Playing a Part – 15.1
Author: Wildbow

Playing a Part – 15.1 | Pale

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“There’s more bags in the front seat,” her dad said, as he unlocked the door and adjusted the tab so it would stay open.

“I know,” Verona replied.  “I put them there.”

“Let’s get unloaded fast, I want to be done before-” her dad stopped mid-sentence.

The car pulled into the driveway behind them.  David, sitting behind the wheel, gave them a little wave, but didn’t get out, instead sorting out papers.  Child support stuff.

“Unload, let’s go,” her dad said, looming beside her.

Verona picked the bag she’d bring in, lifted, adjusted one little loop of plastic that she hadn’t managed to grab, and then headed inside, through the side door and up the last three basement steps to the kitchen.

Her dad followed her in, carrying the stupid 12-pack of plastic water bottles, which came on a little cardboard tray with a lip, the entire thing shrink wrapped in more plastic.

“We have a bunch of reusable water bottles you can refill from the tap,” Verona said, not for the first time.

“This is more convenient,” he said, before heading back outside.

She moved snacks to one cabinet, and cracked open some little boxes.  She sorted out   Sesame crackers, pepperoni sticks, cheese sticks- she stashed them in her bag.

A shadow at the doorway made her head turn.  David, watching.  He was a bit pear shaped which was unusual for a guy, like he’d put on weight but it sat low on his body.  He had a receding hairline, gray at his temples, and blond-orange scruff on his cheeks and chin.  He wore a sweater with a work shirt beneath and khaki pants.

Leaving her feeling weirdly like her hand was in the cookie jar.

“Snack supply,” she said.  She held up pepperoni and cheese.  “Want some?”

“No thanks,” David replied.

She cracked open some of the cardboard boxes with the little paper packets of drink mix, then frowned, checking the box front.

“There’s still more bags in the car,” Verona’s dad said, as he entered, carrying two.  “Would you please get them, Verona?”

“You got the sugary peach punch drink mix again,” she told him.  “I like the unsweetened lemonade and unsweetened iced tea mixes.  The peach one makes it feel like even the wisdom teeth that haven’t grown in yet are hurting.”

“They didn’t have the unsweetened ones.”

“In what world are the people in this town buying out the unsweetened stuff before the other stuff?” she asked.

“Maybe they have the same tastes as you.  I don’t know, Verona.”

“I see a lot of people buying like, cases and cases of pop.  You’d think they’d run out of the sugary one first.”

“I don’t know, Verona,” her dad said, again.  “Maybe you’re one of only three people in Kennet who like those, and they only stock up once a blue moon.”

“Sometimes there’s more of the kind I like toward the back of the shelf.  They just arrange it funny.  Maybe if you gave me money I could just buy the stuff I like?” she asked, eyes wide.  “Because I’m not going to drink this.  Are you going to drink this?”

“No.  Look- please put that down, and come get more bags,” her dad said.

She obliged, putting stuff down and pushing the bag of snacks to the back of the counter.  There wasn’t as much counter space because her dad bought a lot of kitchen gadgets and stuff that never got a lot of use, plus containers, wires, and other little things.

She headed outside.

“Sorry about the chaos, David, you caught us a little off guard.  Unless that was your intention?”

“No.  It’s really not a problem, Mr. Hayward.  I don’t mind seeing families in their usual routine, but it wasn’t my intention to disrupt that routine.  I had some unavoidable delays on my way in, had to stop at a motel.”

“The highway business?”

“Work stuff from the top and the highway business.”

“You didn’t stop at the one downtown, did you?” Verona asked.

“Okay, good, because that place is sketchy,” she said.  She got more bags, then ducked between the two men to return to the house.

“I will keep that in mind,” David said.  “How was your day?”

“Dull.  Tests.  Talked with friends.  Tried to get my friend Melissa to let me come over for lunch but she said no.  We had a screwed up school system at first because a bunch of people bailed all at once around the time the highway went in.  A full afternoon of math and personal finance.  They changed that up and now I’ve at least got art.  And an art teacher who doesn’t like art.”

“She’s just told you more about school and her life in general than she’s shared with me since your last visit,” her dad said.

“Your art teacher doesn’t like art?” David asked.

Verona went back inside, her dad and David following.  She put bags on the counter.  “He’s not an art teacher, doesn’t have much experience.  He’s admitted he’s just doing these random lesson plans he gets online.”

“Frustrating?  I remember you’re an artist.”

“Frustrating.  Not sure I’m an artist.  Like, it’s not a label I wear or put in my top five things to describe myself.  My mom took me to go visit an artist friend of hers, this summer.  That was… sorta cool, I guess.  I got the feeling the artist friend would’ve put ‘artist’ at the top of her personal labels.”

“Your mom, huh?” her dad asked, his back to Verona as he unloaded vegetables.

“What are your labels, David?” she asked.

“Sounds like a question I’d put to people I’m working with,” he said.  “Turning the tables on me?”

“Sure.  Just wondering.”

“Father.  Husband.  Pilot.  Gardener.  Tired.”

“Pilot, huh?”

“It’s a hobby, when I have the time.  Gardening too.  I would’ve thought you’d point out the gardening part of that list.”

“Pshh, why?  Because you’re a guy?  Nah, that’s cool.  Father and husband is a bit boring though.”

“I promise you it’s the furthest thing from boring.  I love being both of those things.”

“There are still more bags in the car, if you can get to them at the next opportunity,” her dad said.

“But being a father is, like, there’s more to it, right?  Very obviously, in your line of work, you know there’s a lot more to being a good father than just being ‘the father’, right?” Verona asked.

“Well, yeah.  And being a husband.”

Verona shrugged one shoulder.  She was wearing a striped sweater with a collar wide enough it could slip off one shoulder, and she’d paired it with a lacy bra strap on full display.  It slipped more and she adjusted, loose sleeves long enough only fingertips extended out.  “I guess.  Lots of types.  So what type are you?  Fun dad, responsible dad, activity dad?”

“Philospher dad, or overthinks-things dad, probably.”

“I like that,” Verona said.  “I’m surprised your job isn’t anywhere on the list.”

“Maybe if you blend in the dad part and the tired part with the gardening part you start to hit the right notes.  What about you, Mr. Hayward?” David asked.

“Top five labels to describe yourself?”

“Overworked server management tech, tired dad, perpetual worrier… I don’t know.  Those other things don’t leave much time for much else.  Verona, could you please get more bags?  I don’t want to leave the car sitting there with doors open.”

“Actually, Mr. Hayward, if you could come with me?  I want to have a two minute conversation with you alone.”

“I’ll bring the rest of the bags in, I guess.  Verona, please put the perishables away?  Please.”

She raised her eyebrows at him in response, while he walked over to the basement steps and side door of the house, maintaining eye contact for a second longer than necessary.

She thought about using a spell card to listen in, but decided not to, for much the same reason she’d thought about using the fetch to skip this entire thing and free more of her afternoon.  From a lunch hour spent half spent talking to Jeremy and half spent watching Lucy get along with Mia to math, blah, then an artless art class, semi-blah, and then getting picked up by her dad, who’d just gone grocery shopping, for this.  Blah.

She unloaded the milk and vegetables- neither her nor her dad were especially big on fruit.  On seeing a spatula, wooden spoons, and some other stuff in one grocery bag, she went to put it away in a drawer, then on impulse, scooped up everything in the drawer, carried it across the kitchen, took the plastic insert with the slots for silverware out of the drawer by the stove, and carried it over to the one she’d just emptied.  Swapping the contents.

That done, she resumed sorting out the snack situation, putting anything that could get crushed in an old hard-back pencil case, and settling it in the bottom of her bag, dropping in more of the stuff toward the bottom- she rinsed out her water bottles, then went searching in the cabinet by the fridge for her flavor packets.  She found an old box, pushed beneath a bag of rice, and dumped it out on the counter.  One of the packets had a tear in it and had leaked everywhere, the contents hardening from ambient moisture, but she had three more little things she could empty into her water to make it a little more tasty than regular water.

She kept one bottle for practice purposes and emergency water, if she was just that thirsty.  Washing off glamour, rinsing shrines, diluting alchemy if that alchemy didn’t have any oils in it.  She’d learned that the hard way.

She paused to rub at her palm, as her hand twinged like it wanted to cramp but couldn’t quite get there.  Circular motions, around the palm.  She uncapped her second water bottle, which was more for drinking, and stowed three of the drink packets in the cap.

David and her dad re-entered, David carrying some paper towels, her dad carrying the rest of the groceries.

Again, that feeling of having her hand in the cookie jar.  Why?

“Whatcha hiding?” David asked.

“Not hiding.  See?  Main water bottle has a screw-in lid, and then there’s the cap?  I use the cap to keep the packets here.  I can empty them in one by one over the course of the day.  All out of the iced tea though.”

“We’ll keep an eye out,” her dad said.

She nodded.

He put groceries on the counter, then sighed as he moved a bag, dug out some zucchini, and glanced pointedly at her as he went to put it away.

She rubbed at her hand again, feeling that twinge.

“How’s the hand?” he asked.

“Hurts sometimes.”

“Fill me in?” David asked.

“Hurt my hand doing something probably pointless, my own fault,” Verona said.  “Dad took me to the hospital to get it looked at, when I showed him in the morning.  Then again when it got bad, cramped, I guess, kind of?  First day of school.”

She showed David the scar.

“She doesn’t want to take the painkillers,” her dad said.  “I really don’t like the fact she’s in pain and doing nothing about it.”

