brie said.

“Again, yeah.  Geez,” Zed said.  “Here.  Just looking over the code to make sure this doesn’t explode into a wriggling connection-subsuming mass in my lap and… I think it’s good.”

“Let’s hope,” Lucy said.

“Snapshot,” Zed said.

The new image popped up.  It was a still image, the people on the patio highlighted.  Skin was brighter, clothes and background darker.  The Beautiful Man barely looked human, wreathed in tendrils and light.  Tendrils extended out.

And in the background, standing in the outdoors just past the patio or whatever it was, Miss lurked, a pale white silhouette.  A defect in the digital process created a bleached-white line where her face would be.

“What are those tendrils?”

“I think, man, Eloise might be the one to ask, but that looks like connection work.  He’s an Egoist?”

“Yeah, apparently.  Was.”

“Egoists aren’t like your usual alchemist type who makes a drug to become beautiful.  They work with the immaterial.  Spirit, echo, whatever.  So this guy, he made himself pretty, sure.  But also… I guess elevating himself, or building something that builds up connections, like hangers-on, or something like rigging it so there’s a gap beside him and women fall over themselves to fill the gap and be his partner.  Or wife.”

Lucy’s eyes dropped.

“Zed,” Brie said.

“Oh.  Yeah.  I think your mom will be okay.”

“He’s a doctor, I think?”

“I think that’s part of the same deal.  Doctors are desirable as partners, right?  So maybe he skews it so he can easily adopt that label.  Legitimately or less legitimately.”

“Guilherme thinks he’s an Other now, not a practitioner.”

“Right, yeah.  Skewed, past tense.  Whatever decisions he made might be locked in now.  Maybe he has three professions he can switch between, whatever.”

“Zed,” Brie said, quiet.

There was a pause.

“Drive, Brie.”

Lucy could hear car sounds, like Zed was driving faster or maneuvering.

“Is everything okay?”

“Witch Hunters not that far from you.  We’re circling around.  Listen, um, whatever he’s doing, it doesn’t seem that hostile.  Maybe Miss thinks so too,” Zed said.

The car sounds picked up in volume.

“If he hasn’t hurt your mom yet, that might not be his intention,” Brie said.

“Or he’s waiting for a signal or cue before he amps up the pressure,” Zed said.

“Zed.”  Brie’s voice was hushed.

“I want to know this stuff,” Lucy said.  “It’s okay.  I had a little cry and I think I’m okay now.  Give it to me straight.”

“It might do to try to get out ahead of any signal or message,” Zed told her.

“Maricica uses birds, or she has in the past.”

“She might change it up, but that’s good.”

“Also phone.”

“I can stop them from using the phone.  Close those doors, like Ray said.  Just need another minute.  Listen, I’m going to handle this, make sure the Witch Hunters aren’t an issue, and call Eloise.  She might know something that could trip the guy up, if he’s rigging the social situation around him.”

“Go,” Lucy said.

“Witch Hunters were an indeterminate distance from your eight o’clock, if north is twelve.  Three of them.  Clint, the heart guy, and two new ones.”

Lucy judged, checked… “Trees in the way.”

“Yeah.  Okay, looping around to get to you annnnd hanging up, for reasons I said.”

“Bye,” Lucy said, but she was cut off mid-hang-up.

Viewed with the Sight, the city was painted in red watercolor, the sky much the same, and the moon was pale white again.  Swords big and small decorated Kennet, marking sites of battles.  Some areas of downtown had multiple intersecting single points.  Watercolor bled through the trees, suggesting or promising turmoil.

She shivered, stood, and rubbed hands on arms.  The raindrops had collected while she’d been sitting still.  She nearly dropped her phone- she’d been clutching it white-knuckled at one point and the case had slipped free of the phone itself.

She used her cloak again to wipe at her eyes.

Last tears for tonight, she told herself.

She whistled as best as she could, and wished she was better at it.  Chloe heard, touching Nibble’s shoulder, but the goblins didn’t.

She drew a quick ‘radiant sound’ rune on the lip of the roof in chalk, touched it, “For Kennet.  Tonight more than ever, for Kennet.”

The sound rune with radiating lines buzzed with power.

“Witch Hunters, west.”

Goblins looked at her, and she extended a hand, pointing like John had told her to point, not with a finger, but with hand out flat.  She held up another hand with three fingers extended.

The goblins charged in.  Nibble and Chloe followed.

“Be careful!” she called down.

“What if they’re coming from multiple directions!?” Nibble called up.

“We’ll handle it.  I’d rather you guys have safety in numbers.  Don’t fight if you don’t have to.”

Nat poked her head out of the trees, frowning at Lucy.

“Don’t if you don’t have to.  We might need you in fighting shape later.”

Nat ducked back into the trees, with Nibble and Chloe right behind her.

She got her hat and mask, pulling them on.  The hat with its wide brim helped keep rain off, but it felt like she was making herself battle ready.  She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them, focusing will into the rune in the mask.  The mask, an extension of herself, was more open to that than some things.

The runework glowed.  Her eyes glowed red in the dark.  When she looked down at a puddle, she could see the eyes alone reflected.  Like her colorful Arena guise, they were the slightly slanted, dramatic eyes of the fox.

She touched her cape.  “Where fire might erupt, let there be smoke.”

Smoke began to billow out.  More runework in the lower portion of the mask kept her airway clear.  It was something she’d drawn when they’d decorated their skin with diagrams and stuff for confronting Edith, and she’d decided to keep this one.

On that note… she got some cards, and touched them to her bare shoulders.

Runes slid off paper and onto skin, reaching for purchase and centering themselves.

She hadn’t wanted to draw out some of this too early, because it’d last about six hours, but she was pretty sure whatever was going on in the arena wouldn’t take that long.

She picked up her bag, strap over her right shoulder.  The chest strap was left undone, the tummy strap as loose as she could get it, so the bag wouldn’t swing around and she could still pull it forward to reach inside.  Cape and fabric draped from the left shoulder.

She slid the weapon ring on as she walked across the roof, attention on the directions the ghouls and goblins hadn’t gone.

Watching out, she glanced down while she dragged chalk through gravel to mark the water-dappled surface beneath.  Where bends in the material of the roof had collected shallow pools of water, she swept hand and arm through them to dash the water aside, where it would find other spots to collect in.  Leaving the ground dry enough for the chalk.

A protection sign.  Something intended to meet aggression in a radiant way.  She mimed the spokes of her earring for the ‘radiant’ part, and encircled herself with a ring.  She marked out a distance… five feet seemed reasonable.  A line with the measurement marked out helped there.

A collection of rusty, bent bits of metal bound together with twine dangled from the side of her bag, along with a collection of sticks.  She pulled them free.

Chalk mirrored the arrangement of the collection of sticks and the collection of metal, before she laid the sticks and metal down over top of the corresponding outlines in chalk.

