Summer Break – 13.13
Author: Wildbow

Summer Break – 13.13 | Pale

Next Chapter

There was something that felt very wrong about the town Avery had lived in all her life rearranging itself.  Familiar places in the wrong places.  Things all moving further away.  Before, when Ken had done it, he’d done it to help them along.  This wasn’t that.

This wasn’t like that.  This felt like grains of sand slipping between her fingers until her hands were empty.

“We can double back, give chase, go after Brie, get the scent trail,” Avery said.  “It’s our fastest road to Maricica, and we can save her.”

“Couldn’t smell her if I tried, smell of blood clogging up my nose,” Snowdrop said.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Verona replied.  “It’s what Maricica wants, we’d be following after, and at best, if we chased and we caught them and we won… we’d have Brie, but they already have what they want.”

“She’s a friend.”

“I know she’s a friend,” Verona replied.  “But consider that- it’s like dealing with a bully.  If we chase and she has Brie hostage or unconscious or something then she’s just going to threaten her.  Maybe if we don’t go straight for Brie there’s a chance we can blindside her or get something she wants.”

“Which we can’t give her,” Lucy said.  “Whatever we do we should go now.  Waiting and debating is just losing a shot at both.”

“I’m not good at arguing or hurrying to this stuff,” Avery said.  “But if we screw this up we might lose the Carmine Contest and all our alliances, which we might really need.”

“I think Zed would understand,” Lucy said.

“You’re siding with Verona?” Avery asked.  Why am I surprised?

Verona cut in.  “If you want to do that, do that.  Lucy and I can go to the House on Half Street.  We know it’s where they want to go.”

“Let’s not split up,” Lucy countered.

“Fine.  The house,” Avery said.

“You’re sure?” Lucy asked.

“You wanted to go?” Avery asked Lucy.  She looked at Verona, “You think this is the smart choice?”

“I do,” Verona replied.

“Okay, let’s go.”

They ran.  They weren’t all that far, but ‘far’ was a weird thing when the town wasn’t currently their friend.

“Gotta stay together, work together,” Lucy huffed out the words.  Avery was going to reply, but she saw a shortcut, grabbed Lucy’s arm, and black-roped her up to a roof.  She stepped back down, circling around a light post, and did the same for Verona.  Snowdrop rode along in opossum form.

“Yeah,” Avery replied, belated.  “Like in team sports, you might have a better idea, but unless it’s a really great shot, your best bet is probably doing what your team knows you’ll do.  A C-plus plan pulled off as a team is better than an A-plus plan executed alone, you against their entire team.”

Verona groaned, exaggerated, stopping only because they had a clear series of jumps to get back down to the road, and she had to hop from a rooftop down to a truck.

Metal rasped, like it was being dragged across the ground.  A chain-link fence emerged from the ground between them and the sidewalk, rising until it was ten feet tall.

Lucy whipped out a spell card, hand at her cloak to shield the rest of the group as it detonated.

They ducked through the hole.

Out of the downtown area, into the residential area to the southwest of downtown.

They looked down the length of the block and at the far end, twelve or so houses down, things were moving, shifting position.  The street and its contents were sliding, turning a ‘T’ intersection into a right angle.

“Go,” Avery said.  “If we go the long way around they might twist up the streets by the time we get around to the far end.  Might as well go forward.”

“I don’t know how you guys talk so much while running around like this,” Verona groaned, as they ran down toward the shifting street.  A dog barking reminded Avery that the Dog Meat that Blunt brought was still out there.

“You’ve been running around with us for a lot of the summer,” Avery observed.  “How have you not caught up some?  Maybe your breathing technique is bad?”

Verona only groaned as they ran down the street.  “Teach me.”

“Focus,” Lucy cut in.  “This is serious.”

“I know it’s serious,” Verona replied.  “I’ve got-”

A sifting, grinding sound filled the air around them.

Fences and gates protecting nearby properties began to move.  The dog barking intensified.

“Careful!”

“Got a mind like an alchemist’s workbench, stuff on the back burner…”

“Focus, god, please, Verona.”

Dogs were let out of yards as fences ceased to enclose those yards.  One was leashed to a clothesline but the clothesline was attached to the house, and the place it was attached to was moving along the siding, no cut or furrow left behind it, just a huge metal hook with a wheel attached to it.  It stopped short of actually reaching them, barking and choking as it pulled the line taut.  They hurried to the left.

But another dog was pacing forward, growling, hackles up, stopping halfway across its lawn.

It’s like that retro game Declan played with Declan and Declan, Avery thought.  Badass Mormon or something.  Going door to door while dodging dogs, manhole covers, paperboys chucking papers at your head…

It’s like a path.

She grabbed Lucy and Verona’s hands, pulling.

There are rules.

The dog on the lawn lunged forward.  Verona awkwardly grabbed at a spell card, using left hand to reach into her right-side pocket.

“Don’t.  Shouldn’t need-” Avery started.

The dog stopped on the edge of the lawn, howl-barking.

On their right side, a dog that was chained to a stake in the earth lunged forward.  The stake it was chained to moved along the lawn, same as the clothesline pulley had, with no furrow or anything.  It stepped out onto the road, out ahead of them.

Lucy was closest, and Avery steered Lucy away, watching, watching-

The stake stopped moving.

She pushed back against Lucy, putting Lucy on a forward path.

If Lis was the driving force behind this, then Lis had made promises not to hurt them.

“Lis can’t hurt us without being forsworn, but we can hurt ourselves, so don’t run into anything.”

If Lis let a dog loose and that dog directly hurt them, that was on Lis and they won tonight.

But if Lis put a dog in their way and they ran into the dog, that was on them, their fault, didn’t count.

They reached the end of the block.  They could see off to the left where the T-junction had become a left-hand turn, and it ended in a dead end, taller houses and fences surrounding it.

Behind them, the block was closing off.

“She can still trap us,” Verona said.  “Temporary trap.”

Avery paused, looking around.  “Which way to the House on Half Street?  I can get us out, I think, but I don’t want to go the wrong way.”

“Key,” Verona said, pulling the key from her neck.  “Find the connection?  Or the scent?”

“I haven’t nurtured that part of my Sight much, ever since it almost took over my regular vision,” Avery replied.  “Let me try.”

She turned on her Sight, looking.

Bands of film, of connections…

“I think there’s not enough emotional connection.”

“Here,” Lucy said.  “Take it off.”

Verona hurried to pull the key free.  Lucy held out a notebook, glancing at Avery.  Avery held it up, while Lucy found her pencil sharpener.  She drew a quick circle with an ‘eye’ connection marker in it, dropped the key inside it, and then popped the pencil sharpener open, emptying the contents onto the page.  She jiggled the book as Avery held it, being careful not to let the key fall free.

The shavings and graphite danced on the jiggled page at random, but very quickly began to find lines and patterns.

“Good one,” Verona said.  “That one’s to me, that one’s…”

They looked back and off to the side.

If they’d just gone by the directions they knew were right for Kennet, they might have continued forward, especially with the fences and trees gathering to block off the way there.

But no, Lis was using her growing control over the spirit of Kennet to move the House on Half Street to a place somewhere behind them.  Far enough off to the side that they wouldn’t stumble on it if they backtracked, but they would have to backtrack, then find their way sideways.

Avery grabbed Verona.  “Eyes closed.  You too, Lucy!”

“Yeah!  Come back for me!”

“That’s the plan!”

She black-roped Verona to a rooftop.  Dogs barked and pulled on lines, or ran across the street to put paws on the side of the house.  They were unsettled, disturbed.  Like an earthquake was coming.

Avery took Verona a few steps down the line.  “Stay safe.”

“Yep.”

“Guard her,” Avery said, passing Snowdrop to Verona.

She went back for Lucy.  In the twenty or so seconds that it’d taken her to go back and get forward -a tree moved to block the way between the leaving and the return, adding a few extra seconds- Verona had struck out a basic diagram.

“You need to rinse off, Luce,” Verona said.  “I know we haven’t had time, but-”

“I will.”

“Sooner than later.”

“I will!  Just- priorities.”

“Your safety is my priority.”

“Get the direction,” Lucy said.  She reached into her bag.  “Didn’t want to do it while running around or we waste water.  Might need it to wash off glamour later.”

Verona shook her head slightly and threw down a handful of chalk.  It settled more in a few radial lines.  One to Verona, but one to a more distant location.

The House on Half Street was moving again.

They wasted no time.  Lucy doused herself, upending a container over her head.

“We need to work together,” Lucy told them, breathing hard from the running, and the shock of cooler water.  “Stay together, stay on the same page.”

“That’s why I’m coming,” Avery said.  “Instead of going after Brie, even though it feels like crap.”

“It’s drama,” Verona gasped.  “Narrative.  What gives Maricica the best moment?  Doing something to Brie when we’re not looking, or waiting until we show and then confronting us and giving us a shot?”

Lucy poured water onto her arm.  Avery steadied her.  “I’m not ruling out the ‘welcome, here’s your dying friend’ as her way of saying hi.”

Avery swallowed hard.

They found the right neighborhood, but there was a twist in it.

The House on Half Street was no longer locked up.  No key required for entry, no folding of space.  It was just… there.

Front door open.

They slowed as they approached.  Lucy took a second bottle from Verona and sloshed it over herself.

They walked up to the front door.

There were sounds of heavy breathing and something wet within.

Lucy reached into her pocket, got some papers, and handed them out.

Silence runes.

Lucy held hers, and pushed on the door to open it.  The rune brightened on the paper as the door moved, no creak, no squeak, no slight bang as it hit the open door of the front closet.

The floorboards didn’t creak underfoot.

Flowers grew out of the wall and floor.  One was a nettlewisp, and the spikes pointed at them as they drew nearer, points trembling.

“How am I supposed to wear this?”

The voice had a rough edge.

They stopped in the front hall, just short of the point where they could be seen from the living room.  The Nettlewisp looked like it was set to go off the moment they got too close.  They’d have to answer it before they entered.

“Wrap it around yourself.  Edith was doing you a kindness by making it into clothes, but it isn’t necessary.  Worn as a wrap or a full suit of clothing, the function is the same.”

Maricica’s voice was unmistakable.

“Do you have a knife?” Charles asked.  “Cut the twine and rope?”

“They left one behind.”  Ken’s voice.  Lis.