“It’s going to be a thing for a while, right?  Possibly the rest of my life?”

“Let’s hope it mends,” her dad said.

It was weird, because this was one of those times where it felt like he actually was her dad.  He cared, he paid attention, he supported her, he’d done what he had to do.  Hadn’t really made it about himself, some grumbling about work in the waiting area of the ER aside, hadn’t been a problem.

She felt obligated to say, “Dad was cool, helping me out.  Stepped up.”

“I step up a little bit more than you give me credit for,” her dad said.

Right, well, that ruined that.

“What were you talking about outside?” she asked David.

“Your dad’s goals and plans, and about timelines,” David said.  “Part of my job is making sure that all the individual moving pieces are communicating with one another.  So if your dad takes a class I make sure the teacher is consulting with other people your dad is talking to, through all of this.”

“Like therapists and junk?”

“Therapists, me, yeah.”

Verona glanced at her dad.  He looked sort of annoyed.

“Well, our goal, as a family, is we’ll get sorted with groceries and start on dinner.  We tend to eat early, I’ve mentioned before.  If we eat past five thirty then I get heartburn in the evenings.  GERD.  And Verona likes to go out in the evenings anyway.  With a curfew she’s a bit inconsistent with following, hm?”

“Guilty as charged,” Verona replied.

“What do you do?” David asked.

“Uhh?  Are you asking my dad how he handles it or are you asking what I do?”

“Why not both?”

“Erhh… Sometimes hang with my friend Jeremy, sometimes with Lucy.  Sometimes I fling myself into the dark world of killers, gang leaders, druggies, mad high school vice principals, creepy people who paint occult signs on walls and claim to tell the future, blah blah blah, wield dark and strange magic to keep them in line.  Sometimes I go say hi to Melissa.  She has to go for walks for physio, so I walk with her.  Mostly I hang with her because she has a cat.”

“Quite an imagination,” David said.

“You have no idea,” her dad added.

“Imagination?  Are you talking about the cat thing?  Cats don’t require much imagination.  They mainly seem to require one-sided love, and they maybe grace you with some affection in return.  Affection or dead things.  Sir caught a lizard.  I didn’t even know we really had lizards here.”

“How do you handle the curfew breaking, Brett?”

“Grounding.  Password on the internet.  She’s wandered off once while grounded, though, so…”

Screwed up the connection breaker after a long night, Verona thought.

Her dad went on, “I at least console myself with the fact that if she won’t take the pain meds, she’s not off trying heroin.”

Verona snorted.  “Uh, the main drug of choice here is meth, sorry.  And most of the big opiate addicts here have moved on to fentanyl, I think.”

“I’m taking that parenting class,” her dad said.  “And they go on about how kids need this nutrition or that sort of listening stuff…”

“Active listening?” David asked.

“But I bring up this stuff and ask how to handle it and half the time all I get is a blank stare, or a stock answer when I have a very non-stock kid.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that in a bad way, necessarily-”

“I am non-stock,” Verona commented.

“Can you cut some carrots?  Peel or scrub ’em, cut them into dimes.”

Verona sighed and went to get carrots.  Her dad mimed her sigh.

“Avery’s family is super weird about scrubbing fruits and veg, you know?  Her mom said she can’t help but worry that stuff gets picked by laborers who don’t exactly get a porta-potty, or they get one and they have quotas so they just go in the field or something, and they don’t have sinks to wash their hands after, so wash those fruits and veg, y’know?”

“I think we’re fine doing things the way we do them.  Peel or scrub,” her dad said.

Verona set the carrots on the counter and went looking for a knife.

“Where is the cutlery?” her dad asked, as he dug into a drawer of spatulas.

“In the drawer closest to the dining room?  Spatulas in the drawer closest to the oven?”

Her dad frowned at her.

“You don’t know your own kitchen?”

“Ha ha.  Are you staying for dinner, David?” her dad asked.

“I- no.  Not usually.  Raises questions about bribes and things.  I usually only stay when there are concerns specific to mealtimes.”

“We usually just take our stuff to our rooms,” Verona commented, as she started chopping.  “Super easy, can do our own things.”

“I thought we’d eat at the dining room table tonight, actually,” her dad said.

Verona rolled her eyes.

She felt a twinge in her hand and dropped the knife, letting it clatter, and rubbed at her palm.

“Everything okay?” David asked.

“It’s a thing,” Verona replied.

“If you’d take the pain meds-” her dad started.

“Scary,” She told her dad.

He sighed.

She sighed back.

“What’s the status on that?” David asked.  “Is there a treatment plan?  Did the doctor say what to expect?”

“The second doctor we talked to gave us a checklist of things to look for, inflammation, numbness, but mostly we’re waiting to see if it gets better, gets worse, or remains stable,” her dad said.  He cut up some beef.  “There’s a possibility of surgery further down the road if it stabilizes at an unbearable level or gets worse.”

“If it gets worse in a way surgery might help with,” Verona noted.

“Yeah.  Papers are on the fridge,” her dad said.  “Medication schedule, list of things to watch for, doctor’s numbers.”

Only ever if I get physically hurt, Verona thought.  It’s like it’s the only thing tangible enough.  Other kinds of hurt don’t count.

Her father had been standing about a foot and a half to the left of where he stood right now when he’d smashed her bag.  Right here.  Not all that long ago.

She finished rubbing her hand, set it flat on the counter, pressing down, as if she could straighten it out or shape its growth that way, then cut carrots with the knife alone.

When her dad had her cut onions, she resumed using her hand, because anything else just slipped away from her.

Things went on in that vein for another twenty minutes.  Chatter, light stuff.  Dinner prep.  Questions about school.

“Well,” David said.  “If there’s nothing else, I think things seem okay here.”

“There’s something,” Verona said, looking up.

Her dad frowned slightly.

“Okay?” David asked.

“Avery’s mom- that’s my friend’s mom, they’re over in Thunder Bay now, they invited my mom over and they asked if I wanted to come by.  Maybe stay for a weekend sleepover, or do a night with Ave and a night with mom.  I wasn’t sure about custody stuff, or plans, or whatever, but I thought it’d be good to bring it up here.”

“You could have brought that up earlier,” her dad said.

Verona shrugged, thinking, I brought it up now because I knew you’d hate it.  “Bringing it up now.”

David looked at her dad, an interested look on his face.  Her dad frowned more, fussed more with the pot on the stove, and didn’t respond.

“Is there any technical reason why we wouldn’t be able to do it?  Any law against it?” Verona asked.

“No technical reason,” David said.  “Mr. Hayward?”

“Let me know the time and date in advance,” her dad said, terse.  “Will she be coming to pick you up?”

“Uhhh, will work that out.”

“We’ll figure it out, yeah,” her dad said.  “It’s nice for her that she gets to be the fun parent, introducing you to artists-”

“Brett,” David said.  “Y-”

“At least she’s interested in and supporting my art, she’s made an impact in a positive way,” Verona said.  “Biggest impact you made was swiping all my art off my art shelf in a freaky manbaby tantrum.”

Both of them turned to look at her, as if both her dad and David were a little shocked at how audacious she was being.

“I’m-” her dad started, as David asked, “You’re talking-?”

Both stopped.

Verona stayed where she was, eyes wide, face blank.

David tried again, “You’re talking about something that happened-”

“While back.  Before,” Verona replied.

“I’m sorry,” her dad said.  “About that.  That’s- it didn’t quite happen like you describe it.  But I’m sorry it happened.  I’d like to think I’m progressing and moving on from that low point in my life.  I’d also like to get a little bit more respect than you used in your tone just now, please.”

“But what’s to respect?  You did act like a giant baby, you destroyed my stuff, you gave me the silent treatment after, you were snide.  Would you respect someone who acted like that?” Verona asked.

“It didn’t happen like you’re painting it.”

“Lucy can and has backed this up.  She remembers the aftermath.  Her mom remembers.”

“Lucy’s your friend and would say a lot of things if she thought it’d help you, and her mom is her mom and would say or do a lot of things if she thought it would help Lucy.  I know from experience a parent is willing to go to great lengths for their kid.  I’ve spent years and years, Verona, going to great lengths for you.”

Verona snorted.

David raised a hand, stepping not quite between them, but still interjecting.  “Let’s wind this back.  I don’t think it’s productive.”

“I’m being honest and checking it’s really okay if I go to my mom’s.”

Her dad replied with very controlled words, “I don’t think I can drive you with the work I do on the weekends, but if you can find your own way there or if she’s willing to travel here and back with the highway construction, that should be fine.  I want you to have a relationship with her.”

“Cool stuff.  Do we have to formalize anything custody-wise?” she asked David.  “In case this falls through or whatever?”

“Informal visits that are agreeable for both parents don’t need CAS’s involvement.”

“Cool, just making sure,” Verona said.

“Is it agreeable for both parents?” David asked.

“Sure,” Verona’s dad said, terse.

“I was just about to get ready to go, but leaving on this note feels ominous.  Verona, if I could have a word with you?  And another word with you Brett, after?”

“I’m at your disposal,” her dad said.

“Want to talk outside?  Or in your room?”

“Outside’s good,” Verona said.

They walked out to the driveway.  It was getting to the tail end of afternoon, the start of evening.  The leaves were touched with the colors of fall, mingling reds with greens.

David exhaled.

Verona leaned against her dad’s car, rubbing at the palm of her ‘claw’.

“What’s up?” Verona asked.

David glanced in the direction of the side door and the kitchen.  “Do you think he’s making an effort?”