This was what she’d drawn on her body, but it built on what they’d studied with the perimeter stuff, and when looking into protecting Ken.

“Engine Head,” she called out, connecting the metal to the diagram.

The massive spirit with the machinery worked into head and shoulders erupted from the metal, flowing out into the backdrop of smoke that poured from her cloak and kept mostly to the circle.

“Smoulder.”

The spirit that came forth was from one of the southwestern shrines.  It liked animal shapes but couldn’t stick to one, and it seemed to represent the last remnants of fire.  Sometimes the shape it held looked like a tree that had burned from within, a dark mass in smoke that had cracks in it, a faint red glow emanating from within.  Other times, the entire body was dark, but would glow red-yellow when the wind blew on it.

“If you please?” she asked.  “I call on the necessary power, for the Kennet Others, for Oaths sworn.  Power was promised, I don’t think they would begrudge me that power tonight.”

They dropped down as fast as they’d emerged, but they dropped down at different points on the circle.  Chalk broke up, as did the little containers she’d kept them in, but the loose shape of the diagram remained, a dark extension of her shadow.

She paced forward, and the outline moved with her.

There were people out on the road.  She wasn’t sure who they were.

Verona and someone?  Matthew?  Matthew was with Ken.

Witch Hunters?

“A quick test-” she said, bending down.  She got a bit of gravel.  She tossed it.

Machine-head’s spirit flickered up, reaching, to swat it aside.  There was a heavier metal-on-metal clang as he made contact than the pebble or his faint form really needed.  The pebble was sent flying away from her.

“Good,” she said, pleased.

She texted Verona and Avery.  Where are you guys?  Three WH to the west, two more possibles to the southeast.

Coming, was Avery’s reply.

Not exactly clear or helpful, Lucy thought to herself.  The people out on the street in the distance did in fact appear to be Witch Hunters.

She went to rest her knee on the lip of the roof so she could lean forward, but her leg was so jittery she immediately fell back.

Surefire way to reward Maricica for pulling this thing with my mom would be to let it affect me enough it changes things tonight.  The confrontation with John had left her emotionally shaky in the same way she’d feel physically shaky if she’d just run herself to the point of exhaustion and throwing up.

A bird swooped down out of the sky.  Lucy readied herself, slipping the weapon ring on, trying to judge with the vague night vision provided by her mask-

Verona.  Lucy hurried to back away.  “Warded!”

Verona steered hard right, flapping madly, avoiding the building.

“Just around me!” Lucy shouted.  Once she was sure Verona wasn’t overdoing it or underdoing it, she voiced a calmer, “just around me.”

Verona settled on the lip of the roof, wearing a crow body.  She shrugged out of the glamour, becoming Verona again.  “Word on your mom?”

Lucy exhaled, heart beating hard.  She was glad Verona hadn’t just smacked into her defensive warding with two spirits powering it.  “I don’t know.  Stuff.  Zed’s asking Eloise.”

“Connections?”

“Something about how the Egoist works.”

Verona plucked a feather from her striped camisole top, then jumped as her phone buzzed.  “Oh.  Message.”

“We’ve got Witch Hunters to the west, goblins and ghouls are on task.  I think I saw some possible Witch Hunters southeast.”

“Oh, the message is from you, just now.  I was flying.  Um, yeah, they shot out Zed’s tire.  Zed and Brie pulled out all the stops, he glitched in a new tire, he’s going to be a minute or so, I’d guess.  Has to change direction again.”

“Sure.”

“We’ve got Witch Hunters around, huh?” Verona asked.  “They kinda beeline right for any big practice stuff a lot of the time.”

“Something like that.  If magic or something tries to push them away, they push back harder, run against the headwind, swim upstream, or something.”

“Darned Witch Hunting salmon,” Verona said, deadpan.  “Sorry I couldn’t stop him.”

Lucy shook her head.  She sniffed, and she wiped at her nose.

“You good?”

“Gotta be.  Hey, rinse off that glamour, right?”

“Yeah.  I’d say I was planning on it but I sorta kinda forgot until you reminded me, thanks.”

“Sure.”  Are you okay, Ronnie?

Verona went on, casual and as cheerful as Verona got without being giddy over something like magic, art, or boys.  “Was working with some earlier, too.  Using what we’ve got for the part of tonight where we don’t really expect them.”

“They could show at any time.”

Verona dug into her bag for one of the recycleable water bottles, and began to pour it on her left arm.  She rubbed, switched arms, poured it on her face and hair, then shivered, whole-body.  “Getting cooler.”

“Yeah.”

Verona, hair still dripping wet, paused to write something on the bottle.  Runes glowed.  She poured more on each shoulder, down her front, and Lucy grabbed the bottle before Verona could awkwardly dump it down her own back.  Lucy did the pouring to get coverage on Verona’s back, rubbed, squeezing wet cloth, then tried making glamour-manipulating gestures with the squeezed-out water.  No color, no spark.  She quickly did Verona’s right leg, pouring water into a cupped hand and doing a quick up-down, and glanced back over her shoulder at the pair while grabbing the bottle to do the other leg.  Water dripped on her as Verona rinsed her hair again to be sure.

Both of them startled as something banged.  A stretch of darkness extended out from the front of the building.

Verona kept rubbing her own shoulders and neck as she hurried over with Lucy.

The front doors were open.  The Sable Prince stood just beyond them, one arm extended.

Wolves and a deer with birds on each antler came out of the shadows.

“That just borked our connection blockers,” Verona said.

Lucy looked.  It had borked their connection blockers.  It’d distorted the runes and made parts fade out, while pushing lines out of alignment.  “Right.”

She looked in the direction she’d last seen the people down the street.  They were still there, and they’d stopped walking.  Now they were looking in the direction of the Arena.

Verona said, “I think your possible Witch Hunters noticed that.”

“Connection blocker backfiring since it was broken?”

“I guess.  You’re also a big smoke signal right now.”

“Does it make it harder to see me in the middle of it all?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure I’d trust that when a lot of the Lighthouse Witch Hunters have tricks.  I think the first one that showed would’ve been able to see past it.”

“Mmm.”

Lucy crouched, so only head and shoulders were peering over, one hand reaching for her hat to pull it down to her lap so she didn’t have a big pointy ‘I’m here’ sign sticking up.

She saw the flash and heard the gunshot almost a second later.  The protective circle around her brightened, Smoulder leaped up, drawing together the smoke her cloak was producing, and solidified it into a large black hand with shattered, pointed fingertips.  The bullet stopped in the air, and the smoke was blasted away from the spot where the bullet was, scattered.

The bullet bounced off the lip of the roof and fell below.

“Oh gosh,” Verona said, hushed.  “Down!”

Lucy dropped down further.

“Maybe don’t rely on that a ton,” Verona said.

“Not intending to.”