The sound of the blade of a box cutting knife clicking its way free of the handle was audible from their end.

They’re here?

Avery peered as much through the door as she could.  She pulled her head back as she saw a shadow move.

There were more wet sounds.

“It seems we have company,” Maricica announced to the room.

More wet sounds.

“Who?” Lis asked, in Ken’s voice.

“Hello there, nice of you to finally show up,” Maricica called out.  “The timing is mildly inconvenient, but nothing we can’t manage.  Would you like to come in?”

Avery eyed the Nettlewisp.  It was hard to make out in the dark, but the petals had patterns and the patterns had a faint glow.  The spikes glistened.

Avery couldn’t answer without abandoning the silence, and she didn’t want to risk setting off the Netttlewisp.

There were some wet sounds.  Some furniture moved.

“Don’t worry, Charles,” the Faerie said.  “Don’t worry, I’m not offended, as much as I find the collection of you all so very offensive by default.  I suppose rudeness is to be expected.”

Lucy held up a finger, then inched toward the front door.  Avery nodded.

Verona got some cards and began drawing eyes.  Avery motioned, and Verona handed her half the stack.

Avery drew about eight by the time Verona had twelve or so.  Verona nicked the back of her hand and began daubing blood on the pupil of each eye.  Avery followed suit.

“What are you doing?” Maricica called out.  “I don’t suppose we could open a dialogue?”

“I think they’re too wary for that, talking with a Fae,” Lis said.

“Would you talk to Charles, then?”

There were wet sounds again.

What’s going on with Charles?

“Anything you think is appropriate,” Maricica added.  “Talk to our local practitioners.”

Heavy footsteps banged against the floor.  The wet sounds continued for a second, then stopped.  “-fuck to do with the local practitioners?”

“Trust me, Charles.  Just do as I say with confidence, I promise you victory.”

Verona jumped.  Avery looked, and saw Lucy touching Verona’s arm.  She pointed to the door, then gestured, holding her arm out in front of herself, bent and braced, drawing a shape around it.  A giant leaf shape?

Verona nodded.  Avery did too.

Avery and Verona retreated slowly from the door and the Nettlewisp.  She was careful to step over and around some of the smaller, decorative flowers, and the twisting, curling vines that extended out from them.

“I didn’t come prepared with words,” Charles said, a little more distant.  “I never had anything against you three.”

“Good,” Maricica said.

“Didn’t want you involved.  I don’t intend any harm, not to you three.  You were fine.  You were fair to me.  But we need to do this.”

Verona hid behind the door of the hallway.  Avery behind the front door.  Avery fished in her pocket and found a card where she’d drawn an ‘Earth’ rune, as in Earth the solar body, not earth as in dirt.  She drew out a diamond around it and laid it against the door.

Peeking outside, she saw Lucy standing just beneath the big front window with boards in it.

Is that what we’re doing?

“The world needs it.  Practitioner or Other, we can’t keep doing what we’re doing.  There’s too much rot at the foundations.  I hoped- I really did hope your time at the Blue Heron would make that clear.  I never had anything against you,” Charles said.  “Bit of hypocrisy, but you’re teenagers.  That’s allowed.  You’re doing better than I did at your age.”

“Should we maybe consider going now?” Lis asked.  “Let them do what they want?  Those girls shot me, I want to get where we need to be and stop.”

Lucy moved her arm.  Then she ducked.

The card she’d placed near the window exploded in a spray of glass that exaggerated the glass already in the winter.  Shards flew everywhere.

The Nettlewisp activated in response.  Spikes were hurled out.  The vast majority hit the cards with eyes on them that they’d left on the floor.  Some hit the hallway door.  Verona had done something, so they bounced off more than they punched in.  Avery’s ‘quality: down to earth’ enchantment made the door sturdy enough that the spikes disintegrated.  Flecks bounced off the side of Verona’s face.

They moved in.  Avery was careful to dodge the remaining flowers, putting all the footwork she’d picked up in soccer and skating to work.  Her running shoe skidded on the floor, where it was coated with old dust and new-ish blood.

Peppered with tiny holes and gouges from the glass, Charles, Maricica, and Lis stood around the cube of meat, which was similarly damaged.

That was the illusion.

“-cover our retreat,” ‘Maricica’ said.

The image was a scene that had happened already, maybe only a matter of two to five minutes before they’d arrived.  Maricica stepped out toward the hallway, dust flowing off her wings, and cast out the seeds that would sprout into flowers.  She whispered to one and set it as the Nettlewisp.

And flowers curled, pollen leaking out, and they reinforced the image.

Avery stepped on one, crushing it underfoot, and parts of the scene fell away.

Charles, as he walked around to the illusory cube of meat, disappeared.  That part of the illusion had been damaged before they’d arrived.  That was why Charles had lapsed into only the wet sounds.

Maricica had been addressing them, but not addressing them.

An Other was in the room, on all fours, hands and feet so far apart it didn’t look like they’d be able to hold their position without slipping, let alone move.  They could have looked like a bogeyman, like the video game bogeyman with the bag over his head that Avery had fought, or the pig dog man that she’d dealt with, but she didn’t get that vibe.  They weren’t stained, exactly.

They were gaunt, bloodstained, white clothes so soaked through with sweat and blood that they were translucent, hard to distinguish from the skin, which was greasy and bloody both.  Something was wrong with their eyes, and she couldn’t see just what it was, in the dark.  Something was wrong with their mouth, too; they had a lower jaw that had been damaged enough that it didn’t have teeth poking up from gums.  It had toothless, splintered  jawbone extending up from ragged flesh instead, that looked like it had been chewed off.  Stitches helped keep the flesh roughly where it needed to stay.  Bent nails were embedded into bone at the shoulders, more at the hands and fingers that turned the extremities into weapons more than anything that could wield or use tools.  Everywhere she looked, it looked like something very nasty had gotten very inventive, in very different ways.

She’d seen a few bogeymen by now and this wasn’t one.  Bogeymen tended to… average out, or pick something that they were built around.  One thing that was their deal, really, and everything else became scars or raggedness, or stained.  This was a hodgepodge.

This was goblins.  The worst sort of goblins, Avery was willing to bet.

The Dog Meat.  The project Bluntmunch’s friends had been planning to do, that he’d brought into Kennet as a way to cover his back.  A distraction.

Avery remained very still and remained very wary as she kept it clearly in view.  The Dog Meat watched her through messy hair.

When they moved, Avery was reminded of playing the party game in the basement of her relative’s house, with her siblings and cousins.  Put your right hand on the red square.  Put your left foot on the black square… Their every movement was disjointed, as if the poor thing was reluctant to move unless they were deliberate in that movement, like everything hurt.  Moving across the floor like a rock climber moved up a cliff face.  Put your left hand on the bloody floor.  Put your right foot on the bloody floor.

They didn’t blink, they barely breathed, and their eyes didn’t waver from her.  They moved through the illusion of the meat cube, and with that illusion already damaged by the glass shards, it crumbled.

The meat cube, Lis, Maricica, and Charles were gone.  Maricica had left a glamoured recording to play, to delay them, to trick them.  The Faerie had called out to the Dog Meat, and at the same time she’d made it sound like she was calling out to them, to set up the recording.

Maricica had asked Charles to play along, even though he’d been confused.  And probably worried about this bloody, nail-studded person who’d have been crouched where Avery was standing now.

The Dog Meat’s left eye remained fixed on Avery as the right eye moved, drooping.  It was like the eye was bulging out against fishnet or wires, like one of those stress balls with a net around it that created a bunch of bulging bubbles when pressed.  Quick, almost too fast to track, they snatched up a fistful of stray fur and blood, pushing it into their damaged mouth.  With no proper lips, they sucked and licked, briefly showing a tongue that had been stitched onto the end of their ordinary tongue, for nearly double length, snaking around hair.  Their right eye moved back to Avery.

Sucking up blood before coughing and ineffectually spitting to clear away the bits of fur.

“Hungry,” they whispered, barely intelligible.  Blood it hadn’t managed to swallow drooled out of its mouth.

Avery cast the silence rune aside.

The Dog Meat jerked, moving about a foot to the side, crouching lower, eyes wider, if that was even possible.

Avery showed it her empty hands.  “Can-”

The Dog Meat flinched again.

“-can we trade you?  We’ve got some snacks.  Tasty snacks,” Avery said.

“We can give you snacks later, too,” Verona said.  “Snacks every day.  If you’ll cooperate.”

The Dog Meat shook their head so fiercely their entire body swayed, rocking left and right as it perched there, arms and legs spread out.

“Coop- cooperation… impossible.  Fight ourselves, fight each other.  Have to.  Made us.”

“The goblins made you fight?”

“Ave,” Verona said.  “If the furs aren’t here, we need to be after them.  You wanted to go after Brie.”

“I freaking know,” Avery whispered back.  She glanced at Verona.  “But if we got our… acquaintance here to stand down, maybe we could track the connections.  We can’t do that if we’re worried about being attacked.”

She glanced back at the Dog Meat.

It was gone.

She turned her head, and looked into the kitchen, where Verona’s alchemy setup was.

It was there, facing a right angle from her, but the bulging eye-

No, it wasn’t the fishnet she’d thought it was.  It was worse.  At least ten eyes were jammed into the same socket, until each one was strained to the point of bursting.  All bloodshot, some even bulging up or down into the space between eyelid and eye socket.

No wonder they didn’t blink.

All of the individual pupils, or most of them, were aimed at Avery, the mouth lolled open, drool and blood dripping down onto the floor.

“If not cooperation, trade?” Avery asked.

“No.  They made us trade.  Made us decide.  Who got hurt, who gave something up.  Done trading.  Trades are never fair, not in this world.”

“Ave?” Verona asked.

“Our biggest successes so far have been by turning enemies into friends, or gathering friends around us,” Avery said.

“Really good idea,” Lucy replied.  “But we don’t have time. Maybe some of the others can buy us some, but…”

“Hey, uh, person in the kitchen, do you have a name?”

“They took that from me too.  They took fairness, they took belonging.  They took my face.  They took my name.”

“If you let us go, we’ll go and hurt the friends of the people who did that to you.  How’s that?  And we’ll make plans to deal with the goblins who did that.”

“All that’s left is hurting and wanting,” the Other whispered.  “No.”