“Sure.  Not all in the right areas, sorta have to wonder if it even counts if he’s not really willing to accept what happened like it really happened.  But I’m not sure that’s fixable like this.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I mean, I don’t think it’s like, my dad gets therapy, therapist says something pithy, and my dad changes his whole outlook, y’know?”

“People can surprise you.”

“I think it’s like… deeper.  If he edits memories or just doesn’t think about stuff, how does it get fixed?  Does it come up in therapy?”

“Part of my job is adjusting the safety and wellness plan.  Perhaps a joint counseling session?  If you want to bring up this sort of thing, you could bring it up there, hash it out.”

“Mmmmm… bleugh.  That sounds like a chore.”

“Bringing it up here and- would I be accurate if I guessed you were pushing his buttons?”

Verona nodded.  “But you’re here so I can.”

“I’m leaving, and you and I both have to think hard about what happens when I go.”

“If you’re only seeing things how they are when we’re both playing super nice, then are you really seeing things?” Verona asked.

David sighed.

“Why is everyone always sighing at me these days?”

“I think… let me think of how to phrase this.  If your dad is putting in an effort, not antagonizing things might help make it easier for that effort to continue.  If you have concerns that the effort is hollow…?”

“Not hollow, just, like, can’t fix stuff if you don’t recognize it’s broken?”

“Maybe we can work out a plan.”

“Okay,” she said.

“It might be best to both try and play at being super nice, as you phrased it, until maybe you accidentally slip into being nice to each other without the play-acting part of it.”

“But what he’s doing is like… he pretends stuff didn’t happen, or just dismisses it, or reinvents it, or makes me out to be the bad guy in his memories.  If I don’t call that out, it’ll just happen.”

“I’ll talk to some people and see if we can’t work out a plan on that.  But for right now… what do you think happens when I leave?  What’s your expectation?”

“Betting he’ll get pissy, then we avoid each other, then he doesn’t mention it for a long time, and he’ll bring it up while yelling at me, like, a month and two months, and a year from now, letting me know it’s all been bottled up and he’s been holding onto it.”

“Right.  Again, I’ll talk to some people about a plan.  But again, do you think you’re safe?”

“He hasn’t touched me yet.  I feel like… like he won’t hurt me directly for the same reason he cared a lot about my hand,” Verona told David.  “Like actually hurting me and cuts and bruises are so real he can’t delude himself.  My stuff, though, dunno.  Depends on if he’s actually getting better or working on stuff.”

“Well, what can we do about that?” David asked, but he sounded like it was more rhetorical than a question he was aiming at her.  He pulled out his phone.  “I’m going to call after I leave.  I want to talk to you and I want to talk to your dad.  Probably more than once.”

“Checking he’s not trashing my room?”

“I feel obligated to ask-”

“No, I don’t think he actually will trash my room.”

David sighed.

Verona shrugged, then adjusted her sweater where it was slipping too far off her shoulder.

“I’ll go talk to your dad.  Give us a minute?”

“Sure.”

He went inside again, and Verona followed him, before going up, taking her bag up to her room.

She got things sorted out, adjusting snacks, spellbooks, stacks of spell cards with elastic bands around them, and handled magic items, including the rasp.

Four of the eco-friendly bottles were in use, marked with painter’s tape she’d written on to label them for their specific alchemy.  She put those with her stuff, then dug inside her drawer and got some of the cigarettes Louise had given them.

She took her mask off the nail she’d put through the drywall, and held it, thinking of the others.

She couldn’t say anything out loud, couldn’t make any overt moves just yet.  But there was a strategy, and they’d meet again in their dreams in a few days, and Verona kind of couldn’t wait.

Like all the friendship and everything was concentrated into that tight, intense little bit of bonding time, planning, catching up, and everything else.

She set the mask down on top of her bag, checked her homework, but didn’t start it.  She’d have to do that later.  It was the one trick with the fetch.  The fetch could bring her notes and she was doing okay now.  A little less great on the recent test than she wanted, suggesting she needed to study up and that fetch notetaking alone wasn’t quite enough, but doing okay.  Homework was the thing she had to do on her own, though.  And apparently the fetch wasn’t super great at group activities.  Which was mostly fine when none of her classes involved much.

Mr. Kelsch had liked doing that stuff but the substitute social studies teacher mostly read out of the textbook and lesson plan.

She fired off a text to her mom: I think it’s cool.  Maybe next weekend?  Have to see what happens.

Then Lucy.  gonna go out on patrol after eating. shrines on my way back I think.

“Verona!” her dad called up.  “David’s leaving!”

Verona sat back.  She made sure to put a connection block on her stuff for now, and locked her door to be safe.

She went down the stairs.  Once she saw David in the front hallway, she sat down on the stairs, peering past the railing.

“I’ll give you a call a bit later, okay?” he asked.  “About that stuff we talked about.”

She nodded.

“I’ll see you guys again soon.  I’ll be in touch about the appointment, Brett.”

“Okay,” Verona’s dad said.

David glanced back at both of them, and Verona wondered if he was weighing if he really should leave, or if there was more to do.

Then he left.  The screen door closed behind him.  Verona’s dad stepped forward, pushing the front door closed after him, before leaning into the door and locking it.  Out of habit, because the door didn’t actually stay sealed closed if it wasn’t locked, and it was cold, and for much the same reason, the lock didn’t set right if the door wasn’t leaned into, she reminded herself.

David only knew this stuff on paper.  David handled the aftermath.  He saw glimpses around the edges.  Was it a good thing if he saw how real it was, felt the weight of being in this house?

She wasn’t sure exactly what it was she wanted.  She didn’t want this- this moment her dad turned around to look her in the eyes, clearly unhappy with her.  But she did want to be taken seriously when she said stuff.  She wanted her reality to be recognized, instead of being made out to be this thing that didn’t happen exactly like she was painting it.  As if she was exaggerating.

“Kitchen,” her dad said.

She got up off the stairs.

Contempt more than anything drove her as she walked into the kitchen.  My mom does want me.  My mom does love me.  She’s just odd in a different way than I’m odd.  I’m only here out of a sense of responsibility to Kennet and its Others.  You’re the shortest path to it.

Her dad took up residence by the stove, stirring the pot, scraping at the bottom so it wouldn’t burn. The brown goop bubbled, simmering.

The space he occupied was a half-step away from where he’d been when he’d smashed her bag.

She touched a configuration of sticks at her chest, hanging from a cord.  A break glass in case of emergencies sort of thing.

“Can you set the table?” he asked.  His back was to her.  He didn’t turn to look at her as he asked.

“Are we really eating at the table?”

The spatula clattered onto the glass top of the stove, flecks and clumps of thick stew spotting the black surface.

“Verona,” he said, gripping handle for the stove door and the edge of the counter that was still dinged from when he’d smashed her bag, his back still to her.

She rubbed a bit around her palm.

The pot burbled, one big bubble at the top visible just past her dad’s armpit, growing and popping in the same place over and over again, spitting up teeny-tiny flecks.

“Because I don’t want to,” she told him.

“Then finish dinner yourself,” he told her, standing straight.  He moved the spatula off the stove, then after faltering on where to stick it, tossed it a few feet into the sink.  He shot her an angry, hurt look.

“Okay,” she said.  “Want me to bring you any?”

“I’m not hungry,” he said.  “And you don’t like wasting food?  Put the rest away in the freezer.”

“Okay.”

He shook his head, then stomped off.

Up the stairs.

The door slammed.

Verona’s thumb ran its circuit around the palm of her ‘claw’.

Check-in with David done, she’d listened to the start of her father talking to him through her dad’s door, then she’d gathered up her stuff and headed out.  The stew was put away, except for what she’d portioned aside for herself.

Stew in a thermos to stay warm, probably something she could eat on and off through the evening, two water bottles were filled, one with the mix already in it.  She kept it in easy reach, hanging off the side of her bag.

She used her Sight, because it had gotten dark.  The world was shrouded in a thin layer of translucent, white-ish wrapping, figures throbbing or wriggling beneath that cover.  It also helped her see in the dark.

Walking while tilting the stew into her mouth with an abundance of caution, given how piping hot it was, she got a big chunk of beef and took it between her teeth so it wouldn’t touch any soft mouth-flesh.  But the juices still leaked out and burned.  She debated spitting it back into the thermos, but before she could resolve one side of that debate, it got too hot even for her teeth.  She spat it toward a storm vent.  She hated doing that.

A small figure tackled it before it could disappear into the oblivion below.

“Heyy, little man,” she greeted him.

Peckersnot triumphantly picked up the chunk of stew-beef, gritty from rolling on the road, slightly chewed.  He juggled it a bit with the heat of it, before he felt confident holding it overhead.  It was only a little smaller than his head.

“You go ahead.  Have at it.”

He peeped.

“Were you hanging out?  Near my house?”

He nodded, then started gesticulating, making random-ish noises.

“I only caught some of that,” she said.  “Have to watch where I’m walking when I don’t have my mask on.  Skunks?”

He nodded.

“You’re annoying the skunks.  And you have an ongoing turf war with…”

He peeped, gesturing around the eyes, waving his arms around.

“An owl, who wants to eat you, while you want to ‘paint’.”

He nodded.

“Don’t get eaten, dude.  You want to hang tonight?  Going to the Undercity, I think.  And the shrines.”

He pumped one fist into the air, then took a bite of the chunk of meat he’d hooked one skinny arm around.  It looked like it was all he could do to get enough air while keeping up with her, and eating added a complication to that.  Small as he was, she could hear the snorts as he tried to intake enough air through his nostrils.

