Playing a Part – 15.6
Author: Wildbow

Playing a Part – 15.6 | Pale

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Lucy put a shovel into the dirt, using the blade to cut a square shape out of the grass, then lifted that square off to the side.  She poured out a layer of grit and smoothed it out to be even.

Is there… is there a body inside?

Of who?  John?

Yes.  I thought- could we bury him?  Unless all of you had another idea?

No.  There’s no body.  You were close?

Sorry.  I won’t prod.  There’s nothing.  I guess if you had his flesh you could revive him, and not allowing that’s part of the rules.

They left enough of freaking Yalda behind to let Charles do something with her.

Ronnie.  Easy.

Well fuck them then, huh?

Yeah.  Fuck a lot of this.

“Earth to Lucy!”

Lucy looked up, then quickly stepped back, pulling the shovel away from the shallow square indent.

Mia, carrying a paving stone, worked her way closer, got on her knees, and set the stone into the shallow hole.  She tested it for wobble, then smiled.  “Nice.  Perfect fit.”

“Lot of time with Verona, working on… pretty varied projects.  You get a sense of space.”  Fitting chalk drawings onto walls and inside a room.

“Weird art friends are great.”

“So long as you’re implying it’s a good weird.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Mia said.  She climbed to her feet, taking Lucy’s hand for the added help, then groaned, taking her time to straighten her back.  “Man.  I hope I’m recovered by Monday.”

“Yeah.  Sorry I’m going easier-”

“No way, don’t apologize.  At least you’re helping.  Unlike Sharon.  And Hailey.  Fuck Hailey.”

“Come on.  It’s been months.  I’m pretty sure she’s learned her lesson,” Lucy said.  “Move on?”

“Move on?” Mia asked, groaning and gritting her teeth as she twisted her back a little.  “Were you abducted and replaced, Lucy E?”

“With all the other crap that happened this summer, I wouldn’t rule that out as a thing.”

“One of these days you’re going to tell me more of that.”

“Maybe.”

“Those guys at least got to reap the benefits.  I paid more than my share for our New York trip.  This is me repaying my parents.  They should be begging to help.”

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  She looked over at Mia’s parents, who were sitting on the patio with iced tea and crosswords, wearing sunglasses.  They waved.

They were about halfway to making a line of patio stones that made a path from the back porch to the greenhouse at the far end of the property.  Stakes and string Mia’s dad had done marked out the route.

“Sorry to invite you over to hang and then rope you into this.”

“At least they offered to pay me some.”

“I bet they wouldn’t have offered to pay Sharon and Hailey.”

“Well,” Lucy started, stopped, and struggled to think of a good response.  “They got the benefits from the trip. So it’s like they were paid already.”

“Yeah.  Fuck them.  Seriously.  We’d be done already if there were four of us.”

Lucy put the shovel into the dirt, trying not to fall back into the imagery of digging a shallow grave.  The necklace shifted, and she was struck by the imagery of John straightening up, in the midst of her trying to convince him not to enter that fucking Arena.  Reaching up to touch it.  Reasserting his resolve.

“Verona’s dad would pull this.  Almost on purpose, though.  ‘Why don’t you invite Lucy over?’  Then when I was over there, ‘now do some landscaping and build a stone wall around the garden.  It’ll only take five minutes.'”

“How does building a stone wall only take five minutes?”

“Yeahhhh.  He didn’t pay me either.  I think Verona was more annoyed than I was and I was pretty damn annoyed.”

“Now I feel bad, poking an old wound.”

“No, no, no.  This is fine.  Really.  I wasn’t doing much.  I like having the company.  I might have to leave on short notice though.”

“Expecting a call from Wallace?”

“Oh, uh, no.  Just errands.  Responsibilities,” Lucy said.  She set the shovel into the grass and stepped on it to cut through.

“Sharon and I were talking about what might happen if Wallace doesn’t come back.  Like a lot of people are doing.”

“Is there- did he say anything that says he’s not coming back?” Lucy asked.

“No!  No.  Don’t worry.  Haven’t heard anything.  But we thought like… Wallace is alright, but who else could you end up with, you know?”

“I’m not sure I want to talk about that,” Lucy said, sticking the shovel into the grass again.  “Actually, let me rephrase, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to.”

“He’s the first guy I’ve liked.  Not the first guy I, like, thought looked nice.”