“But-”

Verona touched Avery’s arm.

Avery activated her Sight, keeping half an eye on the Dog Meat, and half on the living room, where the furs had been taken away.  Only scraps of fur remained.  If there was a trail…

“Snowdrop, do you think you can sniff out the trail?”

“Flower smells make this easier,” Snowdrop said, forehead creasing as she raised her eyebrows.

“Then let’s-”

Avery stopped short.

In her Sight, the doorway to her right was packed with eyeballs, pressed in so tight together they bulged, teared up, or formed six sided honeycomb or five-sided eye shapes.  They were slowly getting more bloodshot.

“I had a daughter,” the wall of eyes whispered.  “I wanted a son.  They were beautiful.  So energetic.  I wonder if they would have looked like you.”

Verona put a hand on each of Avery’s shoulders.  Her eyes glowed purple in the very corner of Avery’s vision.  Avery didn’t dare look away.

“Remember what Bluntmunch said?” Verona asked, quiet.

“What?” Avery replied.

“Bluntmunch said they were making Dog Meat by offing these really awful people.  Um.  People with hidden cameras.  People that got animals from shelters to hunt.”

“I think we tried hunting people too,” the wall of eyes whispered.  “Had to travel to the right spots.  Wasn’t that fun.  Only tried it three times.  They all gave up too fast, or didn’t even run for it.  What’s the point?”

“Let’s rule out cooperation,” Lucy murmured.  “And sympathy.”

“Maybe, yeah,” Avery replied, quiet.

Avery blinked very slowly.  When she opened her eyes again, the Dog Meat’s face was close, its breath heavy against the side of her face.

They extended the double-length tongue, and licked the side of her neck.  Avery jerked back, pushing the Dog Meat away, nearly stepped on one of the Nettlewisp spikes that Verona had warded away from the door, and only avoided falling because Verona caught her.

The Dog Meat grabbed her wrist with a surprising quickness, belly-flopping onto the floor because it couldn’t move that easily.  Nails sticking through fingers scratched skin and caught on the ropes and bracelets.

“What the frig!?” Avery shouted.  “Licking me?  Let go!”

“Can’t touch without scratching anymore,” they told her.  “Can barely touch at all without hurting.  Licking is the nicest I can do.”

“Be my daughter, come.  I’ll teach you to stalk and hunt.”  It tugged with enough force that she was pulled off her feet.  Strong.

Lucy stepped past them, weapon ring turning a pen into a two-handed staff.  She smashed the butt-end into the side of the Dog Meat’s head, turned it into a trident, and stabbed downward.  In the process, she impaled the floor and caught the hand in the space between the prongs.  Nails sticking out of the back of the hand kept it from pulling the hand through, and in the trying, it pulled the trident in a little deeper.  Lucy kicked hard to drive the points home and embed them.

“I’ll care for you, I’ll feed you, I’ll love you, no matter what you do,” the Dog Meat told Avery.  “No matter who you hurt, no matter what you look like.”

Lucy fought to keep the trident embedded in the floor.  “Right pocket, someone.”

Verona leaped to the task.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone!” Avery told the Other.

“You will!  You will, you know you will, that’s what this world is, now!”

“I don’t think you’re right.”

“We abandon each other.  You said you left someone called Brie?  You abandoned her?”

“No.  Not like that.”

“Don’t engage with them,” Lucy said, grunting.  She kicked a reaching hand away.  The Other couldn’t rise very high up off the floor, which limited its ability to attack.  “Third group- yeah.  Quick, flip through, flip-”

Verona flipped through.

“We cling to each other, we hurt each other, then we leave, over and over,” the Dog Meat whispered.  “Over and over.  I’ll cling to you, I’ll keep you, I don’t care if you hurt me.  I’ll keep you so you can’t run.  Be the child I never had.  She was so pretty, so much better than I am.  They took him away from me.  She said I was sick, she’d never have a child with me.”

Avery shook her head, stepping back.

“Go back,” Lucy said.

“Got it, I see it,” Verona said.  She pressed the card to the handle of the trident.

The trident became stone.

“Can I use another?” Verona asked.

“Go for it, though I don’t see-”

Verona dropped the paper and stomped on it.  “In the name of protecting Kennet!”

With the stomp, the floorboards around the trident became stone, merging with the stone of the pitchfork.

The two of them swiftly backed away, joining Avery.  Even though Lucy didn’t have contact with her weapon ring, the spell paper helped the pen-trident keep that shape, locked in as stone.  The Other flailed, scratching with the nails that embedded its free hand and feet to try to do something about the trident, but after the handle broke off, the head remained in place.  It began to dig and scratch at the wood around the part of the floor that had been turned to stone, gouging and sawing at it.

“Can we bind it?” Avery asked.

“No,” Verona said.  “It’s tricky to put in a binding circle like Dogs of War are.  Need to have mementos, fifty drops of blood added to the circle plus one for every person it’s killed, or we have to beat it down three times in serious combat without letting it hurt anyone in the meantime.”

“Don’t have, don’t have time for, and I’m not sure we’d pull off that last one,” Avery said.

“Maricica probably accounted for that.  Good researching, Ronnie,” Lucy said.

“‘Course.”

It would get free.

The Dog Meat froze.

Staring at them, as they retreated from the property.

To Avery’s Sight, it was less a person and more an ooze, ephemeral eyes with a shadow of a figure visible past them.  Eyes that got more bloodshot, staring.

“Let’s go.  We have to stop them from getting Charles and the furs to the Arena,” Lucy said.

“Kill me or come with me but don’t leave me!” the Other screeched.  “Don’t leave!”

They ran together.

“Can we use another portal?” Lucy asked.  “Ruins gate, some coins?”

Avery shook her head.  “I’d worry about the realms thing.  I don’t know exactly what a horror is but if the town is folding and we put a portal down, and the portal folds…?”

“Could Lis do that?” Verona asked.

“By accident?  Yeah.  Let’s not.  If it scared Zed it should probably scare us at least a little,” Lucy said.  “Go, run.  Let’s assume Charles isn’t that fast.”

But he has Kennet on his side.  Lis controls the roads, the routes.  He has to walk in a straight line.

We have to navigate this freaking mess, every roadblock thrown in our way.

“No fur,” Snowdrop said.

“Where?” Lucy asked.

Snowdrop pointed the wrong way.  Avery tracked Snowdrop’s awareness and led the group down the block.

There was some trace fur from the cube that had been taken away.  Scraps.

“The Dog Meat is free,” Lucy said.  “I hear it.”

“Already?”

“Not this way,” Snowdrop said.

The trail led to a garage.

“I don’t know this house,” Snowdrop told them.

“How?” Avery asked her.

“I don’t know!  Definitely not the goblins.  The owners always lock it tight.”

Lucy grabbed the handle of the garage door and lifted.  It clanged.

“Someone locked it,” Avery noted.

“Might be our culprits,” Verona said.

“Ratfink key?” Lucy asked, pointing at Avery, then Verona.

Verona fished it out of her pocket: the little bit of wire sticking out of a rat skull’s mouth.  She used it, putting it into the lock.

“Guess the owners won’t be able to lock it at all, now?” Avery asked.  “Hey Snow, remind me of the address later, okay?  So I can leave them a bit of cash.”

“Nah.”

The garage door slid open.  They walked in, edging past the vehicle, and Snowdrop pushed past, sniffing, before opening the side door.

“Why cut through this way, though?” Lucy asked.  “They can take a straight path, can’t they?”

“Might be that Lis is burning through her power,” Verona suggested.

“It’s that,” Snowdrop said.  “She’s burning through her power, nothing else.  They came through here on foot.  More than five minutes ago.”

“They drove?” Avery asked.

“Charles might’ve,” Lucy said, looking at the car.  “Nothing else?”

“Brie,” Avery said.  “Less than five minutes ago?”

Snowdrop shook her head.

“Less than five minutes ago.  Go.”

They exited the garage, entered the neighboring garage, and hauled the door open, instead of using the fences.  More of the city was arranged to block them.  Neighborhood after neighborhood that was difficult to cut through.  Not that Kennet had really prized being easy to navigate on foot, before.

“I can take us over.”

“No,” Verona said.  “I’ll fall off a rooftop.  Does City Magic really work on home interiors, or is that protected?”

“Protected?” Lucy asked.  They were discussing while hurrying across the street in the direction of the Arena.

“By innocence?”

“I think so,” Avery said.  “They didn’t rearrange the garage interior or anything, and they didn’t mess with the House on Half Street.”

“Why go over when we can go through?”

“Trespassing?” Lucy asked.  “Potentially getting shot?  Connection blockers, at least.”

“Yep,” Verona said.

Verona pulled her hat brim down to draw on it with a white gel marker.  Lucy slapped a notecard to her arm.  Avery did the same.

It felt like running through the sands that were pouring down an hourglass.  As they got closer to the midpoint, the point where Lis was shaping Kennet, everything drew together.  All the inconvenient fences that barred easy shortcuts, the tall roofs, the trees that grew close together in the parts of neighborhoods without any houses.  Lis had given up on using the dogs, at least.  The uphill rise that required them to climb stairs to get to Louise’s house was now struck through the middle of Kennet, the far end of downtown up the hill.

The ratfink key let them into a house where the lights were off.  They cut through, escaped through the back door, and skipped that entire climbing-the-hill part.  The street they were on was a broken one, downtown residences on one side, stores on the other.

Snowdrop’s head turned.

“What?”

“We’re safe.”

“What was it?” Avery asked.

But as she asked, she saw.

The Dog Meat, inside a store window, peering out.  Televisions around it were tuned to static, with faint eye images surrounding it.  The white static gradually turned red.

To her Sight, the phantom eyes around it were doing the same.  Handprints gradually turned redder.

“We can ward it off, right?  John could potentially be slowed down by a chalk line?”

“Potentially,” Lucy said.

The light coming from the televisions in the store window became a bright, bloody red, playing off of the light from the sky and below.

“We have to keep moving,” Avery said, backing up.

“She wanted a distraction, she found a good one,” Lucy remarked.

“Yeah, well… let’s not give it any more attention than we have to.  We’re only five minutes behind?”

“More than two or three minutes,” Snowdrop said, sniffing.  “They covered a lot of ground.”