“Cool.  Glad to have you.  When you’re finished with that I’ll give you a ride.  But you gotta get clean-ish.  I don’t want you staining or snotting up this sweater.  I really like it.  I’ve been wanting to wear it since summer.”

He gulped down the mouthful he’d torn off with his beak, then screamed a brief, one-second scream, one hand raised like a claw, before taking another bite.

“Yeah well, deal with it.”

They crossed the bridge.  Peckersnot used Verona’s leg to hide as a car rolled past.

Using the Arena wasn’t necessarily the only way to get to the other side, but they had some worries that establishing any firm entrances and exits elsewhere might establish a pattern and accelerate the transition.  So mostly they kept track of where they did it, avoided doing it in the same spot twice, barring emergency, and maintained a hard rule of not doing it in the same place three times.

The Arena was the only place where the doorway was firmly established.  Couldn’t really exacerbate the issue when it was Judge-established and firm.

She could see some older teenagers, sitting on the slope.  One of the go-to hangout spots.  Looking out at the water, just in sight enough to be found by friends, just out of sight enough to have a beer or something in reach, even if they weren’t of legal age.

It was hard to not think of the Stuck-Arounds.  In this version of Kennet, they weren’t a gang of jackasses and troublemakers.  In that version of Kennet, they were the only gang that wasn’t led by an Other or someone exceptional.

“Hey, little Pecker,” Verona said.  “You up for running around a lot tonight?  Because I think we should talk business.”

He nodded, stopped, then nodded again.

“In the interest of not taking advantage of you, I would like to acquire your services, as a general errand lad and lookout.  Stuff like me asking you to go run and find Tashlit, so she can come with me tonight if she wants.  Or watching my back in the Undercity of Kennet while I get a trap or something set.”

He nodded.

“I know you like my art.  So if we take a piece of art that took me forty-five minutes to draw, the sort of stuff you like, and factor in value, talent, side benefits like me paying you in snacks and fun stuff while you’re hanging out… we should probably account for the time costs of me having to do extra laundry because you got me snotty…”

He nodded.

“Which isn’t an excuse to get me snotty.  You think one piece of art could buy me a few days of help?”

He nodded.

“You could negotiate here.  A few hours of help, if you pushed for it.  Though we get into the territory where it might get hard to keep up with the drawing.  I want to give you stuff to be proud of, or stuff you can barter to other goblins.  You want to push for hours?  Drive a hard bargain?”

He shook his head.

“You sure?  Like I said, I don’t want to take advantage, I want to make sure you’re happy.”

He nodded.

“Okay.  Here, let’s get this out of the way.  Sit, eat.”

She sat down on a bench, put her foot out so he could climb up onto her shoe, and then brought her feet up onto the bench.  He scampered around, chewing on the chunk of meat while she dug in her bag.

She paged through.  “These ones are choice, I think.  Did this one with Tashlit on the beach…”

She put the book down where he could see.  A man hugged his boner, which was as big as he was.

“And…” she picked the book back up.  Peckersnot reached plaintively, jumping up, reaching in the direction of the sketchbook.  “Hold on, little dude.”

He groaned.

She paged through.  “Here, I thought of you and making this business arrangement with you while doing this one, so I’d be a bit bummed if you bartered it away, but…”

She set it down so he could see.  It was an exquisitely detailed image she’d done with a fine-tip felt pen, of a town with buildings, cars, and a single naked lad in the foreground with a dick that spooled out like silly string, a single length that piled up at his feet, extended down the street, in the window of a parked car, out another window, around street signs and telephone poles, and, in the distance, wound its way around buildings, before making its way back to him, crossing the lap of a knitting old woman and a man reading the newspaper on a bus stop bench.  The guy stood there, holding the end of his drooping, dripping noodle.

“Which one do you like?”

Peckersnot tapped the page.

“Yeah?  Cool.  How many days of your help does this buy me?”

He held up eight fingers.

“Really?  You know, there’s a balance to be struck here.  If you value yourself higher, then you get more art.”

He peeped, gesticulating at the image, before dropping the meat he’d been eating and throwing himself at it, arms spread, hugging the paper.

“Right, glad you like it.  Valuing art and artists.  I like that,” she said.  “Want it now or later?  Later means your arms won’t be full all night, and the image stays undamaged.”

He put both hands to his head.

“Later, let’s say.  And let’s say seven days of service.  Nice number, makes it easier to remember when time’s up, and you’ve rendered me services before.”

He considered, stroked his chin, then nodded.

“Cool.  Come on.  Don’t forget your meat.”

She helped him down from the bench, one of his arms holding the chunk of beef he’d already halved in size, and wiped the bench where she’d put her shoe up before sorting out her bag and sketchbook.

They headed to the Arena, since that was a direction Peckersnot would already need to go to get to Tashlit.

As they reached the point where the residential part of Kennet’s eastern half ended, with the hospital, school, surrounding parking lots and surrounding fields taking up a lot of the real estate, Verona’s active Sight let her see some spiritual activity.

Two figures walking, one behind the other.

She sidled in that direction.

Matthew walked briskly toward downtown.  Edith followed him.

“My sister’s wondering what’s going on.”

“That’s for you to deal with,” he answered.  “Why don’t you tell her the truth?  That you poisoned me, more or less, you played the victim so you could win me over?  That there wasn’t one part of what we had that was genuine?”

“A lot of what we had was genuine.  However it started-”

He wheeled on her.  “How it started tainted everything else!  What you did in the meantime tainted everything else!”

“We’ve been together for nearly a decade, Matthew,” Edith said.  “The way we got comfortable with each other?  The way we made a house for us?  Isn’t some of that worth trying to keep?”

“You keep asking that, you keep saying it.”

“It’s worth saying.”

“I don’t think it is.  I don’t know what you expect, repeating it over and over, then falling into these quiet periods.  Did Maricica tell you to do that?  To drill it in, then let it sit with me?  Did she think it’d gradually worm its way in?”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.  I’m trying to give you space while also- I’m desperate, Matthew.  This is our lives.  Our house.  Our family- we could have an actual family.”

“And you don’t think I’d think about- if there was any way past what you did, you don’t think I’d feel sick to my core, thinking about the price you wanted and were willing to pay to get that?  Or- what’s the delusion here, Edith?  How far does this go?  You were willing to poison me, injecting me with a syringe to feed the Doom, you upended everything we’ve been doing in Kennet for your own selfish needs, killed the Beast, you brought so much shit down on our heads, so much pain and stress and so many hurt civilians, and you helped plan the killing of our friend.”

“John knew what he was doing when he joined the contest.  The risks.”

“Edith,” Matthew said, tense, glaring, “I wish there was a way to inject the fucking bile in my throat into my words, so you’d feel just how wholly, completely, and hatefully they’re intended, but I have to ask you to imagine it instead.  Go fuck yourself, saying that.”

“Matthew-”

“Fuck you.  How do you reconcile any of this in your head?  Do you imagine some freak fucking fantasy world where we call our child John?  Does that help make up for it?  Do you think anyone would be happy with that?”

“I think we could.”

“Fuck you!  There is no we.  There is no our.  There’s a house, and you should go back to it now.  If you had an ounce of decency in you, you’d pack up and disappear.”

Edith shook her head, and as she did, she saw Verona.  Matthew noticed Edith noticing.

“Hi, Verona,” Matthew said.  He paused, taking stock of everything.  “Sorry you had to see this.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” she said.  She capped her thermos of stew and used the little tab to connect to the side of her bag, before pulling her juice free.

“Off to visit the shrines?  Bit earlier than your usual.”

“Undercity, I thought I’d check on things, then do shrines on the way back,” she said.  She uncapped her lemonade iced tea and unscrewed the top.

“I’m on my way there too to look into something Miss caught.  Edith just followed me this time.  If you want to wait for me there, we can talk there.”

Verona was drinking, and held up a finger.

What to do here?

Edith wouldn’t follow Matthew to the other side, because if he unleashed the Doom on the other side, the smear or mangled corpse that resulted wouldn’t raise questions.

Here Edith had that as a check to make sure he held back.

There were a lot of things like that, Verona was finding.

“Let’s go together,” Verona told him.  “Edith, go home.”

“I’d appreciate the chance to talk more with my husband.”

Verona took three steps forward, then tossed out the contents of her drink.

Edith reacted late.  Lemonade iced tea splashed her, face to waist.  Two ice cubes clattered to the sidewalk.

“Who gives a fuck what you appreciate?” Verona asked.  “You helped kill John.  You guys broke my best friend’s heart.  You ruined so much.”

Edith stood there, dripping.

Verona’s hand twinged.  She felt like a cramp was coming on.  She didn’t want it to be now.

“Cold and wet?” Verona asked.  “I remember you hated that.”

“Fine,” Edith said.  “Maybe I deserved that.”

“Maybe?”

“But I still need to talk to Matthew.”

“Would you like to be bound, Girl by Candlelight?” Verona asked.  “I can bind you by words.”

“I’m secure in a hallow I’ve occupied for nearly a decade.”

“Want to try?” Verona asked.  “Edith James, Girl by Candlelight, I name you boun-”

Matthew set a hand on Verona’s shoulder.  His fist closed, bunching up the sweater there.

She stopped.

Edith smiled.

“Don’t smile,” he said.  “This isn’t a win.”

“I’m smiling because you care.”

“I care about what your allies might do if we bind one of you, however justified we might be.  You’re not just ruining my night, now.  You’re ruining hers.”