“That’s sweet.  And boring.”

“It’s not boring at all.  That’s the cool thing about it.”

“Ugh, being all cool and responsible and stuff,” Mia complained.

“I thought that was why you wanted to hang with me.  You’ve got the immature kids, and the kids who’re growing up a bit, being good to each other…”

“Yeah yeah.  But Amadeus bailed on us and I kinda want to be immature and lame for a bit.”

“You’ve got George for that.”

“Yeahhhh.  But Amadeus is the kind of guy, I could see him going five different directions, you know?  Different jobs he might do or places he might end up, and kicking ass at all of them.  He was interesting and smart and I liked being around that.”

“Yeah.  I can see that.”

“I don’t get that with George.  He’s nice, he’s pretty, he’s fun.  But I could see him becoming a lawyer, I could see him working with his dad, I could see him getting stuck in Kennet, no interest in University.  I could see him ending up worse than stuck in Kennet.”

“Like how?” Lucy asked.  She suspected how.

“I dunno.  Drinking too much, doing other stuff.  I remember Hailey’s uncle was like that.  Grew up here, living in the moment.  Living the sort of life where you have a lot of opportunities to make some decisions that screw up your whole life?”

“Drugs?”

Mia looked back at her parents and nodded.  “We really looked up to him, as little kids.  Hailey especially.  Fun guy.  Until he got in trouble.  Apparently just barely scraped by and avoided getting the sort of charges that really limit the sort of work you can do.  Feels like George is like that.  Same place, lots of opportunities to screw up.”

“Hailey’s uncle became a cop, right?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, shit, you’ve got a good memory.”

Lucy shrugged.

“You?  I see you going good places.  Paying attention to stuff, good memory, good grades.  Good heart, digging holes for me.”  Mia gave Lucy a pat on the cheek.

Lucy wrinkled her nose and scrunched up her face.  “Thanks but you just got grit from those stones on my face.”

“Sorry hon,” Mia said, dusting off Lucy’s cheek.

“Speaking of, want to bring one over?  Not trying to get you to stop talking to me about stuff, just, let’s also work.”

“Yeah.”

Lucy finished preparing the spot while Mia went back to the stack of concrete paving stones and paused to talk to her parents.

“Means a lot,” Lucy said, as Mia carried the stone over.

Mia took a second to work her way down to a kneeling position, then slid the stone into the hole.  She looked up.  “Huh?”

“You saying you think I have a future.”

“Sure.  I mean, sure, I went with you and Wallace on that group date because heck yeah, not many people our age dating seriously, right?  But hearing you talk and stuff?  You’re good like Amadeus was good.  I’d date you if you were a guy.”

“Aw, thanks.”

Mia gave Lucy’s arm a light push.  “Hey!  You’re supposed to come back and say you’d date me if I was a guy.”

“I’m loyal to Wallace.”

“So boring.”

“And you just got grit on my sleeve right after getting it on my face,” Lucy said, brushing off the white-ish smudge.

“Been sitting in the garage for a while.  I bet there’s centipede eggs in there,” Mia joked.

“Not funny.”

“Spider eggs.”

“Definitely not funny.”

“On your face, they’ll burrow in…”

“Now you’re reminding me of Verona.”

“Pssh.”

Lucy waited until Mia’s back was turned and then hurried to get the rest of the grit off.

Lucy did another square.  Mia got another paving stone, and exclaimed, “Dad!”

He’d put a glass of lemonade on the flat of the stone.

“For Lucy,” he said.  He put another glass on top.  “And you.”

“That’s not helping!”

“Come on,” Lucy said.

Mia carried it over, being careful not to spill, and then Lucy plucked the glasses off the top.  Mia set the stone down, a little more sloppy than before.

“Lift and lower with your legs, Mia!” Mia’s dad called down from the porch.

“Ow,” Mia grunted.  She took her glass, groaning and rubbing at her back.

“It’s coming along.  Should look nice,” Lucy observed.

“My parents want to sell,” Mia said.  “It’s why we’re doing this.”

Lucy drank her lemonade, cup hiding her face, studying Mia to figure out what to say or do.

“Sucks.  I hope it doesn’t happen,” Mia said.

“Same, but it’s happening all over.”

“They think they’ll see if a place in the city pops up that’s cheap enough, which, like, good luck in this market, or if this place sells and opens up their options.”