“He’s not making any sound,” Lucy said.  “I think the Dog Meat picked up that paper you dropped, Ave.”

The light from the televisions flicked off, the store going dark.  The Dog Meat effectively disappeared.

Avery reached for chalk, turning, looking.

And she saw the Dog Meat.  Moving faster than a speeding car, low to the ground, long-limbed, reaching-

She ducked low, striking out with the chalk, to draw a line on the street.

The Dog Meat stopped short, momentum broken, circled around-

Lucy used a chalk spear to strike at the ground, drawing another line.  Blocking it.

Avery used the Sight, and she could see the phantom eyes receding and retreating.

Lucy pressed the attack, lunging, striking out another mark, shifting from the defense to the offense.

The Dog Meat dropped to all fours, twisting around to face the other direction.

Verona flicked out a piece of paper.  Avery could see the mark on it, and pulled her hat-brim down just as Verona put a hand out to shield her face, which combined to make her hand knock Verona’s hand into her own nose.  “Unf.”

The light flared.

Avery reached for her bag, where there was a strap beneath to wedge a small umbrella into, and she pulled out the Ugly Stick.  She smacked the Dog Meat across the back of the head.

It reached for her, blind, and she swung the club two-handed, striking the arm.

It moved its face like it was screeching or hollering something, but it was silent.  It scrambled back.

The Ugly Stick was supposed to do major damage, leaving wounds that were slow to heal and prone to scarring.  Permanently smashed noses, dented heads, bent arms.

It was an ugly, awful weapon to use, and the one time she really put muscle into it, to slow down this dangerous, hateful, pitiable creature… it barely did anything.

A goblin weapon against a goblin-created Dog of War type thing, Avery thought.  Like using water to stop a flood.

The creature ran, screeching, and as it did, a woman stepped out of her front door, bag at her shoulder, car keys in hand.  She locked her front door behind her.

“No!  Get inside!” Lucy hollered.

The Dog Meat sprinted, not as fast as before, and went straight for the woman.

The woman didn’t see or turn around in time to react.  The Dog Meat leaped the side of the porch railing, and it tackled her, nail-studded forearm braced to catch her at the neck.

The woman slammed into the doorframe, pushed by the neck, head and body at the wrong angle for a heavy impact.

There was no audible snap, but if Avery had heard one, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

She started forward.  Lucy was with her.

“We have to go,” Verona said.

The pair of them moved forward, while Verona hung back.

“More people will get hurt if we stop here.”

Verona watched the Other, who crouched over the woman, sniffing her limp body before licking down the length of her sleeve.

The Dog Meat turned to look at them.

There it was.

“It’s the eyes.  The Dog Meat stalks prey, builds up strength, and spends it,” Avery said.

“The stain?”

“Red stain?”

“Yeah, if that’s what you see.  Gets redder?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “We might have to stop to bind it.”

The Dog Meat crouched, waiting, hiding behind one part of the porch, peering past it.

“I think she’s alive,” Lucy said.

Avery switched from studying the Dog Meat to glancing at the woman, trying to judge if she was alive.  If she was, they’d have to change their tactics.

And she saw the bag.

She reached for her Lost Sight, through Snowdrop.  A way of seeing that looked around corners, a bit, and through stacks of things.

The bag had bones in it.

And once she found that angle to look at things, she could look at the woman…

“It’s not a real person.  Maricica trick,” Avery said, pulling on Lucy’s sleeve.

“I don’t know why you guys don’t listen to me,” Verona complained, as they rejoined her.

“Ease up,” Lucy told her.  “We didn’t know she was fake.”

“She was fake?” Verona asked.

“Bones in the bag.  Guilherme told us to watch out for that sort of thing.  Doll parts, bones, spidery things, brambles, anything Dark Fall.”

“Guilherme told you that a while back,” Verona said.

“He repeated a lot of things,” Lucy added, quiet.

“Used the same line about giving a last gift he used when giving me the Summer Rose,” Verona noted.  “Different meaning, I think.”

The layout of Kennet continued to bar their way.

“We’re clear!” Snowdrop called out.

Avery turned to look.

The Dog Meat was following, getting ready.  Streetlights flickered and flickered red around them.

As a young boy in army clothes ran across the street, the Dog Meat went after him, instead.

Avery tensed, watching-

Until she saw the action figure in the boy’s hand.  A soldier.

A kind of doll, mirroring the boy in appearance.

Avery hesitated, then turned, continuing to run.

“Keep your distance from me,” Lucy said.  She was calling out spirits to the circle around her again.  “In case.”

“Be careful, okay?” Avery asked.

“I will,” Lucy said, but she looked tense.  Water and sweat beaded her skin.  “Work together.  We really need to be on the same page here.  I worry we aren’t.”

“Don’t say it, or you might make it more true,” Verona told her.

Lucy shook her head.  “Saying it is necessary if we’re going to do anything about that.”

“I don’t think anyone disagrees that we need to work together,” Avery cut in.  Trying desperately to keep the peace.

“House,” Verona said.

They cut through a house, jimmying the front door with the ratfink key, then opening the back door to let themselves through to the other side.

It was a way past what Lis was doing to the town.  Past the pinch in the hourglass where the ‘sand’ was most intense, the way most obstructed.

Lis adapted, pushing harder, moving more trees and things into their way.  The town flowed like water, and it flowed in a way that put the heaviest stuff in their path.

But they had a way, and as long as they cut through a residence where people lived, it seemed to cut past Lis’s influence over the town.

As they approached the Arena, cars parked on the side of the street where there were apartments all pressed in together, the gaps between them closing to turn the cars into a barrier.

Avery hopped up and walked over the car, checking the road before hopping down.

Maricica was there.  So was Lis.  The pair of them faced Guilherme, who fast-walked to keep a damaged, parked car between himself and the corner of the building, where Clint, Rocky, and other Witch Hunters were gathered.

Freak, Squeak, Chloe, Nibble, Tashlit, a full assortment of goblins that included Toadswallow, and Matthew Moss were at another corner of the building, ready to act but unwilling to cross the Witch Hunters.

And Musser stood on the rooftop with Raquel and his assembled Others.

Avery scanned the surroundings with the Opossum Sight and her original Sight.

No Charles?

Lis’s control over environment kept anyone from getting a good shot at Maricica, who stood there, wrapped in wings.

Who turned, looking at them.

“And there you are,” Maricica said, and even though she was halfway across the parking lot, her voice carried.  “You arrived faster than I thought you would.”

Lucy touched her earring, then drew a rune.  “Are you another illusion?”

Verona grabbed the piece of glass Guilherme had given her.  The compass, for finding glamour.  It shone gold as it found Guilherme, and it shone that emerald green that turned the rest of it black, as it identified a locus of Maricica’s glamour.  Maricica herself.

“Yes, I’m real.  The true Maricica, with the true Lis.  Charles needed a moment.  He’ll be along in a minute or three.”

“Matthew!” Avery called out, top of her lungs.  “You left Ken!?”

Matthew said something to Toadswallow.  His shouted response was drowned out by the gunfire from the Witch Hunters, aimed at Guilherme, the most exposed Other.

Toadswallow filled them in without needing to speak: a gesture.  A finger drawn across the throat.

“Ken’s dead?” Lucy asked.  The rune glowed as it carried her voice across the gap.

Toadswallow shook his head.

Tashlit gestured.

“Gone,” Verona added.  “Back from whence he came, I guess his power was drained, taken by Lis.”

Lucy’s circle of protection kicked in, the personal barrier flaring to life, the engine spirit lunging up to block an incoming bullet.

They hurried behind cover, before sustained gunfire could break down the circle.  Lucy had to take separate cover.

“Fuck them!  They’re shooting the wrong people,” Lucy hissed.

“I thought it most likely you’d arrive just as Charles entered the building, or just before, as he walked across the lot,” Maricica’s voice echoed through the dark, bloody parking lot.  “But you’re a few minutes ahead.  I’m wondering what you sacrificed, what you saw through.  Did you let the bystanders die?”

“They were crummy glamours!” Avery called out.

Even from a distance, she could see Maricica’s eyes narrow.

“You’re apparently not very good at the tricking humans thing!” Verona shouted.

Guilherme laughed.  It wasn’t a mocking laugh, but more the kind of laugh that suggested he was having fun.

Snowdrop mentally nudged Avery, and Avery looked over.

The Dog Meat.

“Freaking…” Avery whispered.

Gunfire drowned everything out.  A bullet clipped the edge of a car that had been tipped onto its side, and Guilherme didn’t even flinch as it took a notch out of his shoulder.

“You did so well, you three,” Maricica addressed them.  “Whyever didn’t you give the furs to John Stiles?”

“He didn’t want them,” Lucy said, her back to a car, watching the Dog Meat.

Avery drew a line of chalk on the sidewalk, to give herself and Snowdrop some protection from an attack from that direction.

“Too proud?”

“He thought they would make him less him.”

“His instincts were right.  I do wish you’d tried.  I worked a glamour and a curse into it.  Such a letdown, to find it all still wrapped up tight.  I repurposed that glamour into a taunt.”

The recording?

“The curse I’ll save, for another enemy, another time.  You could have had great fun, you know.  A taste of victory, a dark but happy dream, where tonight was quick to arrive, and you thought you won it all.  John abandoning the fight, Lucille Ellingson’s mother safe and sound, one of you finding security in Kennet, another of you finding escape from the worst of it.”

Avery’s eyes dropped.

“No mind games!” Verona called out.  “I’m not leaving my friends!  B.S.!”

Maricica laughed, and the laugh echoed.  “It’s part of what I am, Verona.  Mind games.”

“It’s most of what you are.  You’ll be a short story for Fae in the various courts,” Guilherme declared.  “I’ve spent too much time with you, Maricica.  Do you remember why the Winter Fae are so disconcerting for their fellows?  Two reasons.”

“We dread becoming one.”

“And you dread knowing one, because they know you,” Guilherme said.  “I know where the paths you’re on lead, Maricica, you’re a maggot among Fae and when all is said and done you’ll be lucky if you’re merely a maggot.  That is your Truth.”

He gave that last word a peculiar emphasis, in a way Nicolette had, once.

“Among the other things I am is a one-time friend of a certain Nightmare,” Maricica told them.  “She told me about your prophetic nightmare, Verona.  Back when you were fending off the invaders, fighting a ghoul, when the Aware came?  It’s True.  You won’t leave your friends, child.  You’ll be left.”