“Wasn’t having a super hot night to begin with,” Verona said, looking up at Matthew, “but yeah, you’re not wrong.”

He went on, “We talked about how looking after these three resembled how we might look after a kid, once.  If you’re willing to make her feel like this, how would you treat any kid you had?  If you’re clinging to any deluded fantasy, any idea that we could somehow have a family, you should know you’re fouling it.  Fuck with me, fine, I’ll deal, but don’t fuck with the kids.”

“Fucking with you is fucking with us, though,” Verona said, looking up at him.

“One step at a time,” he said, his voice low.

“Can we talk after you get back?” Edith asked.  “I’ll wait up.”

He shook his head.

“I’ll wait up,” Edith repeated.  Then she turned to leave.

They didn’t move as Edith walked away.  She glanced back at them while between streetlights, and her eyes burned like lit cigarettes in the gloom.

“Sorry,” Matthew said.  “I didn’t mean to-”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Didn’t want to wrap you guys up in my shit.  Sorry.”

“Want company tonight, dude?  I was going to send Peckersnot to get Tashlit, she’s really good at being a listening ear, despite not having ear canals.”

Matthew looked in the direction Edith had gone, then nodded.  “Sure.  Uh, maybe you hang back until I check the worst of it?  A few of the Others that have been lurking around the edges of Kennet for a while slipped inside.  Miss thinks they’re in the hospital in the Undercity.”

“I’ll help.  Especially while you’re discombobulated.”

“I don’t know-”

“Matthew,” Verona said.  “I get it, okay?  I get it.  People can be really good at sucking, sometimes.  So… just say yes?  And if you want a distraction, I can be distracting.  If you want quiet solidarity, I can rock quiet solidarity.  If you want to let the Doom out and tear down half the hospital, then I’ll cover the part where we get innocents free and clear and you can do that.  And if you want to vent, I can hear you out and nod along.”

“I should be the one you lean on, not the other way around.”

“And shit should go down the toilet pipe, except sometimes it flows the wrong way and it’s a horrible mess.  That’s the way it goes sometimes.”

Matthew exhaled heavily through his nose.

“If you go I’m going to follow you and get involved anyway, and I… just realized that’s probably really shitty when you’ve already got a boundary-pushing woman in your life.”

“Guess I’d better bring you along without a fuss, huh?  So you don’t accidentally do what she’s doing?”

“Sure,” she said.  She smiled.

“Okay then,” he replied.

“You want to, uh-” she put a hand over his, where his fingers were clutching her sweater at her shoulder.

He pulled his hand away.  “Sorry.”

She smoothed up the bunched-up fuzzy wool.  “Don’t apologize, dude.  Come on.  Peck?  Get Tash?  We’re going to the hospital.  She can meet us there.  Or not, if she doesn’t feel like it.”

Peckersnot disappeared into the darkness.

“Arena?” he asked.

“Yup.”

They walked toward the Arena.  Verona finished the last few drops of liquid that hadn’t escaped the bottle, probably owing to the narrower neck, and then put it away.

The Arena wasn’t far, but it felt like a longer trip because every second had this weight to it, as if she was on the verge of saying something, didn’t know what to say, and felt like saying something would betray the confidence he’d taken her into when he’d allowed her to come with him.

All three things wrestling with one another for every last second of a trip that took another five or so minutes.

They reached the Arena.  The parking lot was wet, like it almost always contrived to be now.  In the view of her Sight, it was a stark negative image.  The world above was white with red beneath and below it was the opposite, keeping shadows intact.

It hadn’t been quite like that at first, but the Sight adapted.

Verona bent down and began drawing with chalk in the customary spot.

“Does Tashlit need the diagram to get in?” Matthew asked.

“Nope.  I think she uses a bit of power to push her way in past a fold.  Haven’t seen any signs it makes things worse or anything.”

“Good.  I’d like to get on this.  Not sure what we’re in for at the hospital.”

“Listen, you want to work on the diagram?” she asked.  “Gonna text Lucy.”

He took the chalk from her fingers, then bent down, picking up where she’d left off, drawing on damp ground with chalk.  It was just damp enough that it made the lines smoother than they’d otherwise be.

He had a steady hand, all considered.

She called, so she could loop Matthew in, instead of texting.

“Hello?” Lucy answered.  “Ronnie?”

“A black cat crosses your path, what do?” Verona asked.

“Is this a code you set up and forgot to let me in on?”

“What do?”

“Let it do whatever it wants.  Cats are independent creatures.”

“I like that answer.”

“I thought you would.  I’d like it to stay over.  What’s better than a cat curled up next to you, where you know it’s happy and warm?”

“I like that answer too.”

“You had the thing with the social worker guy today, right?  How’d that go?”

“My dad’s pissed.  I pushed things.  But that’s not why I’m calling.  It’s about the hospital.  I’m with Matthew.  Putting you on speaker.”

“Okay.”

Verona hit the button, then held the phone out.  “Hospital.”

“That’s a place.”

“Any idea where it’s at right now?  Matthew was wondering.”

“Uhhh… I could give you a crummy answer or if there’s no rush, I can go ask my mom.”

“Ask.  Super thanks.”

“Gonna go ask.  Leaving the phone here.”

“Love you!” Verona called out, playful.

“Yeah, you too,” Lucy said, voice faint.

“Good thought.  Her mom’s a nurse, right?”

“Yep.”

“It’s not a one-to-one parallel, though.”

“Not a mirror, but you can see where things that get knocked down here might stand up there, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.  “I missed drawing diagrams.  Meditative.  You’re going to have to finish and power it, though.”

“Yeah.”

He stopped drawing.  Hunched over, chalk in hand, he said, “You hate venting, right?  Toadswallow mentioned.  No stomach for it?”

“I said if you need to vent, go ahead.  Only real thing is I hit my limit faster than a lot of other people.”

“Then maybe I’ll keep it short.  So you don’t hit your limit.”

“Sure.  Fair compromise.”

“I feel like you’re one of the few people I could tell who wouldn’t make a big deal of it.  Toadswallow would act up, Miss and Rook would worry, maybe because of the strategy of it, more than anything.”

“Alright.  No making a bit deal of it.”

“Don’t flip, don’t lose faith in me, don’t-”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he said.  He drew in a deep breath.  “Couple nights ago, I got low.  Had one too many beers, I was tired, sitting outside by the fire pit, no fire.  Thinking about- a whole fucking wasted decade.  On Kennet, on Edith, on everything.  Had a good cry on my own.”

“Allowed.”

“I’m not much of a crier.  Tore out my eyeballs as a teenager, the ones I’ve got now are practice, Otherness.  I’m not sure my tear ducts work right, not sure my heart works right, emotionally.”

“I get you, dude.  I’m not sure how different we are, there.  Though my eyeballs are intact.”

“Edith came out.  Put her hands on my shoulders.  And in the sweetest voice, a tone I’ve heard so many times, she asked me to come up to bed.  And for a second, I forgot everything, I forgot all the reasons not to.”

“Yeah.”

“And then in the next second, and long seconds after, I remembered, the poisoning, the stuff she did, the people we lost, the- the struggle, and I thought maybe I could ignore all that and go up with her anyway.  Sleep in the same bed, pretend.  Pretend enough that the last decade wasn’t a complete waste of everything I gave it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Walked away without saying anything.”

“You know, my dad’s a big pretender.  I’ve got a pretty good imagination, I’m good at pretending, I put a lot of that into my practice.  But my dad, I think I might get some of that from him, but he… he pretends he’s right.  He pretends that something an eleven year old does is something he can hold a grudge over for years.  He pretends stuff didn’t happen.”

“Edith pretends stuff didn’t happen.”

“I don’t think you can pretend that much, past that much bad, without it screwing you up, dude.”

“Yeah,” Matthew said.  “But maybe with a bit more alcohol or something to numb things around the edges, the pretending would be really nice in the short term.  Fuck, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”

“You gotta go, Matthew.  Get a motel room.  Use the money you were going to use for my demesne.  Or bunk with Louise.  I know Snowdrop stays in her spare room.  You wouldn’t leave a money trail Edith could follow, going to Louise, and I think she’s genuinely a cool enough person to roll with it.”

“The Carmine Witness?”

“She looks after Melissa.  She looked after Snowdrop.  I think she gets a lot out of it, helping.  Let me- let me check in with her.  okay?  Then you can go from her place to wherever you’re going.  Once you don’t have a money trail.”

“I don’t know.”

“Seriously.”

“No, I-” he started.  He stopped, before getting to his feet.  “Crouching down like this is making my knees hurt.  I could see myself doing that, maybe, except- all the reasons I was that low, that ready to betray myself and all of you by doing what she wanted… the house is important to me.  If I don’t have that, what do I have?”

“You have us.  Friends, allies.”

“How much of an asshole am I if I respond to that beautiful sentiment and say that’s not enough?”

“Little bit of an asshole,” Verona said, smiling.

“I like… having built something.  I like feeling like the path I took and the choices I made got me things that aren’t- that I wouldn’t have had, if I’d done something else.  I think I would’ve found cool people, driving away from that hospital without putting the Girl by Candlelight inside Edith James.  I wouldn’t have a house.”

“Okay.”

“And if I don’t have the house then I think… I’d be low, and I’d be vulnerable, and she could get me, and I can’t- I can’t.”

“If you do have the house, though, weren’t you low?  Won’t you get low again?  Get away from her first, guy.”

Matthew looked out over Kennet.  He sighed.

“Get away from her.”