“I’m betting the place in the city will happen first.  Kennet is a bit ass.”

“But it’s our ass, you know?” Mia asked.

“Yeah.  At this point I’ve been through so much with Kennet, I don’t know how I could let it go.”

“Losing your dad and stuff?  Sorry if that’s-”

“Yeah, and no.  It was a while ago.  Hits me out of the blue once in a long while that he won’t be around for my eventual wedding or whatever, or I can’t talk to him about boys.  Or that my mom’s mostly on her own.  But besides that it’s fine.  Don’t step on that.  You dropped the stone on a bit of grass so it’s not flat.”

“Oh crap.”

It also hits me out of the blue that Paul is gone, Lucy thought to herself.

“Dig your fingers in there, in the dirt with possible spider and centipede eggs.  Lift it up.  Don’t drop it on my fingers while I get the clump.”

“Ha ha ha.  I should, you joking like that.”

“Seriously.”

And it hits me sometimes that my dad’s dad spends more time flying down to Florida where it’s warm but never comes out here to spend time with us, and John is gone, and Guilherme is losing it…  adds up to a whole lotta hits coming out of the blue, by now.

Mia used water from a tap by the garage to rinse off her hands, and Lucy followed suit.  They returned to their lemonade, which they’d left poised on top of the wooden fence posts.

Lucy was in the middle of drinking when she saw Rook on the street, approaching.  Rook wore the guise of an old woman wearing black, the usual charms and trinkets gone.

“I think I gotta go,” Lucy said.

“Aww.  Is that your grandmother?  I know you said one of them was white.”

“No.  She’s just a person I help out sometimes.  She helps me out too.  Got my mom out of a bad work situation once.  She’s a badass.”

“Damn, cool.  I want to be a badass like her when I grow up.”

“Goals,” Lucy said.  She got her stuff and hurried over to the gate.  As she did, Mia’s parents got up, and Rook decided to stop at the sidewalk, a driveway’s length away.

“Here,” Mia’s dad said.  “For the hard work.”

“Oh, you don’t have to-” Lucy protested, hands up.

He pressed a twenty into her hand.  $20 for forty-five minutes of work?

“Thank you for being a friend to Mia, showing up to help out.  If only all her friends were so polite and helpful.”

“You’re so embarrassing, ugh!  It’s like you’re paying her to be my friend.”

“I’m just glad you’re interacting with people who expand your horizons,” Mia’s mom said.

Lucy’s eyes widened a bit.

“Beyond dance and gymnastics,” Mia’s dad hurried to add, glancing at Mia’s mom.

“That’s what I meant,” Mia’s mom said.

“Uh yeah.  Sure.”

“So embarrassing.  Go, before they ruin things.  Enjoy time with the old badass.”

“Shh!  Don’t say that loud enough she could hear you,” Lucy said.  She let herself out through the gate.  “We should hang out later.”

“Without chores, for sure,” Mia said, glancing over at her parents.

Lucy hurried over to Rook, nervous.

“You’re back.  What happened?”

“There are no emergencies, but time is tight.  I was hoping to borrow you.”

“Borrow?  Like-?”

“I need a job done.  You’re aware I have an agent in Musser’s organization?  Holding a Lordship not far from Thunder Bay.”

“Yeah.  Bridge.”

“Who is occupying the body of a practitioner called Basil Winters.”

“Bit sketchy.”

“Basil is- was a professional thief, who finds and steals artwork and information of a sort that couldn’t be reported to authorities.  Things looted in wartime, things acquired by way of other thieves, studies done in-company and then not released because the findings were damaged.”

“But to possess him?  Eesh.”

“It won’t have to be for much longer.  He isn’t hurt and we aren’t putting him in mortal danger.  And by doing this we can keep Musser from asserting his claim.  A reality that would do far more harm to many, many Others and more than a few innocents and practitioners.  If Musser succeeds, he’d come after Kennet in the final throes of that success.  He would likely win.”

Lucy sighed.  “And what am I doing?  You want me to go to Thunder Bay?  Or near?  To help Basil?”

“No.  I want you to step in and help me stop someone else from reaching Basil.  You’re allowed to say no.  The risk is minimal, our target isn’t a fighter.  You’d travel to the detour portion of the highway.  We can tether you to Kennet so you can venture to the very limits of Kennet’s knotting.  You wouldn’t have total leeway, but you’ll have some.”