Avery, still watching the Dog Meat, reached out for Verona’s hand.  Verona pulled her hand away from Avery’s, into her lap.  She whispered, barely audible, “s’okay.”

“Ronnie.”

“Just head games.”

The Dog Meat seemed to have lurked and stalked enough.  It darted off to the left, out of sight.

“Don’t go giving it any help, Lis!” Avery called out.

No phones or anything made all of this so much harder.

Avery tried to predict the direction the Dog Meat might come from.  Above?  Would it leap from the roof of the apartment building?  Come from the left, where it originally was?  Out of a window?

“Hey little guy,” Verona whispered.

Avery looked.

Beneath the car they’d crouched behind, Peckersnot was peering out with one eye.

“Still wearing your war wounds, huh?” Verona asked, giving his the top of his head a rub with one thumb, where a cat scratch had scarred over.

Peckersnot picked his nose then placed a gob on the sidewalk between Verona and Avery.  Avery switched off with Snowdrop in peering around.  She was fully prepared for the Dog Meat to come after them full bore, full intensity, with minimal warning.

“Miss should be proud,” Maricica declared, not shouting, not raising her voice, but letting the wind and the nighttime carry it.  “She picked you so well.  Boxing up Jabber, taking the furs.  You took Charles’ things!  You would have so enjoyed the look on his face when he went looking, earlier tonight.”

Peckersnot slapped a small hand against the sidewalk, pointing.

He’d drawn the Arena in streaks of snot on the sidewalk.  A large square.  A circle to mark where Matthew was.  A circle for Guilherme, slightly off because Guilherme kept moving as the car he was trying to use as cover was periodically shifting position, dragging itself to new orientations in the parking lot.  An X for the Witch Hunters, an X for Maricica.

“This wouldn’t have been nearly so much fun if you’d been incompetent.  I would’ve had to contrive to have you sold to the Dark Fall to make this interesting at all, dragging all the rest of Kennet in to save you.  But this?  This will make for more interesting exchange.  I have Brie.”

Avery looked up.  She felt alarm from Snowdrop, and scrambled, drawing a quick line of chalk.  Snowdrop, slower to move, became opossum size, dropping down beneath the car with Peckersnot.

“Shitfuckme!” Verona swore, as the Dog meat came crashing through the door straight in front of them.  It stopped at the line of chalk.

Avery had to leave cover to step across the first line she’d drawn.

She was distracting us.  A mention of Brie just as he was going to attack.

Verona had drawn lines too, and had put a spell card down.  Fire erupted, chasing its way up one side of the Dog Meat, as it moved around the drawn lines, onto the top of parked cars, and then moved on all fours to cross them, double-length tongue extended.  Not making a sound the entire while.

Avery did a quick triple-tap of her foot as she backed up, aware any Witch Hunter could be putting her into his sights.

She glimpsed Maricica raising a wing.  Dust was cast out, blocking the view.

Protecting Avery.

But not from the Dog Meat, who wanted her, for some damned stupid reason.  Some creepy ass creature wanting a daughter to fuck up as badly as he was fucked up?  Fuck.

She leaped back, wind runes on her shoes kicking into life, and stumbled on landing.  The Dog Meat came charging after her, and she rolled out of sight, roping herself out behind Lucy.  Verona had already moved around.

The Dog Meat turned on its heels, and came straight at them, and was met face to face with the smoke spirit, Smoulder.  Avery had suggested Fumey, but that had gotten shut down.

It wasn’t the most solid spirit.  Blind, snagged up on solid smoke, the Dog Meat was slowed enough for Lucy to stab it twice.  Avery powered up her shoe and kicked the silent Other.  On impulse, recognizing that it had probably burned through its post-stalking burst of speed and strength, she reached out, looking for connections.

She found the paper she’d drawn and made, and pulled on that connection, hauling it free.

The Dog Meat snarled as it caught itself, one hand at a car window, one at a sidewalk slat, one foot on the side of the car, another against a tire, entire body tensed, like a spring ready to release.  The lower jaw that had been whittled to a crude serrated blade worked, tongue flailing around it like it hadn’t quite learned how to use it.

“Come,” it said, looking at her with too many eyes crammed into two eye sockets.

She could sense something from Snowdrop, and in the moment, it was hard to parse, until she realized Snowdrop was communicating the same thing.  Come.

Snowdrop was running across the street, alongside Peckersnot.

The Dog Meat came after Avery.  Avery dodged around, ducking low fast enough she had to put a hand on the ground, and turned her head, glancing at the battle map.

She slapped her hand against her shoe three times, a quick motion that bought the Dog Meat time to come after her.  Then she leaped skyward.  The tongue licked her leg and  a hand caught at her shoelace, tearing it.

She reached a second floor window, and placed a foot on the sill, pausing, hands pressed against either side of the window to keep herself from falling.

Taking in the scene, with the battle map in mind.  Peckersnot had smeared a handful of snot from one O to an X.  From the group with Toadswallow and Matthew and Tashlit and the others to the Witch Hunters.  There had been other gobbets, but they were harder to interpret.

Maricica hadn’t been providing cover.  She’d been blinding them about what the real plan was.

Matthew had unleashed the Doom on the Witch Hunters, driving them back.  The gunfire was aimed at it.  Guilherme closed in on Maricica.

The coast to get to the side of the local Others was clear.

“Verona!” Avery hollered.  “Lucy!  Run!  To our guys!”

The Dog Meat came up the wall, climbing, grabbing every handhold, leaping up off of windowsills, climbing more by a sheer lack of self-preservation than anything else.

Avery pushed her deer mask up to her face, tapped her shoe three times again, then tipped backward.  She kicked herself off.  From a second story window, twenty to thirty feet above the ground, to being in the air above the car-less road in front of the Arena, still twenty to thirty feet above the ground.

She reached into her pocket as she flipped back, a lazy backflip.  One of her last two coins.

The Finder’s trick, it bought her passage.  It worked with any kind of travel practice, and worked as a currency with a lot of Others who acted as couriers and guides, mostly Lost ones.

She hurled it down at the ground.  “Safe landings!”

She landed in a crouch, hat and cape flapping around her, then sprinted to catch up with the other two.

“Good girls!” Toadswallow crowed, as they got closer.

“The Doom comes back in a moment,” Matthew said.  “Guilherme’s exposed.”

“Daft man!  You set too short a time!” Toadswallow cussed at him.

“I’m not used to giving it longer.  I’m afraid it might get too clever.  Go after the Sable Prince, to undo Edith’s bindings, or negotiate with Maricica.”

“Guilherme!” Lucy shouted.

Maricica laughed as she avoided Guilherme’s approach.  The Faerie wore his original self, black haired, young-ish, a giant of a warrior with a fistful of overlong spears in one hand, a spear ready to throw in the other.  More weapons dangled from his belt.

“Witch Hunters!”

“Goblin-wrought pest!” Guilherme bellowed his response.

Avery looked.

The Dog Meat had leaped from the side of the building, much like she had, but the landing had been rougher for it.  It came for them.

She remembered the battle map Peckersnot had drawn.  Other gobbets-

Chloe came tearing out of the woods, intercepting the Dog Meat.  The two immediately began thrashing one another.

A nail-studded hand raked Chloe’s face, and that was enough to set Nibble off.  He leaped into the fray, working with Chloe to tear into and bite at the Other.

“And it’s now finally safe for Charles to emerge,” Maricica said.

Her voice was pitched to carry, in that magic Fae way that Estrella had used, but it wasn’t pitched to carry like it was pitched at them.

Lis moved a wall on the far side of the street, about ten feet from where they’d been huddled for cover.

Charles stepped out, beard trimmed shorter, but still scraggly, hair long-ish and thin near the top, bags under his eyes visible even from a distance.  The red furs were a shroud, wrapped around him, like a crude cape or robe.  Too long, they trailed behind, matted with blood.  He was shirtless, but the furs steamed in the cool night air.

“Guilherme,” Maricica said.

He threw a spear, and she avoided it, touching it as it passed.

Charles stopped walking as the spear continued forward toward him.  It struck a car door about two feet to his left, embedding there.

“You say you know me, winter-numbed oaf,” Maricica spoke, her voice high.  “But you’ve become too easy to know.  You chased me with those spears for three years.  You think I don’t remember?  How you move?  You won’t hit me or Charles, I guarantee that.  But if you don’t deal with those Witch Hunters as the Doom recedes, they will push forward from their cover, and they’ll open fire.  Good Others of Kennet will die.  They won’t shoot me or Charles.  I’ll see to it.”

Guilherme inhaled, chest expanding.

“You know it,” Maricica made her voice a whisper that was louder than her speaking voice, carrying further.  “I’d say the choice is yours, but I don’t think you can afford something so callous as these deaths to be what follows you into Winter.  You’d do more harm in the long run.”

“You’re nothing, Maricica.  You’re lesser.  A mere maggot that fantasizes of grander things.”

“And you’re repeating yourself,” Maricica whispered once more.  “The Doom of Edith James recedes in three… two… one.”

Guilherme turned, striding toward the Witch Hunters.  The first of them saw him approaching, and they opened fire.  Guilherme swiped with his spear, striking the bullet out of the air, then gave the spear a swift and sudden spin, deflecting three more bullets.  Whatever followed, Avery couldn’t see, because Witch Hunters retreated, still shooting, and Guilherme chased.

“And one more piece is removed from play,” Maricica said.  She looked back at Charles, who resumed walking.  He’d stopped when the spear had been thrown.

He wasn’t a fast walker, not with the weight of the furs and the fact he had to drag them.  He wasn’t that strong a man to begin with.

“I told you to walk forward with confidence, Charles.  Carry on, and don’t stop,” Maricica told him.

He bowed his head slightly as he pressed forward.  Crossing the street to approach the parking lot.

“Zed!” Avery called up to the roof.  “I’m so sorry about Brie!  Do you know where she is?”

“I can’t,” Zed called down.  His facial expression was lost, almost forlorn.  “She glamoured my power supply.  I’d do something about it, but-”

But what?  Pouring water on the power supply?

Kicking it violently?

Delicate technomancy?

Yeah, no, that had to be a bit tricky.