“Tell- tell Louise it’d only be for one night, okay?  I’ll figure out where I’m going or what I’m doing after that.  Rent something, get a house.  With cash, no paper trail.”

“Gonna say, after going away on vacation, getting away from everything?  And staying at Lucy’s?  You need more.  Time to get upright.”

“One night to start.”

“Okay,” she said.

“And you’ve gotta- fuck, you girls have got to let me handle some stuff for you.  Ten times.  Twenty times.  My ego, my values, I can’t let kids handle all this.”

“Get upright first.  We’re in this for the long haul.  There’s time.”

“Fuck, what if you’re adults by the time I’m- upright, like you said?  What if I’m never upright again?”

“Not an option.  Work on that, get to where you can pay us back, if it’s that important to you.  Or shut up about it,” Verona told him.

He looked in the direction of the Bowdler ski hill.  A gas station and some stores partway up glowed, exterior lights still lit, or panel signs above boxy storefronts partially lit from within.

“It’s close to work.  I could even walk.  Nice view.”

“Yeah?  Nice deal.  She’d be happy to have you around.  She could probably use help around the place in the short term, while you’re around.”

“Edith visits her sister the day after tomorrow.  I could get my stuff.  Tell Louise I’ll pay her.  Once I’m able.”

Verona nodded.  “I’m about ninety-nine percent sure she’d be happy to help out and ninety-five percent sure she’d tell you you don’t have to pay.’

“I’ll pay her.”

“Okay.”

“Damn,” Matthew said.  “The chalk circle.”

“Want me to?”

“Nah.  Meditative, like I said.”

She stepped back, leaving him to resume the work.

About thirty or forty seconds passed.  Verona heard a door close on the other end of the phone.  “I’m here.  That took a bit.  You still there?”

“We’re here,” Verona replied.

Tashlit had turned up at the far end of the parking lot.

“Talked to my mom about the hospital.  She says they have a shortage of staff.  About twenty or thirty percent of the nurses and orderlies dropped out around the start of fall.  One of the senior staff.  One of the big cardiac surgeons and chair heads.  Too many patients for too few people.”

“That tells us what to expect, then.  Hospital virtually empty, probably a few nurses and orderlies, probably the two head honchos?”

“I don’t know if it’s that literal, but probably.”

“Bunch of Others,” Matthew said.

“Not sure how that translates,” Verona said, “But yeah.”

“Okay,” Matthew said.

“I also asked,” Lucy added, “If any places in the hospital were empty or abandoned.  They closed a wing and they’re keeping it dark and neat for if there’s like, a hurricane or something.  Not enough staff.”

“Which wing?” Verona asked.  She high-fived Tashlit with her good hand as Tashlit walked up.

“Top floor, Northwest quadrant, post-critical care and rehabilitation.”

“Nice one.”

“I try.  Anything else?”

“Don’t think so.  I guess if we don’t get back in touch in half an hour or if Peckersnot comes rapping at your window, come rescue us?”

“Okay.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too, Ronnie.  Later, Matthew.”

“Later,” Matthew answered.

Lucy hung up, so Verona did too.  As she was putting her phone away, she saw a text appear.  She didn’t raise her phone to look at it, because she had a sense of what it said.

Lucy.  Good job with Matthew.

Verona put it back in her pocket.  She smiled at Tashlit while massaging her ‘claw’.  She had to turn her Sight off to see: Tashlit was wearing a light jacket over a bright yellow tee with a graphic on it, purple lips with pink teeth biting onto a snake.  Peckersnot sat on Tashlit’s shoulder, a lock of Tashlit’s hair drooping down from the loose skin of her scalp, positioned across the top of his head like a bad toupee. Verona hoped he hadn’t stuck it there with snot.

“Heyyy.  Thanks for coming.”

Tashlit slapped Verona’s shoulder lightly.

“Yeah, of course.  Having an okay night before now?”

Tashlit nodded, tapped her ear.

“Good music?  Cool.”

Tashlit put fingers near her mouth, hooking them.

“Ghoul?  Which?”

Tashlit stroked her hair.  Which was getting a bit patchy.

“How’s Chloe doing?”

Tashlit mimed.

“Talks a lot, but that can be nice, right?” Verona asked.

Tashlit nodded, then paused mid nod, did a kind of segue into a shrug, then touched her ear with both hands, one finger spiraling out-

“Yeah.  Makes it hard to enjoy music.”

“I have no idea how you do that,” Matthew said.

“Trick is a lot of the time you have a good idea of what the answers could be.  I know my friend, so you go from that to working out which answer it is.  And we reuse the same signs.”

“Sign language?”

“Guess it is, but not really?  We tried that but it gets garbled.”

“I think I’m done enough.  Want to get us going?”

Verona nodded.  She walked over to the diagram, surveyed it, then bent down.  She made the final chalk lines.

“In service of Kennet.  Let’s go to the Undercity.”

The lines lifted up, and Kennet flipped around.

To Verona’s Sight, the undercity version of Kennet was both brighter and darker.  The factories churned, smoke and dark steam poured out, and the haze in the air meant that all the lights that were on created an ambient glow, but the town itself was mostly dark.

A yellow-red haze over silhouettes of buildings with the rare light on.  Leaves weren’t red and green so much as they were red and black, changing color more completely before jumping to the rot phase.  There were lots of spots on the ground where leaves had settled, plastered down by rain, the haze of smoke had settled over them, and then they’d lifted up.  Leaving lots of lighter, leaf-shaped imprints everywhere, many of them five-pointed maple leaves.

“Hospital,” Verona said.  For Tashlit’s benefit, she reported, “Some outside Others got in.  Should be mostly empty, some low-level hospital staff, two people at the top, we’re guessing.”

Tashlit nodded.

Verona got her mask out, then pulled on her cloak, leaving her hat folded up in her bag.  As they left downtown and passed some people, those people saw her and stepped off the sidewalk, onto the grassy slope by the shore, where mist and smoke were slowly rolling down, caught by nearby lights from the street.

“Hey,” Verona called out.

“Yeah?” a guy asked.  His girl clung to his arm, looking over his shoulder.

“What’ve you heard about the hospital?”

“They’ll fix you up.  But the price is steep.”

“What sort of price?” Matthew asked.

“They own you, after.  Or worse.”

Verona reached around for her bag, and Tashlit grabbed a strap to lift it around, freeing Verona to dig inside without having to also hold the bag in position.  Which was nice, because her one hand felt twinge-y.

She got a partially full carton of cigarettes, then a spell card.  She scribbled a note onto the spell card, signed it in an exaggerated fashion, then drew cat ears and a cat face around the ‘o’.

She tucked it inside the carton, then threw it at the guy.  He caught it.

“This won’t blow up?”

“It’s an IOU.  A teeny tiny one.  You cooperate, you get cooperation back.”

“There’s activity at the school.  It’s right by the hospital.”

“Could be a problem that’s self-correcting,” Matthew said.

“Maybe,” Verona replied.  “But I think we gotta maintain stability ourselves.  We told some of those jerks to stay out, they came back in?  Nah.”

“School thing’s helpful, right?” the guy standing by the slope asked.

“Yeah.  Tell whoever takes that IOU, if they do you a minor favor, I’ll do them a middle-size favor if they pass that back.”

“Yeah?  I guess.”

“Gotta be someone who’s on friendly terms with me.  Bitter Street, School, South End, Factory Smokers.”

The guy nodded, pocketing the card.  He offered the girl he was with cigarettes, taking his focus off Verona.

Which was a good excuse to move on.

Sure enough, the school was active.  The lights outside were on, a flickering, cracked light illuminating the field, and people were outside.

The Vice Principal was outside, with her predecessor, cage around his head.

He was a lot bigger than he’d been.

That was a thing that was happening.

Verona waved as she passed.  The school nurse saw, the oldest of the Vice Principal’s lieutenants, and said something.  The Vice Principal proceeded to wave with both hands, star wand in one hand, the ribbons that were tied to it tangling around her arm.

“Some of those kids are supposed to be in detention still,” Verona noted.

“Maybe this is detention?” Matthew asked.

Verona shook her head.

The school was separated from the hospital by a ridge of rocks.  The rocks had let water collect and form a kind of natural ditch at their base.  A bunch of people in scrubs were standing out there, with one not-person.

“Do we want to handle it?” Matthew murmured.

Verona could see with her Sight.  Here, after a transition period, she’d taken to being able to see this world in a different way, distinguishing the things of under-Kennet from the things above.  Here, a translucent, red, fleshy cover wrapped around wriggling white maggoty things.  Pale, scarred, eyeless flesh pressed against membranes, wriggled, and flopped around in bondage of their own scarred, wet skin.

Seeing in the dark, seeing past smoke with the help of stuff inscribed on the inside of her mask, she could see at the window.  Human silhouettes.

“There’s people at the window watching them.  Nah.  We want to get up there,” Verona said.

“Sure.”

They walked in the front doors, into what would’ve been the emergency room.  There weren’t many guards, which was interesting.  And a lot of doorways were sealed.  A lot of the doors in the main hallway and into rooms seemed to be double doors, to let beds pass through, but the doors had handles that stood out a fraction more than the rest of things, to absorb the hits from the front of the beds, and a lot of those doors had been lashed together.

Plastic ties knotted together and forming a wreath around the door.  Extension cables that had been wrapped around and then partially melted, exterior insulation blending into exterior insulation in black lumps.

A bit of barbed wire.

A lot of fencing.  The rooftop had fencing around the edges, forming a boundary that anyone on the roof would look through as they smoked or had lunch, a common sight from the big field behind the school.  On the topside, the youngest kids would wave and good-natured nurses and orderlies would make sure to wave back.  Even if it was sometimes a hundred times that the kids waved in a row.