“I mean like… you know those water resistant phone cases?  It’s like sure, water resistant, but not waterproof-”

“We’ve had this conversation.  I think we spent too much time in each other’s company the past while.”

“You don’t want to take a swim in flying bullets any more than you want to test your water resistant phone case by taking it into the pool.  Don’t take a swim in flying bullets.”

“Not intending to!  Kinda happy that worked though.”

“It was super cool.  We gotta get you doing that stuff when you’re not in a pinch, y’know?”

“Maybe when things calm down I’ll try to set up a system.  One cool new trick every week or something.”

“Every day.”

“That might be a lot.”

“Set the bar high.”

The door banged open a second time.

Not shadow, this time, but light.  Light like a sunbeam striking through a dusty window into a dusty house, motes flying this way and that.

Goblins that weren’t from Kennet came tearing through.

“I thought it was no spectators.”

“John called his old buddies,” Lucy said.  “I think it’s a thing.”

“Daaaaang.  Everyone’s gathering a team?”

“I guess.”

“And they’re opening the way.  Okay.  We didn’t get warned about the strange goblins.”

Lucy shook her head slowly.

That was a good point.  And a problem.

Montague was using Ken’s model setup to connect to the greater perimeter, which let him stay close to Matthew and help with protection.  He was supposed to warn them if Charles, Maricica, or any other intruders came.  Witch Hunters weren’t counted in that, unfortunately.

Charles is a competitor, so maybe we won’t get the alert, but we should with Maricica, right?  And whoever else they bring?

Yeah, the Witch Hunters were coming now.  They might’ve even been calling friends.   Lucy lifted up her witch hat a few feet from where her head really was, so the peak and brim would extend over the roof, and there were no gunshots.  She snuck a peek.

Just in time to see Avery tearing out of nowhere to kick one of the two Witch Hunters across the head.

“Avery,” Lucy said.  “Let’s help.”

“Go.  I’ve gotta figure out a way to do this without going overboard.  I’ll do what I can, Sanguine Stoning it!”

“Right.”

The stone from Clem.  Charges up practice.  Also makes it backfire.

Better to leave that in Verona’s hands.

Their usual pattern.  Verona hanging back, figuring something out.

This could be a long night, Lucy thought.  Conserve, but conserve like it’s okay to run out of every last drop of power, every last spell card by the time the contest is over.

She decided to use the glamoured fox form, because it meant she could get down from the roof without the ladder, which would mean she was moving in a straight line, and it helped her close the distance after that.  She raced toward them, as three separate foxes.

The worst case scenario was that they use the glamour, and get the warning that Maricica had showed up right after.  Getting stuck in this fight while knowing she needed to rinse off sooner than later.  Maybe being so wrapped up in whatever was happening here that she couldn’t get all the glamour off, before the glamour-manipulating Faerie arrived in front of them.

Still, Verona was right.  Using this stuff now might be better if she could rinse it off between now and Maricica.  Better than expending other resources.  Probably.

Three foxes with smoke streaming behind them, sprinting across the parking lot, ducking behind parked cars-

Two witch hunters, both about forty.  They looked similar-ish, a man and a woman.  The man wore a t-shirt and carried a rifle, with a long coat or something tied around his waist, tails draping to his ankles.  It shifted a bit in the wind, but it wasn’t a super great effect.  He had a dopey ‘my mom still cuts my hair’ haircut, not a bowlcut but otherwise devoid of style, too short to be parted, but trying really hard to part anyway, and he had a five o’clock shadow that did not make him look cooler.

The woman had the female equivalent of the haircut, a bob completely different from Verona’s shaggy style, without any apparent intention aside from raw efficiency.  The woman wore her coat and wore long pants, and she carried both a riot shield and a metal baton.  A handgun was strapped to her right thigh and another to her right calf.  A cut on her forehead suggested Avery’s flying kick had hit home.

She was fending off Avery.  Avery was giving the metal stick about three or four feet of space more than it really seemed to warrant.

The man moved with his back to the woman’s, the two of them stepping to the side, so he’d be able to face down Lucy while the woman could keep the metal stick and shield between herself and Avery.

He shot.  One bullet, and one of Lucy’s three glamour foxes was turned into wisps of smoke that quickly twisted away into nothing.  The gunshot sounded about five times as loud as Lucy might have expected, and she wasn’t sure how much of that was the glamour she wore, how much was how beefy that rifle was, barrel about twice as thick as what she might’ve expected, and how much was how quiet Kennet otherwise was.

Another shot destroyed a second fox.

“Lucy!” Avery shouted.

Lucy threw herself to one side, shucking off the glamour-fox, pushing it forward.  Cloaked by smoke, she rolled twice on the road, to get behind a parked car in front of one of the shops with a living space above it.

“Don’t touch the woman’s stuff!” Avery shouted.

The man made a yelping sound that might’ve been more intentional than other yelps.  He and the woman moved, back to back, leaning into one another, coordinated.  He aimed for Avery, who leaped behind a light-post and disappeared.  The woman blocked the glamour-fox Lucy had sent forward with the shield.  It crashed into her, more style than substance, not even making her shift her balance, and the shield crackled, buzzing audibly even from a hundred feet away.

“Emmett!” the woman raised her voice, as Avery ran across the street.  She lifted up the shield with both hands, slamming the bottom end down onto the road.

The wet road.

Avery jumped, air shoes giving her the extra boost.

There was another audible sizzle and pop, and a faint flash of light at one or two points on the road, too fast for the eye to register.

Avery’s back slid on the car roof above- Lucy saw her circle kick into life, and shouted, “Gentle!”

Engine-head loomed, blocking Avery from crashing down onto Lucy.  He shoved her away, nearly pushing her out of cover.

“Gentle!” Lucy warned.  She groped for Avery’s foot, hauling her in closer.

Emmett shot.  The shot didn’t hit the windshield, but the windshield still cracked, spitting bits of glass out that danced along the road.  Avery hurried to put her back to a car tire.

“You’re okay?” Avery asked, quick, quiet, eyes super wide.

Lucy nodded.

“Verona?” Avery asked, an expression on her face like she feared the worst.

Oh, the bullet aimed at the rooftop.

That explained why Avery had charged in.

“She’s okay.  Prepping.”

Avery visibly relaxed.

“Your mom?”

“Dunno.  What’s that shield?”

“Taser shield and electrified stick,” Avery murmured.

The man shot again.  The shot seemed to be aimed at the space beneath the car, because it pinged hard against the car’s underbelly.  Both of them flinched away, Avery toward the back bumper, Lucy toward the front one.  But they kept their backs to the tires.

“I guess electricity is effective against a bunch of Others,” Lucy murmured back, her heart hammering.  She began picking out a spell card.

“I think it’s more like-”

Lucy heard the running footsteps with her earring.  Not Emmett’s, by direction-

“Forward!”