“I’m conserving energy.  Lucy, I’m holding onto what so I can help your mom if I can get through… whatever Ken is doing.”

“It’s not Ken, it’s Lis, with a lot of Ken in her,” Avery called up.  “So you’re mostly right.”

Zed hesitated, like he was going to say something, then his eyebrows drew together.  “Please, in exchange-?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Absolutely.  I’d do it even without the exchange.”

“Don’t make it a promise, just…”

Avery joined Lucy in the tight nod.

Just help Brie.

“Any last words, Charles Abrams?” Maricica asked, smiling, her wing extending while one remained folded around her.  Like she was bowing, giving him the stage.  Dust twirled out.  “You had things you wanted to say.”

Lucy dropped one backpack strap from one shoulder while Maricica was facing the other way.  She glanced at Verona, who reached inside.

Nibble and Chloe continued fighting the Dog Meat.  It looked like as much as they hurt it, it just added more cuts and scars without actually removing flesh or slowing it down.  As if injury could pile onto injury forever without ever making it less.  At the same time, though, the two worked together and kept it from coming at them, and the more ‘living’ binding kept it from being able to hang back, stalk, and build up in intensity for a future attack.

Verona passed a can to Lucy.  Lucy began making it a gun.

For Maricica?

Are we really going that far?

“I thought we were fair to you, Charles,” Matthew called out.  “We couldn’t afford to give out power for nothing, we asked you to manage some sickness and curses.  Others in our group were facing down Witch Hunters, risking their lives.  We only asked you to carry a share of the load, for protection.”

“It’s not that,” Charles replied.  Maricica seemed to be magnifying his voice.  The glamour she’d cast out.  “It’s the rest of it.  All of it.”

He looked up at Musser, who stood at the edge of the roof.

“Boo and fuck my hoo, Charles Abrams!” Toadswallow raised his voice.  “You hung around with arsewads like Belanger and Musser when you knew it was a bad idea.  A smoker who carries on with his bad habit shouldn’t blame the world if he gets cancer.  You want to bitch and moan?  Sure!  But don’t blame us.  Don’t blame this.”

“It’s the world that props them up, Toadswallow,” Charles said.

He stopped in his tracks as Lucy aimed the gun at him.  She stepped forward.  He stared at her.

“I told you not to stop, Charles,” Maricica said.

“Implicit binding by way of gun.  Learned this from Durocher,” Lucy said.

“I don’t want her to shoot me,” Charles said.

“You stand a higher risk now that you’ve stopped in your tracks.”

“I don’t want her to have to live with that.”

“You’ll have harder decisions to make soon,” she told him.

He stared at Lucy.

“Charles,” Avery said.  She started to walk forward, then flinched as the Dog Meat flung Chloe away.  Chloe landed in a crouch, tense, teeth bared.

Nibble strained to lift up the Dog Meat.  Chloe tackled it and Nibble into the foliage.

“Charles,” Avery tried again.  “I think this only ends in tears.”

“I can’t remember how much I’ve told you about this, but I sat in jail for years, after a Revenant killed the gang I was helping.  I thought a lot about the harm I did.  And about the harm that system was doing.  Prison, jails, the sheer injustice in our justice system.  I deserved to be there, but a lot of people didn’t.  And they didn’t deserve how terribly we fail so many of them.  We fail to help, you know that?  It’s barbarism.  And men up top will pledge to be harder on crime, they’ll argue for that barbarism, and the world will cheer.”

“What does that have to do with the price of tea, Charles!?” Toadswallow shouted.

“That’s the button Alexander pressed, to get me angry enough to forswear me.  And he plunged me into a life sentence so much worse than the prisons.  If prison is barbaric, then this system you all exist in, swim in, karma and truth?  Forbearance and forswearing?  It’s evil.  It is varnished, polite evil.”

“You say that only because you’re no longer part of it,” Musser called down.

“Yeah,” Charles replied, looking up, drawing the furs tighter around his shoulders.  “But isn’t that the trap?  The innocents don’t get to know and the least innocent of all, people like me, we don’t get a say.  Who is benefiting from it that’s going to tear it down or question it?”

“Us?” Lucy asked.  She extended a hand toward the Kennet Others.

“I’m talking about practitioners.  If Rook and Miss were here I think they’d agree the Others are fighting a losing war.  They don’t have a say.  Judges get replaced by Lords.  By practitioners.”

“And I’m talking about us.  Practitioners,” Lucy insisted.

“Charles, you could have talked to us,” Avery said.  “Said something.  Raised ideas.”

“I told you when you were innocent, not to do this.  I told you when you became Aware, just before your awakening.  You didn’t listen.  Now you’re in too deep.  You’re bleeding, you’re tired, I have little doubt you’ve got chalk under your fingernails and crusted into the creases of your palms, mixed in with blood.  Your hand is trembling as it holds that gun, Lucy.  I don’t think Toadswallow considers you children anymore, because he swears around you.  You were thrust into this world and now you’re in a bloody, stark part of it… is now the moment you finally listen to what I have to say?”

“Try us,” Lucy told him, still holding the gun.

“Avery said this only ends in tears.  I can’t help but think of how many tears are being shed every day.  By Seths.  By people like me.  By innocents who have no inkling of how the practitioners around them are harming them.  By Others bent under the establishment of practitioner families and organizations.  I think Solomon envisioned a world where the rules he put in place were the start of something.  Then he was forsworn, did you know that?  Were you taught that at the school?”

Avery shook her head.

“I think what he wanted was twisted in the same way my plans for stopping Alexander were twisted.  A system of laws and Truth turned into an ugly mockery of what he’d wanted, as sure as anything.  If it was meant to be the start of something, it got twisted into being a stopping point.  A bastion against the people who’d push for change.  Who’d push for better.  That bastion is manned by Alexanders, by Larry Bristows.”

“If you delay too long, John Stiles may finish the contest,” Maricica told Charles.

“It’s fine.  Maricica told me to address you three, in that house where you had the furs.  She created puppets to replay the scene, using glamour.  Did you-?”

“We did,” Verona told him.

Guilherme and the Witch Hunters still fought.  There were gunshots in the back parking lot.

“I thought about what I should’ve said and to put it in as few words as possible…” he paused, trailing off.  He looked at Lucy.

“No tricks,” Lucy told him, reasserting her grip on the gun.

Avery glanced back at the Kennet Others.

“If you pull that trigger, you’ll be helping to enforce a system where the weakest don’t ever really get a shot at changing things at the top,” he said, voice rough-edged, almost a growl, as he put more force into it than he’d used yet.

Lucy’s hand wavered.

Verona put a hand out, steadying Lucy’s.  “Distinction being that you’re being kind of a bunghole, Chuck.”

“I’m forsworn.  I’m doomed to be a bunghole, Verona.  To be cast in the worst light.  To have any avenue up and out from the bottom be an ugly one.”

“You’re going to hurt people,” Verona said.  “What this sounds like… burning the system down, forcing reckless Lordships?  You’d catch a lot of innocents in the way.  That’s not you being forsworn and people treating you worse, it’s you being a complete and utter bunghole.”

“Maybe I’d catch innocents, but I’d catch a lot of men like Alexander who’d condemn many, many more.  I’d clean the slate, or at least give it a chance at being cleaned.”

“What if you can’t?  What if you just mess it up worse!?” Avery called out.

“It can’t get any worse!” Charles raised his voice, angered now.  “Don’t you understand?  Maybe it won’t be as pretty, but we’re already sliding!  We’re already condemning children to roles they’ll live out the rest of their lives!”

He glanced up at Raquel.  Musser placed a hand on Raquel’s shoulder.

“We’re condemning people by their word!  We’re condemning Others by binding!  Awful people thrive until someone worse cuts them down!  Every day this continues is a day people live out things worse than your worst nightmares!  It has to cease!  It’s nothing to do with me or my being forsworn, it’s that I’m not fucking alone in this!  It happens every day!  All of this, it happens every day!”

“If you didn’t have it in you to shoot in the midst of his tirade, Lucille Ellingson,” Maricica purred, “you don’t have it in you to-”

Lucy twisted, and she pulled the trigger.

In the flash of the gun, Maricica’s glamour slipped slightly.  Her form, sleek and insectile, but with a female form in the midst of it, a face like a horrifying maze of mandibles. The bullet tore a hole through a wing of both the human-ish Maricica and the real version behind the mask.  It clipped Maricica’s arm, blowing away a chunk of flesh.

“That’s for Brie,” Lucy said, hand shaking.  The gun became a can of soda again.

“Brie cut away and ate seven different body parts from seven different people to survive her contest.  They didn’t survive.”

“Charles’ contest,” Verona pointed out.  “Charles made the Choir.  Doesn’t really fill me with confidence he’ll handle this.”

Maricica smiled, holding her injured arm.  “It was hers in that moment.  I think it remains hers now.  One of the nightmares Charles speaks of, behind her eyes every night as she tries to forget and move forward.”  She looked up at Zed.

“And it seems you’ve given her one more,” Zed called down.  “Bleeding her?  I caught a glimpse before you cut the phone and internet.”

“She sleeps.  She’ll wake.”

“What’s wrong with you!?” Lucy raised her voice.  “You’re hurting people, over and over again!  You scared students at the school, you created the Choir, you used that power!  You hurt Brie, you let us get hurt!”

She created a blade.

Toadswallow walked between Lucy and Avery.  He touched Lucy’s leg, giving it a pat.  “Perhaps leave it to us?  I don’t want you to have to shoot the man either.”

Lucy didn’t look like she was going to back down.

Goblins were gathering, moving through the group, gathering.

“We have a responsibility to you three,” Matthew said.  “We thought you would say what was necessary, maybe poke around the mystery of the Carmine Beast, but you stepped up, you really did, above and beyond.  That you’re even here makes me think I should have done more, so you wouldn’t have to be.”

“You’ve had a heaping load of shit on your plate,” Verona said.

“That’s true,” he replied.  “Let us?”

Tashlit put a hand on Verona’s shoulder.

Charles looked up at Musser.  “What do you think?”

“I think you’ve broken, Charles.  It hurts to see.  We weren’t close, but I liked you.”

“Assume I enter that building.  Assume I win.  Aren’t you afraid?”

“It would be an inconvenience.  A disruption.  Little more.”

“You’re so sure?”

“Sure enough,” Musser replied.