“I really don’t want to leave Kennet.  I know the odds are slim but there’s still some chance that things with the Family Man accelerate.  If I’m not around or checking in, there could be a hundred childbirths and a ritual mass murder that explodes his power base or something.”

“Matthew is keeping an eye on that.  Along with Pipes and Grandfather.  They’re good for one another, they’re competent.”

“Why not send Matthew?”

“Because our target is slippery.  Matthew is overwhelmingly strong, but he’d have one shot, I think.  One chance to deliver a massive blow that cuts off her ability to get to Bridge, and there’s a good chance he’d miss.  You have a variety of practices and that affords you more opportunities to catch her.”

“Do you want me to kill her?  Because the way you’re talking about Matthew…”

“I don’t.  Which is one more reason I don’t want to use Matthew.  Catch her.  Hopefully we can redirect her elsewhere.  You would have help, Toadswallow and the Dog Tag Doe included.  You need to decide soon if you’re going to help me so I can make other plans if you’re unable.”

“I’m- I don’t have enough information.  Like who is she, what is this, how, why?”

“Do you trust me?”

“I- some?  Mostly?  I feel like if I say straight ‘yes’ I’ll get a catch of an answer, which means yes would be a lie.”

“I’ll keep my answers short and I hope that ‘some’ trust extends to fill in the rest.  Her name is Marlen Roy, she’s a childhood friend of Basil and by all reports she has very good instincts.  The Carmine Exile gainsaid her for eighty-six days.  Without practice she evaded his attempts to stop her, then later sought him out and argued him down to four gainsayings.  She has just recovered her practice and Musser is back to using her to run messages between his Lordships that can’t be traced by technomancy or augury.  The night Bridge captured Basil, she left early, giving us the opening.  Now she’s going back to him.  She’ll want to spend some time with him, and she’s equipped to see through the ruse.”

“Okay, well-”

“Let me finish.  She’s a drifter.  You’ve read about the Lost?  You’re partially informed?”

“Yeah.”

“And city magic?”

“Yeah.”

“She utilizes parts of both.  She is a mote of dust in the wind that evades your grasping hand, augmenting herself and altering environment.  She’ll be on an enchanted motorcycle and she’ll have any number of tricks ready.  Slipping by is what she focuses on, practice-wise.  You’ll also have the handicap that we want you to maintain a disguise.  We’re confounding the area and the placement of Kennet relative to that stretch of highway, we don’t want her being delayed or redirected to feel like it comes from Kennet.  Now, how are we doing on you possibly accepting this task?”

“I still have questions.”

“Ask.”

“Morally- still not super great on the Bridge-Basil thing, if I’m honest, and I’d be even less great about you doing the same thing to her, if that’s the plan.”

“It isn’t.  And morally, if it helps, she is not a good person either.  She is a longtime associate and enabler of the Musser family, a graduate of the Blue Heron-”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.  It’s not a good thing, but we know plenty of decent people from there.”

“It is only a fact about her that paints a picture.  Shortly after graduating one of the first pieces of cargo she ferried was a young man who fled an arranged marriage.  She tied him up, drove him back, and he was forced to marry.”

“What the fuck?” Lucy asked.  “That’s a thing?”

“I thought that might strike a chord with you.  For full disclosure, the marriage is a happy one now, but that is the sort of thing that she does.  She ferries drugs, weapons, Others, humans, magic items, and she manages information more questionable than all of those things put together.  Our current plan is merely to give her something else to do for a while.  Possibly injure, probably destroy her vehicle.  Any and all of those plans mean she’s no longer ferrying things for Musser.  Morally, I feel us stepping in to hurt and hamper her is grounded.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “I still don’t like going this far away from the Family Man.  Verona trusted me with it.  And Verona’s trust is both fragile and important.”

“I can handle some of that.  We don’t think anything will happen there today, but I can devote resources to it.”

“And you’re not dealing with Marlen because-?”

“Because I tried to stop her once and I failed.  She’ll anticipate the same tricks next time around, and the remainder of my abilities and tricks are too Oni-specific.  If I used those, Musser would likely know Kennet was involved and he might decide to retaliate.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  She frowned.  “Alright, sure.  I can’t make any promises.”