They moved forward, onto the sidewalk.  The woman rammed the bottom end of the shield into the vehicle.  If there was any crackle, it was because of the rain.  Nothing zapped, no arcs of energy appeared.

But in the aftermath of that, the air smelled like something had burned, and it wasn’t her personal cloud of smoke.

“Maybe not super effective but I bet there aren’t a lot who are super immune,” Avery said, and it sounded super random.  Like in her shock, not knowing what to say or do, she was finishing her earlier thought.

Lucy grunted in the affirmative.  She picked out some spell cards and memorized the order, glancing quickly between them and the surroundings, to make sure no Witch Hunter was circling around.  One car had parked too close to the one in front for the Witch Hunter to squeeze through, so the woman circled around.  She glanced back-

“Emmett!” the woman called out.

He had been circling around the other end of the row of parked cars to catch them where they had no cover, but now he turned, and he shot at something behind him.

Squeak shrieked, a panicked and alarmed sound, hands over his ears as he ran forward.

“Brought a bit of help,” Avery said.

“Just them?”

“For now.  We’re stretched a bit thin.”

Emmett put bullets into the disproportioned, bug-eyed, matted, shrieking Other at a rate of about one every two or three seconds.  Squeak barely even hesitated, only twisting his upper body around in some vain effort to try to get out of the way of the bullets, periodically sagging forward, hands catching him before he could belly flop on the ground, pushing him back up to a standing position.  Squeak eventually collapsed, dropping a crying little girl that had been at his back, letting her tumble to the ground.  Lucy peered around, watching as the girl sprawled into a puddle, and began bawling.  Freak play-acting.

Emmett pointed the gun at Freak.  “Not buying it.  You, Marta?”

Lucy rose out of cover and threw a spell card.  Marta moved into the way, blocking it with the shield.

A gust of wind erupted from the rune on the card, forcing Marta to back away a step. Lucy threw another.

The woman made that stupid yelping sound again, and the pair more definitively swapped positions.  She blocked the onslaught of spell cards, which included a splash of water that made the shield crackle, but didn’t bother her or her partner any.  Another produced a flash of light.

Her goal wasn’t to stop them, because she wasn’t sure what would achieve that, but she wanted to put them off balance enough that they couldn’t do something to Freak and Squeak.  Or Avery.  Or her.

Emmett made another series of sounds that might’ve been another language, like German or Dutch, or some secret code-language.

Another short, practiced maneuver that didn’t even seem that fancy.  A coordinated, two-step movement, Marta moving to one side, Emmett about-facing as he took a lunging step to the side.

Lucy ducked behind the car as the gunshot went off.  Still freakishly loud.  The bullet grazed the car, taking a chunk out of the spoiler, and set off the car alarm.  Lucy pressed a hand to the ear without the earring.

“Agh!  What is that!?” Freak shouted.

Lucy peeked and saw the little Lost girl throw herself at the shield, then stumble away, spasming.

“Don’t touch the shield or the stick!” Avery shouted.  “They’re electrified!”

“Shut up!  I don’t know what that means!  And shut up!”

Another shot hit the car.  A second or two passed, then another bullet punched through.

He was moving around while pinning them down.  The smoke that rolled around Lucy was a benefit, and her mask let her see pretty easily through it, let her breathe in it.  She could hear okay in the midst of it all, too.  It was maybe bothering Avery, though.

“I’m going to help Freak,” Avery said.  “Can you get him?”

“I can try.  Couple seconds…”

One sound-altering card, tucked in between backpack strap and her shoulder.  One Whittler’s curse, learned from the Atheneum Arrangement.

Smoke card.  Lucy folded it into a crude paper airplane, then threw it off to the right.  Smoke billowed out behind it.

Lucy motioned, stabbing an arm out.

Avery went left.  Lucy went over the back end of the vehicle.  She made no noise in the process.

The woman stuck the electrified stick into a spot on the back of the shield, reaching for her gun-

And Squeak threw himself over Freak, shielding her as Marta opened fire.

“Get off me, you utter loser!  What do you think you’re doing?  I’m a lady!  Practically a princess!” Freak protested, as Squeak shrieked in pain at being repeatedly shot, adding slaps and punches to the abuse he was suffering.

She shoved the hairy Lost monster off of her, in the direction of the shield-wielding woman, right into the electrified shield.  The woman stumbled, but didn’t fall, somehow.

Magic item?

Some kind of special trait?

Marta the Witch Hunter started to aim at Freak again, but Squeak grabbed the shield, his ongoing wailing and higher-pitched shrieking intensifying as he was actively and constantly electrocuted in the process.  He pulled her off balance enough she couldn’t get a clear shot.

With long hair and dress fluttering, Freak got to the gun before Marta was able to aim it.  Freak grabbed on, and it was clear she was stronger than the Witch Hunter.

The man with the gun realized Lucy was coming at the last second.  The silence card Lucy had on her was helping there, so did the misdirection with smoke, and the fact his partner had two strange Others grabbing onto her.

He turned the gun toward Lucy.  In the process, the circle around her activated.  Engine Head reached up and out, a heavy metal-on-metal collision ringing out as he batted the gun’s nozzle away from Lucy.

She pulled the silence rune free, then stabbed it out.  Weapon ring activated, and the rune-inscribed card became a battle-fan.  She collapsed it so the solid pieces on either end of the fan caught the gun, and blocked the barrel from pointing at her, then stuck her other hand out to press the card with the curse inscribed onto it into his chest.

He looked down, looked up, meeting her eyes.

She pulled the fan away from the gun, unfolding it, and slashed with the very end.  She drew an exaggerated papercut between his nipples, slicing shirt and skin, but not the paper.  Instead, the paper turned crimson.

Curse activated.  A dozen visible cuts appeared all over him.  She kicked at his leg, and three more appeared, that she could see.

She let the card drop out of her hand, and the sound of the car alarm ceased.  All sounds ceased.

The weapon ring was pulling on her personal reserve of power; as much as that was something she’d been working on, she didn’t want to overdo it, especially early in the night.

A lesson from Guilherme: the best footing was the footing her opponent wanted.  She barreled in close, free hand out to try to block his arm and keep him from aiming the longer, heavier rifle her way.  She hugged him, practically, grabbing onto him for balance, so she could afford to stick a foot forward and behind his other foot.  He stepped hard on the back of her shoe, scraping her heel, but it was uneven footing, and with her pushing and one of his feet not securely on the ground or securely under him, he fell.  He pulled her down on top of him.

The landing made the curse flare up again.  More small cuts.  The first cuts were starting to spread as blurs of blood on the t-shirt.  She groped for the gun- he held it away.

It was a bit of a paradox, that if she was close, the circle she’d marked out and powered with Engine Head and Smoulder wouldn’t protect her, but if there was more distance between them, there wasn’t a lot she could do about the gun, or keeping him from shooting someone she cared about.