“Deal with them, and I’ll spare you and you alone the inconvenience.”

“Go!” Matthew shouted.  “Before he negotiates an agreement!”

Avery went with the group.  Goblins charged.

A gleaming chain link fence rose up from the ground of the parking lot, barring their path.  Goblins shied back.  Avery hurried forward, grabbing on, climbing, helping herself over.  Lucy cut through.

Avery landed on the far side, turned, and pulled a stack of spell cards out of her pocket.

“Careful!”

It was Maricica, sweeping in close.  Avery scrambled away.  She started to page through the cards, glancing down to check what she had, but as she did, Maricica moved again.  There was a glimpse of the more dangerous hidden shape as Maricica moved beneath one of the lights that illuminated a section of parking lot.

Lucy charged forward, weapon ready, standing between Avery and Maricica.  Avery trusted Lucy to guard her as she checked the cards she had left.

Musser called down, “Charles Abrams, I don’t believe you.  You’re forsworn and I haven’t forgotten.”

“Imagine that, that we must deal as men do without practice,” Charles said.

“You’ve dedicated yourself to opposing me.”

“Let it be a test.  I won’t touch you, I’ll trust that the change I bring about can unseat you.  You can be unmolested, free when everyone else worries and deals with inconvenience,” Charles said.

“I’ll add my oath to it,” Maricica spoke.

“I don’t know you.  For all I know, you’re mad, and you’re a Fae,” Musser said.

“If you side with the people that hurt Brie, I’ll never forgive it,” Zed told Musser.

“Who said I had any intention?”

“You’re tempted,” Maricica said, “you-”

The sound of her voice dropped in volume.

Silence reigned.

Verona hadn’t come past the fence, but she had written up a silence rune.  She stared through with purple eyes.

Goblins surged forward, through the hole Lucy had made.  Avery motioned for the people at the fence to stand back, then threw a card.

The ground cracked.  The fence became loose.  The pressure of Tashlit, Matthew, and others pushing against it brought it down, very nearly on the heads of the goblins who’d just passed through.  Tashlit caught it and held it one second for them to get past, then dropped it.

Freak and Squeak charged forward, and Maricica took flight, avoiding them.  She turned in the air like a dancer might, wings and dust around her.

Toadswallow loosed firecrackers, and Maricica slipped back and away.

The silence made it hard to coordinate and communicate.  Avery glanced over and saw Charles staring down some approaching goblins.  Gashwad was in the lead, holding a combat knife.

Fences erupted around them.  Lucy hurried over to do what she could to take them down.

Have to deal with Lis.

Just as Avery was about to sprint off, the silence ended.  Avery glanced back, and she saw Verona on the ground, holding her hand.  No paper or rune was there anymore.

“I won’t be silenced,” Musser declared.

“You should be helping!” Avery called up.  “Your instincts are right, Charles is going to screw everything up!  It’ll be inconvenient, at the very least!”

Maricica landed on the rooftop, not far from Musser.  She said something Avery couldn’t hear.

“If we win, we’ll be more inconvenient.  An oni, dead headmasters…” Lucy murmured.  “She just swore to him.  A lifetime of her serving him if Charles tries anything directly against him.  A Fae in full bloom, a supply of glamour.”

“You heard?”

Lucy nodded.

Musser opened his mouth.

Avery didn’t need the translation from Lucy.  She could see Zed react.

“He said yes.  He’s not afraid of Charles, furs or no furs.”

“Careful!” Avery shouted.

Musser’s six familiars descended from the rooftop.

Avery scrambled back, looked for Lis, and saw her at the far end of the parking lot.  Wearing the appearance of Ken.  She moved slowly, hand at her side.

A head-on fight against Musser’s group was bad enough, but fences, walls appearing out of nowhere, and the cover of the scarce few cars on the lot slipping aside made it harder.

Avery hurried, circling around-

Lis raised a wall between herself and Avery.

“You’ll have to go now, Charles,” Maricica said.  “Trust.”

Charles snorted, barely audible.  “Trust?”

“You’re siding with Musser!?” Avery shouted.  She had to avoid the expanding shadows of Rabbit Killer as Matthew met it with the Doom.  She circled around behind Charles.  “Don’t you realize how that runs against every last thing you said!?”

“I am no stranger to compromise,” Charles said, trudging forward.  He glanced back over his shoulder at her.  “What else can I do?  I’ll fix it later.”

“On the backs of people you’ve hurt!  Off the Choir!” Avery charged at him.  “Brie!  Us!”

A wall rose up out of the ground.

She started to circle around, saw a glow, and used the wall for cover as a bright beam erupted from Musser’s familiar with the glowing hair.  Goblins scattered, some with hair set afire, others badly burned.

Glad Chloe and Nibble are fighting elsewhere.

Freak and Squeak were tearing through things.  Tashlit faced the woman with black hair and ivory skin, both of them with hands raised.  The woman flinched as Verona pelted her with flaming spell cards.  Tashlit rushed in, grabbing the woman by the wrists.

Until the raincoat-wrapped quartet of others tackled her, cutting with a scalpel.

Charles was advancing on the door.

Maricica moved with agility over and through the crowd.  A dash of glamour, maybe a curse- it was hard to tell what she was doing, except that she helped sway certain fights in her own group’s favor.

Avery circled around further, looking for an angle.  Maricica glanced at her.

If she circled around enough, maybe she could go after Lis.

Lucy, spear in her hands, advanced on the Faerie.  She hesitated as Musser stepped off the roof and landed on his feet, about twenty feet away.

“Careful!” Avery called out.

“I know!” Lucy retorted.  She surveyed the situation, then reversed direction, moving toward Charles.  She nearly tripped over a shift in the footing as Lis worked.

Avery stomped her foot three times, then leaped high, up toward trees.

The trees moved, but not so fast that Avery couldn’t grab a fistful of foliage, get a foot onto a branch, and reorient.

She saw Lis, surrounded by walls, but there was no roof.

She hurled cards down.  A flood of water, ice-

The rainclouds that had been spitting down water around Kennet released the rain they’d been holding back.  Freezing rain.

Avery leaped from branch to the top of one of the walls Lis had surrounded herself with.

“I can keep going.”

“I surrender,” Lis replied.

“Where is Brie?”

“Safe and asleep.  Maricica will use her.”

“Swear.  The surrender.  You can’t go back-”

“I swear, for tonight, I’m done.  I’ll lower all obstructions, I won’t interfere further.  I’ve played my part.  I-”

“No tricks!  No lowering a wall that’s keeping some monster away!”

“No tricks.  I’m done, I play no further part, even by inaction,” Lis replied.  “I’m nearly spent anyway.”

“Do it!” Avery spat out the words.

The wall she was crouched on dropped out of existence, disappearing into pavement.  Fences fell away, barriers fell.

Avery hopped the last few feet to the ground, and broke into a run.

The few moments of being up against the worst of Lis and Musser’s group had added up.  An awful lot of their side were down and out, or tied up in ongoing fights.  Matthew’s Doom smashed Rabbit Killer up against the wall, hard enough that Rabbit Killer didn’t get back to his feet after, but the trenchcoat Other had left Tashlit lying on the ground and now went after Matthew.  The Doom didn’t sweep back in to defend him.

Musser advanced on goblins, and goblins retreated.  Toadswallow hurled a trick, and Musser smacked it out of the air with a gesture.

The Elemental Other was creating radiant fires that forced Squeak and Freak back and out of the way.

All with the clear intention of clearing a path for Charles.

“You three,” Maricica said.

The Faerie was atop the roof, in the position Musser had occupied a minute or two ago.  Her voice carried.

“Together, you’re a threat.  I dare say you win,” Maricica declared.  She smiled.

“Get bent!” Verona shouted.

“You’re the nicest!” Snowdrop called up.

“But you’re not together, are you?” Maricica asked.

She extended wings, and lunged into the air, in Lucy’s direction.

“You’ve washed off your glamour, but your body remembers the shapes it has held,” Maricica said.  “Washing it off only removes the dust, and the dust is something I can provide.”

She changed direction abruptly in the air, grazing the building.

Avery drew closer to Charles, but she could see Verona as Maricica descended on her.

Verona pulled a bottle from her bag and cast the bag aside.

Maricica came down out of the sky in a cloud of dust.  Verona opened the bottle, and the dust flowed into the container.

Maricica laughed, turning in Lucy’s direction.  She landed, her back to Verona, motioning-

The glamour in the bottle moved.  Verona capped it.

And the very end of Maricica’s long wing, which had been grazing the roof, came away.

The dust Maricica had put on the roof’s edge before taking off came down in a cascade.  Directly atop Verona.

“Lucy,” Maricica said.

Lucy held her ground, weapon ready.

The dust cleared.  Verona was a cat.  Her spell cards and items were scattered to the wind around her.

“A final gift for you.  I break the pattern of threes and threes,” Maricica told Lucy.

“Don’t want it.”

Maricica held her hand out.

Behind Maricica, Avery could see, the Beautiful Man emerged from the trees.

“They’re very pretty,” Maricica purred.

“Fuck off!” Lucy shouted, head turning to look at the Beautiful Man and back to Maricica.

“She would want you to have them.”

Maricica dropped them.  They glittered gold, dancing on the bloody parking lot like a pair of dice.

Avery was too far to see it clearly.  She had to focus her eyes, use Snowdrop’s Sight to make out details beneath the golden shapes.

Earrings.  Square, large.  With torn earlobes attached, black skin, ragged crimson edges.

Lucy charged, as Maricica laughed, voice high and carrying.

Verona was nosing into her bag.  She popped open a lid of a container.

I have to trust them to handle these things, Avery thought, turning on her heel.  Going after Charles, who was walking the remaining distance to the door.  She pulled out the Ugly Stick.

Verona got into the jar of her own hair, using it to break free of the shape she was wearing.

“Lucy!” Verona hollered.  “She broke into your mom’s room, remember!?  When she visited!?  It’s a trick!”

Lucy slowed, eyes widening-

A little too short sighted, too tired, too angry, one step taken in too deep.  Musser stepped in, disarming her.  Maricica took flight.

Avery pushed herself, legs hurting as she ran, desperate now, leaping as she grabbed onto the side of Charles’ head, getting a fistful of ear and hair.  Sideways momentum to pull him off balance- tear his ear off if she had to.