That fencing had been cut away, the chain-link wire forming metal wreaths around the door, the cut off endings sticking out in every direction, sharp.

The intention seemed to be limiting passage.  Turning the hospital into a labyrinth.

“Came here for my hand,” Verona remarked.  She rubbed at her palm.  “If I remember right… can we go through here?”

Tashlit mimed.

“It’s okay to make noise.”

Tashlit kicked the door.  The handles didn’t give, so the hinges had to.  Even reinforced, meant to stand up to the repeated battering from passing hospital beds and gurneys or stretchers or whatever they were called, they gave way, the doors clattering to the ground.

The sound of it echoed down hallways.

They walked down the main hallway, and lines painted on the floor and wall pointed to departments, though they’d been scraped and scratched at.  There were other lines and streaks where bodies had been dragged, fluids painting inconsistent lines behind them.  Some were in eerie line with the lines painting the way to departments, like the people doing the dragging had been going to those same places, using the lines as guidelines.

Didn’t matter.  Verona was working under the assumption that these guys were holed up in the department that was abandoned on the topside.  They had to cut off the head of the serpent, here.  Or convince it to play ball.

“It’s your lead, Matthew,” Verona said.  “I have my way of doing things, you have yours, but I asked to tag along, you get to say how you want this done.”

“I think I’m probably the worst person to lead right now.  You might be better off with Peckersnot.”

Peckersnot did that short, hoarse, outraged scream again, hands as claws reaching for Matthew.

“Peck’s not dumb, and he’s not Cherrypop,” Verona told Matthew.

“I didn’t mean to poke fun, or act like he was- meant what I said.  He’s inexperienced, but you might be better off with him than me.”

“Okay, well-”

Someone hurled themselves against a sealed door.  Their face had been skinned, with safety goggles, and an oxygen mask set into the damaged flesh, and the skin edges of the skin that remained crept up and locking the things into place.  Tubes wormed through and into holes in their throat.  They made a muffled, strained sound, muffled doubly for the intervening door, and a loose tube spat droplets of fluid against the circular window in the door in sync with each failed effort made at speaking.  They headbutted the glass.

Two more followed, hurling themselves against the door.  Plastic buckles snapped.

“Keep moving,” Verona said.  “They-”

They’d been keeping an eye on the door to their right, but the door to their left banged.

A woman with red, raw, burned flesh shoved against the door.  Burned fingers scrabbled against the gap in the door, reaching through a gap that wasn’t quite wide enough for the fingers, leaving skin scraped off and building up against the gap, flaking and falling to the floor.  Worse, when she stopped pushing against the door, the chains around the handle going slack, the gap narrowed and her fingers were crushed.  She didn’t seem to care.

Behind her, through damage in the face of the door, Verona could see a man with flesh scarred from burns using a mop to try to drag his wheelchair forward, toward the door.

“Keep moving.  The best thing we can do for them right now is- shit sorry, Matthew.”

“You said you had your way of doing things,” Matthew said.  “I saw- I don’t know if I saw a glimpse of that back at the gas station.  When you got vicious.  But I think I and a lot of others, maybe Lucy too, we’d feel better if I could see.”

“Hmm.”

“I’d feel better about things in general if I knew.”

“Okay,” Verona replied.  “Top floor.  Let’s find the stairwell.  They probably trapped it.”

They briskly walked down the hallway.  Each department they passed had people caged within.

Verona could imagine one of the gangs storming their way inside.  Someone could come through, maybe with an axe in hand.  Maybe with something like practice, and open each door.  With the right coup, claim, or degree of pre-instilled fear, the patients would come tearing out.  A flood of desperate, frenzied combatants.

Verona hadn’t seen any gangs yet that could really hold up against that.  It was a fact that added to the mounting tension, as they passed doors and the patients were provoked.  Some screamed.  Many couldn’t.

As they moved further down the hallway, there were less and less lights on.  Many had been intentionally broken, glass trampled to gritty dust or kicked to the side.

The stairwell, by comparison, was brightly lit.

“Peck,” Verona said.  “Scout?”

Peckersnot went from Tashlit to Verona, then down Verona’s arm, toward the railing, spitting on it before leaping to it.  He scampered up the banister, peered up, and pointed, before gesturing, both hands flat, bringing them down.

“Deadfall,” Matthew said.

“See?  Not so hard.”

Tashlit tapped Verona on the shoulder, and Verona nodded.

Tashlit walked toward the stairs, and the yellow of the eyes that peered out past torn flesh seemed brighter in the gloom.

Something creaked.

A hospital bed with cabinets lashed to it fell straight down onto Tashlit.  Tashlit grabbed it and hurled it aside in a singular motion.  It crashed into and through the banister, landing across the steps that led down to the basement.

People could be heard whispering, panicked.  Footsteps stomped.

And three patients came tearing down the stairs, snarling.  All with casts around their heads and limbs, holes drilled in for eyes, gaps for nostrils and mouth.  One of the drills had gone too deep, leading to a copious amount of dried blood leaking from one mouth-hole, with broken teeth stuck in the blood.

Tashlit caught one, pushing her against the wall, while grabbing at the arm of another.  Pulling him off balance.  He crashed down the stairs.

Verona tossed a spell card down.  Paper touched floor and water rippled, eve though there hadn’t been water there before.

The patient stepped onto slick floor and fell hard.  Matthew stepped on one of his wrists.

Tashlit hurried to find flesh to touch, her forehead pressing against the cast around the one patient’s head, as close as she could get to forehead-to-forehead contact.  Her eyes closed, glowing in the moment before eyelids made them completely dark.

The woman with the casts sighed heavily, and as Tashlit let her go, freeing her where she’d been pinned against the wall.  She slumped down, mumbling something.

She grabbed the one who she’d caught and sent sprawling down the stairs before he found his footing, cast-hands not especially great at helping him push himself to his feet.  Eyes glowed.

“Don’t burn too much healing, okay?” Verona asked.

Tashlit nodded.

The third one was punching ineffectually at Matthew’s leg.  Tashlit caught the one arm, bent down, and found flesh at a gap in the neck.

The frenzy, at least, stopped.

“Peck?  Good eye on the deadfall.  Keep scouting.” Verona said.

They left the three patients behind, going upstairs.

Another bed was rigged to fall, not as a straight-down deadfall, but something rigged to ropes, so it would swing forward before the ropes reeled out, crashing into the wall by the landing of the stairs.  Syringes had been pushed through fabric so they stuck out in all directions.  Fluids from the syringes colored the sheets in yellow, various shades of brown, and crimson.

Verona pulled her mask off and scribbled, leaving the others to handle the task of getting them up.  Matthew unleashed the Doom, and the Doom briefly wore Edith’s face before crashing through barricades that had been erected on and at the top of the stairs.  A barrel of something that had been rigged as a trap was sent crashing through the set of double doors.

Taking them to the third floor.  The top floor.

Northwest was… Verona took a few seconds to find her orientation, second guessed it, then went back to the first guess.

Man, would I be bad at Paths, she thought.

She finished the rune on her mask, then put it on.  It was near the mouth, so she kissed it to activate it.

Air stirred around her, lifting up her hair, cloak, and making the looser sweater flutter a bit.  It cooled her body down, and she’d already been a bit cool, so she shivered.

The upper floor was an open floor plan, but barricades and things sequestered the one quadrant off from the others, narrowing the avenues of approach.  It meant she could see over some of the barricades, and count the total number of forces arranged here.

A front line of maybe thirty people, ten of the ‘patients’ with the frenzied nature about them, hands zip-tied together, barely restrained by the orderlies, who numbered about eight.  Big guys in white.  There were also thirteen or so nurses, many elderly, and a handful of Others.

And one man in charge.

There was something at play with the ongoing knotting, where some people were really standing out, or by standing out over here, they got the focus of what the knotting was doing.

Knotted people, in brief.  As Kennet slowly distorted, these people were distorted too.

The Vice Principal had dodged it, but her pet hadn’t, as if her predecessor had absorbed everything, getting bigger, fatter, less shapely, stronger.  Maybe more loyal, or more settled into his role.

The Bitter Street Witch was more bent, unwilling or unable to stand up or straighten to her full height.

The Factory Smoker Foreman was a brute of a man who’d forged a wrench that needed two hands to hold, flesh stained black.

And this guy…

“What do I call you?” Verona asked.  She motioned for the others to stay back.

“Me?” the man in charge of the hospital asked.  He was standing behind an old man that Verona recognized as the old ghoul that she’d had to deal with when Sharon the Skeptic had knocked down the barrier around Kennet.

“You.”

“The Resident.  And you’re the Third Witch of Kennet.”

The Resident was tall, literally broomstick thin, and dressed in a suit that looked like multiple suit-sleeves had been torn or cut from the shoulder of a suit, then stitched end to end.  His mouth was thin, lipless, and his eyes were scarred over, with fresh cuts in the scarring, like they’d been made frantically.

When he raised a hand to point at her as he named her the Third Witch of Kennet, she could hear bones creaking like a branch flexed to the point of almost snapping.

“I know at least one of those Others that’s keeping you company right now isn’t supposed to be here.  They didn’t ask to enter and we didn’t say okay.”

“More than one,” Matthew said.  “I recognize three.”

“They’re allies,” The Resident told Verona.

“They’re going to make your life a lot harder,” Verona told him.  “Because they’re not allowed, and if you’re harboring them, I’ve got to clear you out.”