Avery came in from the side, glass crowbar held high, in both hands.  Avery, the soccer player kicking hard at the gun hand.

Disarming him.

He turned his head, shouting-

Silence.  The rune she’d let fall.

Avery turned, mouthing words.  Lucy extended a hand, pointing.

Lucy used an arm, bent enough that wrist nearly touched shoulder, to fend off the punches from the guy she was lying on top of.  The runework on her skin deflected some of it, taking away from the impact.  If anything, he was suffering more than she was.  Cuts kept appearing at random places on his skin.

He seemed to realize pretty quickly that as long as the curse paper was on him, every impact was making more cuts erupt into existence.  Each one small, inch-long, no deeper than the skin, easily healed, but all together?

She had to get away before he riddled out the way the curse worked.  The Whittler’s curse was a basic Pónos curse, pain, but backed by Város, toil.  Had to get away, but she didn’t want to stab the guy.

He’d stopped punching at her, and grabbed instead.  That wouldn’t make cuts erupt, and he was groping for her armpit and neck, like he was aiming for leverage.  Like he knew what he was doing.  She couldn’t use her arms, didn’t have any great weapons-

Off to the side, Avery, wearing her deer mask, cape streaming, glass crowbar in hand, jumped into the three way struggle of Marta, Freak, and Squeak.  Squeak was trying to keep Marta from making effective use of the shield, the ineffectively wielded shield was keeping Freak from tearing the gun free, which meant Freak was moving in a constant circle to avoid it while both hands gripped the gun.  Marta did her best to pull free on both fronts while maintaining some semblance of control.  If Freak didn’t move fast enough, Marta might be able to jab at her with the top end of the electrified shield.  If she moved too fast, she risked the grip being less than effective.

Avery leaped right into the middle of that.  The crowbar stabbed down.

Prying hand from shield.  The end of the crowbar exploded in a spectacular spray of glass shards, and the shield was flung from the woman’s hand, cast all the way across the street.  Glass danced off of Avery’s deer mask.

Yes.  The mask.

Lucy had almost forgot she was wearing her mask.

I wanted fangs–

She bit.  Or headbutted, but the effect was to smash the snout of her fox mask into his chest, producing gashes on face, the side of the neck, and hand, as if teeth had slashed him.  He seized up enough in reaction to the erupting cuts that she was able to roll away and to the side, running for and picking up the gun.  She aimed it down and off to the side, hauling back on the trigger-

Nothing.  It locked up before she could manage it.  She stroked the length of it, every area in reach, fumbling to see what might be a safety or catch…

He lurched to his feet, each little cut with some blood oozing out.  He hesitated when he saw her with the gun.

Freak kicked Marta in the midsection, running start, full-strength.  Marta stumbled about ten steps back, then stopped, leaning against a car.

They’ve got something about how they move and stay on their feet.  Marta especially.

Not one thing had successfully brought Marta to the ground yet.  Three hundred pounds of lopsided monstrosity crashing into her, being wrestled by a super strong girl holding onto one arm and a creature at her feet, grabbing at foot and shield, being kicked by a girl that could throw Squeak’s mass halfway across the street.

Not that the woman was invincible.  Marta held one hand to her stomach, and her mouth yawned open.  Silent while the rune was still working, she made a motion like something between a retch and a cough, and blood slopped from mouth to road.

Freak had done some serious damage kicking her in the middle like she had.

Drooling blood, moving like she was coughing or gagging, Marta looked over at Emmett.  Her partner.

The curse paper fluttered down from the man’s chest.  He grabbed it out of the air.  He nodded at his partner.  Wife?  Sister?  Maybe a combination of two of the three.

Yeeeaaahhh, that was part of the issue with the basic Whittler’s curse.  Making it stick.  It needed the toil to keep the pain going.  It only lasted so long, the book had said five to ten seconds for most practitioners, but that seemed like it had been fifteen or twenty.  Every time it activated and delivered a cut, due to exertion or any impact delivered or received, even a running footstep, the duration would reset.

The implication in the book had been that apprentice cursewrights would train themselves on it, and on the basics of exchanging curses, with the cuts serving as rebuke and punishment for failure.  The cuts could lead to unconsciousness from blood loss, even death, but they always healed without scarring.

If Emmett had any sense at all, which he likely did since he was a Witch Hunter, he could deliver that back to Lucy.  She knew what to do about it, she had measures ready, but it was something to keep in mind.  If he got within a few feet of her, tossed it at her, it would stick.  She would be under an intensified version of its effect.

Fair was fair.

It felt like a whisper from the earring, but it wasn’t.

It was Verona’s voice, calling her name.  A signal, fed down the connection between them, like how they could call Miss, or how Avery could communicate with Snowdrop.

Lucy looked that way, and only just caught Marta drawing her other gun.

Lucy backed off, motioning, and so did Avery, with Avery pulling on Freak’s sleeve.  Lucy moved to the sidewalk and cover of cars on one side of the street, Avery and Freak to the other.  Squeak scrambled after them, lurching to provide cover with the bulk of his body, already riddled with bullet holes, some going through the front and out the back.

Marta ran to Emmett, turning, using him as her shield, aiming.  The gunshots were silent.

Verona’s practice kicked in.  It came from a long distance away.

A spray of water, straight and long distance, ramming into the pair.  It didn’t drive Marta or Emmett off their feet, but it drove them back.

Marta’s gun flashed, but it didn’t seem like it was intended to hit a specific mark.

It did succeed in getting Lucy to duck down.

At her ankle, the dropped watch caught the spray.  Time slowed down.  One of the things dropped from the transient elemental-men with its function later worked out by Nicolette at the Promenade.

Lucy ran.  Taking advantage while the Witch Hunters were distracted, and while other things occupied their senses.

Moving a bit faster, relative to their time.  Her awareness was much faster, considering.

She could see dark masses inside the stream.

Special delivery, Verona?

She had time, she was almost certain.  Ducking low, head beneath the stream, Lucy ran, closing the distance.  Emmett shielded his face with one arm, leaving his other hand exposed.

Clutching the curse.  He moved in slow motion, reeling.

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.  Insistent.

I get it, Ronnie!

Lucy snatched the curse from his fingers.  She slapped it onto his bloody chest, and raked with fingernails to set it.

The paper was redder this time.  She did her best to trip him, knowing he, at least, could be knocked off balance.  Her eyes didn’t move far from Marta’s gun.

The watch only had so much energy.  She shifted her footing, darting to one side-

Without Emmett helping to block the spray as her human shield, Marta took the brunt of it.  It didn’t bowl her over, but it did spoil her aim some- less than Lucy had expected.

Smoulder reached up to try to block the bullet, and didn’t succeed.  It hit the wall about two inches to the right and one inch above Lucy’s head.

Lucy took cover in the same moment Avery leaped from it.  Lucy had to reach up, grabbing Avery’s shirt, hauling her back and down.