Maricica slid a hand into the gap between the base of Avery’s palm and Charles’ head.  Fingers slithered between Avery’s, almost like oil in how easily they flowed, moved, and made her grip slip away.

Maricica pushed on Avery’s hand while Avery was still in the air, making her body turn slightly.  Avery landed on both feet, but had to turn a partial circle.

Maricica swept her way to her own landing, wings following.  They were dizzying, curtains sweeping around Avery, blocking off her view of the everything else..

“Got some nasty trick for me too?” Avery asked.  “Worst fear?  Secret desire?  Gonna pull back those wings and have someone ready to blindside me?”

“I don’t have to do anything, Avery,” Maricica told her.  “You’ve done it yourself.  Strayed too far from your friends.  You’ve already said goodbye in your heart, haven’t you?  you’ve left yourself a few steps too far away-”

Avery’s leg jittered, heel hitting the ground at least three times.  She leaped, a flying knee straight for Maricica’s face.  The Faerie’s wings moved, pushing her entire body to one side, and she easily avoided it.  She touched Avery’s side.

Avery stumbled as she landed, scrambled to find her feet.

Charles walked the final few steps to the door.

She reached for him, worried Maricica would act again.  But as she glanced back, Maricica was gone.

His hand fell on the door.  Verona, a few steps away, had peeled a spell card off the wet ground.

He pulled, and light from within formed a beam, a bar, across the pavement.

Avery’s reaching hand hit it like she might hit a glass wall.

The Alabaster Doe stood in the doorway.  Verona’s hand with the card in it pressed against the other side of that barrier of light.  A distance away, Lucy kicked at the air, breathless, while Musser held her arms from behind.  Rain soaked them.

“Charles Abrams.”

“Do I finally get anything but rejection from you, now?” he asked.

“There is no shelter for you here.  No quest, no passage, no currency.”

“No, of course not.”

“But you’ll have your chance and your contest.”

“As is my due.”

“As is anyone’s.”

He walked inside, as she held the door.

The door closed behind him, a metal door meant for all weather, allowing for a heavy sound.  That slice of light and impenetrable barrier became bloody darkness again.

Avery sank to her knees.

“You idiot!  You absolute idiot!” Lucy swore.  “You don’t know what you’ve done, Musser!”

“I know full well.”

“Guys,” Zed said.

They stopped, looking up.

Then they followed his gaze.

At the far end of the parking lot, Maricica stood with a limp Brie standing askew, leaning into one of the Faerie’s arms.

“Coming down,” Zed said.

Avery didn’t wait for Zed.  She hurried.  Musser let Lucy go, and Verona raced over, carrying her bag.  A few stray spell cards had fallen across the bag and her, and fell free as she ran.

“She’s a little drained,” Maricica said.  “But I don’t imagine that’s her foremost concern.”

Avery didn’t respond.  Neither did Lucy or Verona.

Avery looked back, and saw Zed.  Zed hurried, followed by Raquel.  Musser walked but didn’t hurry, didn’t run.  His attention was more on fights that had petered out.  He motioned for his Familiars to stand down and step back.  Only Rabbit Killer and the woman with the ivory skin had been taken out.  The rest of his familiars looked like they were in decent shape.

“Brie,” Zed said.

“Zed,” Brie whispered back.

“Where was she?” Lucy asked.

“With me the entire time, hidden in a fold of my wing, camouflaged in the dust.  I may be unclothed, but I do have need for a means of putting things away,” Maricica said.  “I loathe crude weapons, but sometimes I need to put things down, as well.”

She looked at Brie as she said it.

Brie tensed, finding the strength to fight, but she found no purchase- no arm to firmly grip, only a sheet of wing that fingers grazed, stirring up dust.

Blood ran from a cut on Brie’s palm to a chalice held near the elbow, a match for the goblet Lis had had.

“Let her go,” Zed said.  “She can’t take much more of that.”

“I think you imagine me more kind and merciful than I am.”

“You’re a creature of Dark Fall,” Zed said.  He swallowed hard.  The tension was clear, and his focus was more on Brie than Maricica.  “I know it’s a court that likes trade.”

“I don’t believe you have much I desire.  On the other hand, killing her could easily punctuate tonight as a loss for your side.”

“Maricica,” Lucy said.  “By the deals made, and the oaths sworn, you promised us long and full lives.  Take a good and honest friend from us and you’ll be betraying that oath.”

“That’s a very open-ended interpretation,” Maricica replied.  “I might even call a Judge to order, if you were to press me on it.  I do think we’d have to wait until they were done with their other business.”

“You promised and I’ll hold you to that promise.  Not for after.  For now.  Screw the judges,” Lucy spat the words, voice hard.  “I’d ask the universe to judge you.”

“We’d ask,” Avery said.

“Yeah,” Verona added.  “Haven’t you gotten all the use from her you need?  You got the power she has in her through the blood.”

“I did.  Some.  I could drain her further, keep what I took.”

“Or you could keep your oaths,” Lucy retorted.  She spoke like she was fighting to hold back from shouting and screaming.  “Do you really want to try it?  Do you want to push us- me to the point of being unreasonable?”

“If you did, that’d be denying us a full and rich life and all that jazz, too,” Verona added.

“And how do I know you won’t attack me the moment she’s not in my grasp?  Would you swear?”

Lucy barked out a laugh.

“That’s suggestive of your intent,” the Faerie said.  “It’s clear you want to harm me.”

“You fucking think?” Lucy asked.  “But I won’t if you leave her alone.”

Maricica smiled.

Avery put a hand out to the side, and she motioned the others to back up a bit.  Lucy hesitated, tense, before acceding.

They gave Maricica about ten or fifteen feet of space.

And Maricica released Brie.  It was Zed who hurried forward to catch her before she could lose balance and fall.

Zed hugged her, the two of them sagging to the ground.  Zed checked she was alert, and she let her head rest against his shoulder.  He twisted his head around to kiss her forehead.

“Good.  Now get the fuck out of our lives,” Lucy told Maricica.

“Very well,” Maricica said, backing off.  She swept wings around herself until she was wrapped in them, upper corners turned away, as if she was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress.  She smiled.  “It was amusing.”

“Screw off,” Avery told her.

“I thought you might chase that little piece of glass Guilherme gave you.  A compass for glamour.  But you went the opposite way, didn’t you?  Telling a completely different story.”

“I’m so sick of you talking,” Verona said.

“You’ll be done with it soon.  Had you gone that way, you’d have found Charles, kneeling in dirt, digging.  You could even have brought him into custody.  Of course, Lis and I would be busy in the meantime, and wherever you took Charles, you’d have found a snare waiting.  It’d be best to tease you, giving you a chance to talk to him, to have confidence shaken.”

“I don’t think I care,” Lucy said.  “Just go?”

“Do you know what he might have dug up?  I know you stopped to check it was buried, at two separate times.”

“The doll,” Verona said.

“The doll,” Maricica confirmed.

“What doll?” Raquel asked.

“That held the curse for the Choir,” Verona said, looking up and over.  “Why?”

“Claim,” Maricica answered.  “Let me go.  I’ll leave you to wait for the contest to finish.”

“What did you do?”

“And, as I go… my apologies, Brie.  I reinforced those bindings with glamour, to keep you from surrounding me with hungry waifs…”

Maricica moved one arm, violently.  Imperceptible threads glinted in the light.  They pulled, and they pulled at Brie’s skin.  They pulled away glamour, and they pulled away ink.

Stripping away the tattoos.

Lucy lunged.  Avery followed.  Lucy’s hand met with the threads that had pulled taut, a web to block her reaching hand.  Avery ducked around, circling- but Maricica was already moving.  Flying.

The air filled with the sound of children singing.

“Charles must have the doll,” Avery whispered.  “Claim over the Choir?”

“Probably.  Tricks and stuff tied into it?” Verona asked.

“He has the knowledge, he would only need the tool and power,” Musser said.  “He’s not an utter fool after all.”

Brie reached up with a hand.  Individual beads of blood welled where the tattoo had been stripped from skin.  She pawed weakly at her shirt collar.

The sound of children singing swelled.  Avery could see waifs now.

“What are you doing?” Zed asked.

Brie pulled a necklace free.  A beaded chain necklace, like the ones John had kept the dog collars on.

With a ring on the end.

“It’s claim,” Brie whispered.  “More claim than the doll, maybe.”

Avery looked up at Maricica’s disappearing silhouette in the red night sky.

Brie pushed the necklace into Avery’s hand.

“Get it to John.”

Avery turned, then broke into a jog.  Running.  Before John got locked into some circumstance where he couldn’t answer the door.  Before something happened.  Before Charles brought the full weight of the Choir to bear.

She hurried.  Past a wounded Freak and Squeak.  Past an exhausted Nibble and Chloe, who slumped against a tree, in one another’s arms.   Past Tashlit, who was healing.  Past Matthew, past Musser’s Familiars.  A wounded and bloody Guilherme sat near the trees at the corner of the building, watching but not participating.

Past waifs, who gathered in growing number, their voices rising to crescendo.

She reached the doors.  The arena where this had all started.

“Don’t enter!” Toadswallow called out.  “You’ll be locked in!”

She hesitated, then hauled the door open.  “John!”

John was there with the soldiers all around him.  Like Lucy had said.

“Take this, use it  Find a way, before Charles takes the Choir!”

He hurried over.

The Alabaster watched them.  Charles watched.

She reached forward, stopping short of putting a hand past the doorway, in case that might count as entering.  Instead, she pulled it back, ready to throw it underhand.

And it was snatched from her hand.

She turned, aghast- no people, she’d been careful enough.  A shadow from Rabbit Killer?

She spotted it, flying with the chain and ring dangling.

Weaving into trees and away from the Arena.  A ephemeral songbird, carrying a ring bearing the same as an inscription on the inside.

She let the door fall closed.

She wrapped herself in glamour, and she threw down the last coin.  “A faster course!”

To become a bird.  To chase.  To get that ring back.

She flew after it, a raptor, a hawk, a wolf of the skies.

She did not find it.

The singing of the Choir reached its loudest.  Audible even as she was a ten minute flight from the Arena.

The singing stopped entirely, and she had to take a moment to gather her thoughts enough and realize why.

The Choir had gone inside.

Next Chapter