“What they’re doing to the patients isn’t great either,” Matthew said.

“Yeah, well, baby steps,” Verona said.  “Dial that back?”

“They knew what they agreed to when they signed,” the Resident said.  “At my hospital, we’ll fix anyone that can be fixed.  No charge except loyalty, and your name gets dropped into the lottery.  If we draw you…”

A patient slavered and gnashed, pulling against restraints.  Two burly orderlies held him back.

“Want a fix for that hand?”

Verona pulled her thumb away from her claw-hand.  She shook her head.

“I’m providing a service.  Contracts secured by one of these new allies you take offense to,” the Resident said.  “I can’t betray them.”

Verona put her bag on a nearby counter.  She pulled out a carton of cigarettes.

“I’m going to need a lot more payment than that to change my mind.”

She pulled out a jar, then tossed it to the ground.

The air rushed out of the space.

While they reeled and reacted, she found the packet of spell cards she needed.  Matthew and Peckersnot backed off, and Tashlit strode forward, unbothered by the momentary lack of air.  She didn’t need to breathe here any more than she needed to underwater.

Verona, for her part, had the localized pocket of air generated by her mask.

The air rushed back into place, but the way it had been drawn out had pulled it from the lungs, and, as Verona understood from last year’s science classes, lungs had a reserve of air.  Even exhaling as hard as a person could, they wouldn’t spend that reserve without exhaling, pausing without taking in another breath, exhaling again, and so on.

The wind had been knocked out of them.

A spell card of hers hit the ground and the lights shattered.  Darkness reigned.

Tashlit could see okay.  Verona had her mask.

Verona knew the old man was a ghoul, of a different sort than Nibble and Chloe.  He ate pregnancies or something, and he was strong.

He came right for her, comfortable in the darkness.  She sent a spell card after him, and he ducked down and to the side.

Flame erupted, bright, and he staggered away from it.

Tashlit went after him, and he threw Tashlit into the barricade behind him.

Another spell card produced another patch of flame- he’d avoided being set on fire by sidestepping it.

Bringing him close.

He grabbed her, lifting her up off her feet.

She drew the rasp from up her sleeve and raked his cheek.

A magic item from Cleo the Witch Hunter’s stash.  A slight cut from one of the rasp’s little extrusions would extrapolate out to a few hundred cuts across the entire surface of the body.

There were a hundred extrusions and she gave him the full rasp.

Which left him about one percent of his skin.

He dropped her, and she jabbed unsuccessfully, for his eye, while he reeled from the rasp’s effects, flesh raw, red, and ruined.  She hit the bridge of his nose instead, twisted, trying to find the angle to drive it into his eye, but only really bumped the eye instead, before he knocked the rasp away.

Even a bump multiplied out.  It had left him blinded, and he shoved at her, unsuccessfully, hand thrusting out to her left, only his elbow really grazing her.  But he was strong, and she was bowled off her feet.

Tashlit shoved him into the counter.

The fires were giving the others light to see by.  As their eyes adjusted to the dark, they crept forward, fumbling a bit.

Verona went for her bag on the counter, got a think of salt, and tossed it at the old ghoul.

He reacted as anyone who’d just been skinned would if they’d been salted, but he was also a ghoul, so there was a deeper effect.  It pulled strength out of him.

She hurried to work, uncapping the salt and pouring it out as quickly as she could while keeping the line more or less unbroken.

“Tash, don’t let anyone break the circle,” Verona said.  “And get the jars ready?”

Tashlit nodded.

She wound cord around her left arm, and then pulled the twigs from her chest, that little necklace that would have served as an emergency bit of power if her dad had done the unexpected.  She pushed it into her ‘claw’, that hand that wasn’t cooperating lately.

Making it a real claw.  Dish’s porcelain studded a larger hand with shards for fingertips, broken fragments jutting out of flesh.

She used spell cards ruthlessly, holding them in the claw while the rope at her forearm grew hotter, reaching its limits.  Fire, light, more fire, darkness.

She changed direction frequently, so it would be harder to anticipate her and get in her way.  She didn’t fight her way through, but instead moved quickly and silently, zig-zagging.  The eyes of her mask were dark right now, but her night vision was in full effect.

She went straight for the Resident, hopped up onto a hospital bed for the height, and she still had to reach up in order to wrap the claw around his face.

Hopping down to the ground, she forced him to bend over, cooperating.  Broken porcelain pulled on flesh.

He moved, she squeezed.  He moved again, she squeezed harder.

The only twinges were his.

“Could-” he said, muffled.  “Compromise.”

“The time to negotiate was before.  I’m bringing you before the Kennet Council,” she told him.  “Where’s the Other that handles the contracts?”

People around her were getting too confident.  Trying to figure out if they could come after her, pry her away from the Resident.  Verona turned her head, looked at Tashlit, and then said, “Air.”

Another jar cracked against the floor.  Another vaccum took hold.  The air rushed out of the room.

The resident grabbed at Verona’s arm, stabbing one palm in a piece of porcelain that jutted from her wrist.  But he came dangerously close to pulling away the binding that helped keep the spirit localized-

The hangovers were too bad if she did the sixberry thing or full body hosting of a spirit with any regularity.

She pushed him to the ground, and did her best to survey the situation.

The Doom surged, ramming the barricade, and scattering the biggest group of people who’d been ready to pounce on her.  Had they been planning something, even as they choked and flailed?

Thanks, then, Matthew, she thought.  She kept looking, knowing her time was limited.

There.  At the back.  A woman who looked like hospital staff.  To Verona’s Sight, she didn’t have the look of white thing wriggling inside red flesh.  She was from the Overworld, and whatever was inside her worked with strings and cords.  Connections.

“Release them from the contract that keeps them bound to the hospital,” Verona said.  “Swear to leave Kennet.”

Two more of the invading Others were recovering faster than the rest.  One was covered in ulcers, the other looked like a human but to her Sight was the usual translucent-white cocoon, but had something white and scarred wriggling beneath.  No red.

She held up a spell card like a warning, and they backed up.

Claw-tips pointed forward, she advanced on the contract Other.

“Release them.  This isn’t okay.”

“It’s business,” the contract Other gasped, still out of breath.

“Consider your license revoked one way or the other,” Verona told her.  “Your options are to cooperate and see the council, to leave while swearing to do no harm, be bound, or die.  Either way, the contracts are done with.”

The woman panted for breath, slumping against a wall.  She shook her head.

“Cooperate, leave with an oath, be bound, or-”

“Kill then,” the woman said.

Verona flexed the one claw.  She only had another minute.  Maybe half that.  Then the strings would break, the spirit would lose shape, and Dish would have to return to her shrine to build up strength again.

Killing.  Frig.  Why did they have to make it hard?

“You don’t have it in you,” the woman said.  “I know people, I know expressions, I have to, to work.  You can’t-”

The Doom lunged.

The woman was slammed against and partially into the wall by the oily black mass.

The Doom opened mouths and pulled her in, swallowing her, a broken arm and broken leg pulled into the Doom’s mouth as it receded.  Slithering back into Matthew.

“You shouldn’t kill,” Matthew said, as he walked forward.  “Shouldn’t carry that.”

“Okay, well, sure,” Verona said.  “I’ll probably eventually have to.  If you don’t count what I did to Bristow as killing.”

“I don’t, and let’s put that off, okay?” he asked.

Verona shrugged, then adjusted her sweater collar.

“Resident?” Verona asked.  “What do you think?”

“I’ll talk to the council.”

“Good.  Get your guys to stand down?”

“Yeah,” the Resident replied.  He motioned.

Patients and the civilians who would’ve eventually become patients relaxed some.  The orderlies had to hold the patients back.  Some had gotten hurt while out of breath, letting their guard down around the patients.

Verona looked over at the two remaining Others.  The ulcered one and the one who she had a questionable read of.

“We’ll cooperate,” the ulcered one said, sounding very normal and everyday for someone who looked like he had two plagues at once.

“Looks like the Vice Principal is ready to go to war,” Matthew said.

Verona took a step back and to the side to be able to look out the window in the direction of the school.

Sure enough, they were all out there.

Verona freed her hand, letting the spirit out.  She firmly shook her hand to help shake Dish loose, then winced, rubbing at her palm.

“Let’s give them a show then.  March our guys out the front door.  And play it up.  A lot of those guys are kids, you really can’t be too corny,” Verona said.

“Noted,” Matthew replied.

Verona gave Tashlit a one-armed hug as she reunited with her friend, before collecting her bag.

Glancing back at Matthew, she could see as the moment passed, the distraction no longer a distraction.  The thought had no doubt crossed his mind, like it was crossing hers.

Gotta go home now.  Or deal with the lack thereof.

A thought that made her want to do this again, pushing, getting away, getting out, doing something actually freaking productive.

Same page as you, Matthew.  Different scales of intensity though.

It was a hard and bitter circumstance, to be caught trying to change the mind of someone like this.  Whether it was Edith’s imagined future, her dad’s imagined past, or this Resident’s imagined reality where he thought he stood a chance, they lived in fantasy, in delusion.

The delusion would always win until reality got too in their face, whether that was a social line crossed while a CAS worker could hear, iced tea thrown in their face, or a liberal asskicking.  If that stuff even worked.

“We’ll figure this out somehow,” Verona said, quiet, to Matthew, to herself, and to Kennet.

Tashlit set a soggy hand on her shoulder, in solidarity and agreement.

“We gotta,” Verona added, rubbing at her palm.

Next Chapter