Verona’s delivery-

On the road, amid the froth and general spatter of the now-dissipating stream, were glass jars.

Marta might’ve seen Lucy pulling Avery back, and might’ve realized why.  She grabbed Emmett and hurled the two of them down at the ground between two parked vehicles on the far side of the street.

The alchemical jars spilled their contents.  Water vapor in the air froze.  Water on the street became ice slick.  Glass on one car window silently shattered, a door fiercely dented, and Marta, not fully behind cover, fiercely scratched at one side of her face, trying to get vapor off before the freezing could intensify further.  Some flecks came off with skin.

The silence rune was destroyed in the process.  Sound resumed, the entire street loud with the sound of ice cracking and settling.

“That hurt,” Avery said.

“Didn’t Ronnie call you?”

“I thought she was in trouble, that we had to resolve this fast.”

“No, that’s just the usual ‘come’, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” Avery whispered.  She looked spooked.

I can’t blame you one hundred percent, Lucy thought.  That was the sort of thing where it would’ve been beautiful and effective if we were on the same page, almost reading one another’s minds, moving in unison.

But we’re not always.  Sometimes we stumble.

What would’ve happened if we’d been in the middle of that?

Freak scrambled onto a car’s hood, further down the street, then got up on top, standing tall, body language deceptively shy in the moment as she tried to get her footing.  She looked back and called out to Squeak.  “Get up, you loser!  Draw their fire and do something useful with your miserable, piss-stained existence!”

Squeak made an apologetic whining noise, and hurried forward, plugging up three different bullet holes in his own chest with claw-tips while he ran, which made him run even more off-balance.

Headlights illuminated the road.  Squeak froze mid-run, then ran off.

Who would be out at this hour?  Musser and other Witch Hunters?

The vehicle wasn’t easy to see with the light of the headlights bouncing off of fresh ice, but that wasn’t Matthew’s truck.  It wasn’t Musser’s either.

It was a sleek sports car.

Cleo’s group?

Lucy, Freak, Squeak, and Avery all backed up, moving behind cover, tense.

The vehicle rolled forward, slow on the ice, the drivers making no attempt to talk to Marta and Emmett.  They barely acknowledged Lucy and Avery with more than a glance.

All women.  Two in the front seat, one in the back, all twenty-ish.  The one in the back was bald.

The car’s passage had bought Emmett and Marta the chance to back off.  Lucy didn’t feel like pressing things, so she motioned to Avery.

“Don’t puss out!” Freak complained.

“There’ll be a lot more coming,” Avery said.

“Ugh.  At least you put on a better showing than this sad sack,” Freak said, slapping a hand against Squeak’s chest.  “And don’t give me that look.  Your face looks like some granny’s cooter.”

Squeak covered his face with his clawed hands.

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.

Lucy’s head turned.  A second later, Avery’s did too.

That was an urgent call-out.

Another glamour?  She hadn’t even washed off the last, though the spray might’ve helped.

Lucy was in the middle of starting to dress herself up as a bird, mid-run, when Avery grabbed her arm.

The glamour spilled, along with feathers.

“Sorry, no need for that!  I can black rope us!”

Lucy nodded quickly.

But that feeling from before was coming at her hard.  The sensation that had come with the realization that they had her mom, and that hadn’t resolved.  That Charles was out, and they hadn’t fixed that.  Now this.  The spilling of the glamour.  Other little things.

“Pick that up!” Freak demanded of Squeak.  The big bug-eyed oaf hurried to oblige, scooping up the riot shield, or trying to.  He was promptly electrocuted.

“You moron!  Idiot!  Do it better!”

“Gotta reach under, grab it by the handle,” Avery said.

Freak looked at Avery, like she hadn’t known that.  “Squeak, you blithering idiot!  It’s so obvious!”

Squeak electrocuted himself twice before managing it.  He carried the shield with him.  Lucy had the rifle, for what it was worth.

They crossed the parking lot, keeping a healthy distance from the one car that had parked askew in a parking spot.  Two young women, one Indian, one white, were helping their third friend to walk, each one of them bracing one arm as she struggled to take each step.

The Aurum stood in the door.  The light that came from within had a golden tint.

Lucy hurried on, running, stumbling a bit as Avery jerked her toward the trees.

Behind a tree- she had a last glimpse of the Aurum admitting the woman inside.

A helper?  For who?

Avery took Lucy onto the roof.  Gravel crunched under their feet.  Verona was at the far end of the roof, near the back parking lot at the north.  Some goblins, Nibble, and Chloe were with her.

Avery waved to Squeak and Freak, pointing at the ladder at the side of the building.  It had been covered with metal, but they’d unlocked the cover with the ratfink key that Cherry had given them.

While Avery pointed the way, Freak dragging Squeak behind her, getting frustrated as his face and head kept getting caught on branches, Lucy looked at the people -practitioners?- at the front door.

Was the bald girl who could barely walk another contestant?

They’d keep coming, Lucy remembered.  Lesser participants.  John needed to finish fast, to narrow down Charles’ window of opportunity.  Each new participant was… possibly twenty minutes or half an hour of added time for Charles to get ready, to make his last-minute appearance.

She glanced down, watching the two friends of the bald girl walking away.  Then she hurried over to Verona.

“There’s some in the trees,” Verona said, her eyes glowing lavender.

Lucy could see it with her mask on.  Men and women, a few teenagers, marked with blades.  Clint with the removable heart was in there.  So was Rocky, the aggressive young one who stayed close to Clint.  Francis wasn’t in view, but they had no reason to think he’d left, and Cleo… no apparent Cleo.

And about ten more, back there.  Multiple groups from multiple directions had started congregating here when the connection blockers had died.  The epicenter of everything going on.

Lucy tugged on Verona’s shoulder, and they backed off before another Witch Hunter decided to open fire like Emmett had.

“We tried to deal with the three you sent us after,” Nibble said.  “If we’d kept trying, I think we would’ve gotten hurt.  Might’ve lost someone.”

“Right decision,” Avery said.  “Stay alive.”

“I think I failed at that already,” Chloe replied, eyes wide and cataract-white.  “Closest I get is when I eat something alive and it’s warm inside me.  Puts some pink in my skin.”

“I mean, stay functional,” Avery said.

“I’m barely functional most days,” Chloe said.  “It’s really very embarrassing.”

“You do okay,” Nibble said, quiet.  He rested his head on Chloe’s shoulder, beanie-hat padding what would otherwise be him leaning on rather angular, sometimes jagged bones.  “Maybe wind back the silly while we’re in crisis.”

“Crisis is the best time for silly,” Chloe murmured.

“Why’d you jump in to fight two Witch Hunters, Ave?  They shoot your dog?” Verona asked.  Then, more serious, she added, “They didn’t shoot your opossum, did they?”

“Nah.  I thought they shot you.  One of you.”

Verona shook her head.

“Or that they were shooting at you.  So I thought I could blitz them and run.  That shield was wired up, I’ve got the new stuff, some of it I’ve figured out.”

“Ohh, was that what it was?” Verona asked.  “Shield?”

Squeak put the shield down and promptly tazed himself again in the process.

“Ah,” Verona said.  “Thank you for demonstrating, Squeak.”

Squeak’s tongue lolled, his hand stroking his own head, until Freak kicked him.  “Don’t be an attention hog.”

“I thought the water stream was to work against the electricity stuff, and that’s why you did it,” Lucy murmured.  “Except we disarmed them before it could be its best.”

Verona shook her head.  “Water carries a lot of alchemical effects.  I had some bottles.”

Lucy wanted to say something about that, about the close call with the freezing, but she knew she was guilty of a misstep herself.  Avery had nearly come crashing down on the protective bubble that Lucy had rigged up, when sliding over the car.  Verona had nearly flown into it.

“We need to try to coordinate,” she told them.  “I guess a bunch of us picked up new practices and stuff, and we haven’t like… trained?  Lots of practical battle experience, but… not with a lot of this stuff.”

“No,” Verona agreed.  “We haven’t really even compared notes.”

“No,” Lucy agreed.

“Wasn’t a notes thing with me,” Avery said.  “I just… overdid it.”

“Only way to do it,” Freak said.

“Enh,” Avery made a noncommittal, unsure sound.

This was making that uneasy feeling stir up.

That they’d done a lot to gather power, that they’d picked up practices, done their own thing, but a piece of connective tissue just wasn’t there.

“Gotta get back on the same page,” she told them.  “And gotta do it fast.  Try to communicate what you’re doing, hang closer to one another.  That might mean you need to not hang as far back as you were, Ronnie.”

“I figured we wanted to keep eyes on the building, in case of Charles.”

“We did, we do.  I don’t know.  Just hang closer?”

Verona nodded.

“Ave?  I know you got a lot of cool toys and stuff, I know you said you worried it was a lot of time out of our last days, but there’s no pressure to prove something, okay?  Do what you can, use what you can.”

Avery studied Lucy’s expression for a second or two, then nodded.

“More!” Nat called out.

All crouched down so they wouldn’t be easy targets, they turned to look, then crawled across the roof, rising up a bit as they came to the middle part where there was no real expectation that the Witch Hunters would get a clear shot… unless they could shoot from the Bowdler ski hill, or the clock atop the town center.

Which she wasn’t ruling out as distant possibilities, but if they could, then things would’ve already been over.

There were other Witch Hunters at the south of the building.  Maybe Emmett and Marta would have been included in that number, but four more new ones had arrived after the women had left, dropping off their friend.

“Where’s Zed?” Avery asked.

“Cut off, I think,” Verona said.  “I hope it’s just that they’re cut off.”

Lucy pulled out her phone.  She texted Zed.  Where are you at?

Her spare glamour was in a compact, which was in a sealed box in her bag, as a just-in-case.  She didn’t want the glamour, though.  Just the compact.

She popped it open, then held it up.

“I know you just said to stick together, but I’m going to go get Snowdrop and Cherry.  They were watching our backs.”

Lucy hesitated, then nodded.  Avery hurried away, ducking behind a bit of venting and disappearing.

This was the part of team sports and group activities she’d always struggled with.  Sometimes the thing to do was to hear a bad idea or see someone who wasn’t perfectly in position, and just trust that, and it always felt like a lose-lose.

So now it felt like she knew she could trust them, but she wasn’t sure, and that little bit of not being sure, the big maybe, was making everything about this feel worse.

Gotta figure this out.  Gotta figure it out fast.

Gotta deal with the Witch Hunters… and two with nothing all that special going for them was a lot.  We keep on only scaring them off.  The only time we actually dealt with them was when the three of us washed our hands of things and walked away, and the local Others went all out, turning off powers and forcing the issue.

Gotta figure out Zed… he’s still not here.

Her heart hurt.  It really felt like her heart hurt, the indecision and doubt driving right into her chest, where she was shaky from John.

The bad feeling peaked, little hairs on her arm stood on end, and her earring picked up something.

She slipped the weapon ring on, turning.  “Trouble!”

She’d feel like an idiot if-

Shadow across the rooftop lurched, forming a lump that reached about seven feet in height, then tore.  Slats of wood and dry plaster framed the edge of the shadow, and a figure stepped out of the gloom.  Well dressed, tall, broad shouldered, wearing broken glasses.

Lucy turned a pen into a spear.

Musser did nothing but look at her, disinterested, then look back over his shoulder.

Zed and Brie ducked beneath Musser’s arms, squeezing past, to get through.  Raquel followed after Brie.

“It worked after all,” Zed murmured.  “Alright, okay.  Truce, truce for now… please.”

Lucy was tense.  So was Verona.  Goblins were battle ready.  Freak was tense.  Squeak was barely coherent after the recent electrocutions.

Nibble and Chloe circled around, putting themselves between Lucy, who was closest of their group, and Musser.

“Truce?” Lucy asked.

“There’s no need for anything further,” Musser said.  “I did what I said I’d do.  I assessed the situation, uncovered what I could.  Reid volunteered himself for the ritual, it serves the family if he succeeds.  Now here we are.”

“You intruded on Kennet and you’re still intruding,” Lucy said.  “We had precedent.”

“You can only have what you can keep.  Zed said the fighting’s begun?”

“Yeah,” Verona said, quiet.

“And the Witch Hunters assembled,” Musser said.  He walked to the rooftop’s edge.  His hand moved, there was a gunshot, and he caught the bullet.  “Tentatively moving forward.  They’re wary.”

“The entire city’s topsy turvy, and there’s a big bloody ritual in the center,” Zed said.

“They might try to get inside and interrupt,” Lucy said.  “Could be a disaster.”

Musser answered, “They’ll try.  They might even succeed.  There are too many ways in and I don’t care enough to try to stop them.  Let it happen.”

Lucy shook her head.

“Headmaster Musser offered to bring us over, if I could stabilize the way through,” Zed said.  “He would’ve come even if I’d said no.  I thought it was better we were here too.”

“It’s okay,” Lucy said.

Avery stepped out from behind venting, followed by a human Snowdrop, who had Cherrypop draped over her head, hands clutching tufts of hair.  Cherrypop sat up straight on seeing Musser.

Cherry fumbled, managed to grab her rock, stood tall, leaning forward, on Snowdrop’s head, and hurled the cube-shaped rock full-strength.

Ten feet separated Cherrypop and Musser.  The rock made it to a point about a foot in front of Snowdrop.

“No!” Cherry cried out, as Musser looked down at the rock and then over at her, then turned his back on her.

“What’s going on?” Avery asked, wary.

“Surrounded still, and Musser came with Zed, Brie, and Raquel.”

“Why are all three of you soaking wet?” Raquel asked.

“Fighting and countermeasures,” Verona said, doing a very good job of sounding like it was something wiser than it was.

“Speaking of, I need to rinse off the glamour,” Lucy said.  She paused, looking at Musser.  “What’s your plan here?”

“To see what happens.  The Lighthouse overstepped and they haven’t backed off, even after talking to their main office to request more recruits.  If there’s a chance to remind them why they should remain in the Blue Heron’s good graces, I’ll take it.”

“But you won’t stop them from charging into what’s going on down there?”

Musser shook his head.  Then he walked away a bit, over to the rooftop’s edge.  Witch Hunters pointed guns at him, but he didn’t seem to care much.

Lucy wondered if there was something at work like the Whittler’s curse, except in reverse.  By reinforcing that protection, he could be stronger?

Didn’t matter.  They did have to be ready for an attack from within their ranks now, though.  If Musser decided to turn on them…

Too many things.

“The situation with my mom?” Lucy asked Zed, quiet.

“Eloise has things she can do.  I gave her access to the video and snapshots.  She wants to wait for the most opportune moment, which, I gotta warn you, she’s confident, Eloise is great at this, but the tech I’m using to spy isn’t.”

That feeling of panic started to well up again.

“Reassure, Zed,” Brie said.

“I’m going to keep looking into this,” Zed told Lucy.  “We’ve got a free moment.  If you guys will make sure the Witch Hunters don’t sneak their way up here, I’ll take a bit.”

“Please.  Thank you,” Lucy told him.

She looked around.  The only ways up were from inside the building, up through a hatch… and the ladder on the side.

She looked back at the shield.  “Can we use that?”

She pointed at the ladder.

“Let’s hope our friends don’t try to use it too,” Avery said.

“Watch the cameras?” Zed asked Brie.  He stepped away from his work, looked at the battery, then began pulling it apart.  He dragged the components over.  “It may be too grounded to work super well, but we can do something.  Let me rig it.”

“You remind me of Ray when he was younger,” Musser said.  “He was more cheerful.  Hawaiian shirts, laughter, always ready to leap into things.”

“You realize that a big reason he ended up dour and icy was you guys’ influence, right?” Zed asked.  “You, Bristow, Alexander?”

“One reason among many.  It’s this world, Zed.  Adapt to it, meet it head on with eyes wide open.”

Lucy could remember Musser leaning over her.  Deciding whether to take her earring.  The casual insult.

The insult inherent in the fact he was here, that he’d trampled over their rights and claim to be here, claiming to investigate the current situation.  One they’d explained, more or less.

“Did you find what you came here for?” Lucy asked.  “With those eyes wide open?”

“I think so.  There’s more to discover, but I found out enough.”

“Yeah?  About the Carmine’s death?”

“Some.  I do recall you and your Dog of War interrupted my fact finding, just over there.  Broke my glasses, cursed one of my familiars.”

“You were digging into private stuff, and stuff where we had precedent and priority.  We’re Kennet’s practitioners,” Lucy told him.

Zed finished setting up the electrified ladder.  A bit of technomancy had gone into it.  He straightened.

“Like I said, I found out enough,” Musser said.  “Your Others are subversive, an Oni is among them.  Charles’ ideas weren’t fostered by Charles alone.  I don’t fault you for what you are, you three.  You’ve been badly misled.  You’ve been told the world is upside-down in a way that suits the Others.”

“I think your perspective is skewed,” Avery said.

“Perspective, like architecture, is based on a solid foundation.  I’ve been a practitioner for a long time, in unforgiving dynamics, and I’ve faced some of the worst Others and enemies, from outside forces and from within.  Even my own immediate family.  Reid has undergone similar and today, I suppose, will be his final test in whether he learned what he needs to.  I know what I’m talking about, and my perspective is sound, little girl.”

“So?” Lucy asked, folding her arms.

“So, we’ll clean house.  The Others here may pass on warnings, you can do what you will, it doesn’t matter.  I know how strong you are, I have the contacts, I know how strong they are.  It’s something I’m very good at.  They should be able to clean house without any difficulty, binding those Others who don’t heed the warnings those here pass on.”

Goblins hissed.

A scraping made Lucy’s head turn.

Nibble, holding Chloe as her toe-claws dug into shingle.

“I wouldn’t provoke, Headmaster Musser,” Zed said.

“What if we stopped you here and now?” Lucy asked.

The man made an amused sound.

“What?  What’s so funny?”

The man glanced at Raquel.

Raquel gave the answer, like it was below her Uncle, so she had to say it.  Or her delivering the line made it land differently.  “We made the calls this afternoon.  The town is a mess, it’s dangerous, it’s bloody.  I don’t think that gets better after this contest.”

Lucy looked at Avery and Verona.  “You already called them?”

“It’s pretty much done,” Raquel said.

She looked at Zed, who looked up at his work, frowned, and nodded.

“The Oni, at least, should be clever enough to know that the moment I came and got a good look at this town, it was more or less decided,” Musser added.

They might’ve known from the time they made us their practitioners, back in May, Lucy thought.

Were we supposed to do something about this?

Too many things she felt like she should see as rock solid weren’t.  John.  Her mom.  Her friends.  Their purpose.

Too many things arrayed against them felt like they were too hard to crack.  Even two Witch Hunters.

“John might win,” Lucy said.  “He knows Kennet.  A greater power sympathetic to our cause?  Do you really want to go against that?”

“He won’t win,” Musser said.  “For one thing, the assembled Witch Hunters are about to break in and try to interfere.  I’ve told you already I don’t particularly care if they do, but if you want to take action, you can.”

With that said, he walked away from the roof.  Lucy hurried over, and used the compact’s mirror to check over the edge.

They were coming.  An organized group.

Her Sight and the Eavesdropper’s earring told her the rest- she could see the watercolor, she could hear the massed footsteps.

From two separate directions.  Simultaneous.

“Do we act?” Avery asked.

Lucy nodded, the words not coming.

Because if she let the words come, they might come with words that Avery disagreed with.  Something that Verona might agree with, which was dangerous on its own.  Verona had hinted at it.

She admitted it.  She was spooked by all of this.  Like Zed had said, it was big, huge, and it was here.

They were up against enemies who’d just… destroy everything.  Musser.  The Witch Hunters.  Enemies who’d kill them.  Enemies who outnumbered them, all coming from a hostile, bitter, unfair, and shitty fucking place.

And they were holding back, playing fair, showing mercy, letting them go.

Sometimes that worked.  But now?  Everything on the line?

She worried that if she told Verona they needed to stop holding back and make their enemies stop -die-, Verona would agree without as much hesitation or doubt as she hoped.  Avery wouldn’t, and the schism between them would wound their dynamic when it was already hurting.

What were they even fighting for, if Kennet wouldn’t survive the aftermath in either case?

Next Chapter