“If you can’t manage it, we’ll have another shot, calling Avery or Verona to intercept.”

“I don’t want to interrupt their time together.  Knowing them they’re probably in the middle of something.”

“We don’t want to interfere either.  Miss once told me that everything you three do is for Kennet and after seeing the sacrifices you’ve been willing to make, I now believe her.”

Sacrifices.  John.

Lucy looked out across Kennet.  “I should go home, get specific stuff.”

“They’ll come to you, and take you there.  Toadswallow knows where to go.”

Lucy nodded.

She hurried home.  Mia’s place was at the nicer part of town near where Paul had lived with his mom, and wasn’t all that far from Lucy’s house, even though it wasn’t an area she came to that often.  It was hard to shake the recollection of the Family Man’s territory from her head, as if moving through streets that were familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time was pushing a button in her skull, bringing the idea to the front of her mind.

She let herself in.  “Hi mom, leaving soon!  Just getting things!”

“Okay!  Back before dinner!”

“I’ll call if I can’t get back easy!”

“Back before dinner!” her mom repeated, more serious.

Lucy kicked off her sneakers, headed straight up the stairs to her room, and put her bag on her bed.

She powered up her laptop, just to see if Wallace had emailed.  He’d said something about roaming charges being why he couldn’t call.  No email.  It felt disorienting to care as much as she did, when they’d, what, hung out?  Watched part of a movie, played some video games, went out to fast food?  Got ice cream sandwiches at the convenience store and sat by the water?

Yet she needed him to be okay.

There was a jar from Verona.  Lucy grabbed that.  ‘Down to earth’ ball from Avery.  She got that too.  She hoped she wouldn’t have to use both.  Some of the stick arrangements that evoked specific shrine spirits.  She got two.  Most of what she had on her already was stuff that she thought she’d need if the Family Man situation erupted.  She put some of that aside.  There were a few curses that were meant for the leader of that creepy little compound, that she hoped would bring him low in the eyes of his people.

Not as appropriate for going after this motorcycle woman.

She left behind her mask, as well.  If the others were going to disguise her, she didn’t need it.  A fox mask would only leave a clear trail back to Kennet.

She quickly changed, pulling on clothes that didn’t have dirt on them, then went downstairs, bag over her shoulder, heart pounding in her chest.  She heard a honk on the street when she was nearly at the base of the stairs.

“Where are you going, who with, and can I reach you?” her mom asked, stepping out of the living room.

“Uggggh.”

Her mom leaned against a doorframe.  “I’m working late, I want to see you for dinner before I go out.”

“I’m home all alone tonight?”

“Is that okay?”

“It’s-” Lucy started.  She didn’t want to lie.  “Should work out.  Mia was saying she wanted to hang out later.”

“And I want to meet Mia.  Who are you going with?”

Wish I’d done a connection blocker.  “Just people.”

Her mom folded her arms.

“I’m trying to stay occupied while Verona’s gone.  I’m being good.”

“Do you even know their names?  Was that honk outside them?  Are they driving age?  Picking up my fourteen year old daughter?”

“Oh my god, mom.  No, pretty sure they aren’t teenagers.”

Lucy opened the door, fishing in her pocket for a note she could draw a quick connection blocker on.  Her mom followed her.

Lucy stopped in her tracks as she saw who’d arrived.

The car was an old beater, in the sense that it looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to it at one point in time, and then it had been treated worse.  Cars were meant to withstand weather and this car looked like it had been covered in interior house paint, not actual car paint.

Standing by the passenger side window was Bracken.

“He looks sixteen,” Lucy’s mom said, as she stood behind Lucy.

“That’s Bracken, he’s new and he’s in my class.”

“Are you still dating Wallace?”

“Happily, avidly, loyally.  Wait, do you mean you think there’s something between me and Bracken?”

“Is there?”

“There is absolutely not.  I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

“Why are you getting in a car with someone who hates you?”

“I don’t know!  I don’t know if he’s coming, I didn’t know he’d be here!”

“Let’s go say hi?”

“Mom,” Lucy protested.

“Come on.  You’re fourteen and I’m paranoid.”

“Mom, don’t.  Please, this is awkward.  You’ll just cause problems.”

Her mom stepped back inside, put on shoes, and then headed out.  Lucy tried to block her.

Please be Doe in the front seat.  Please be Doe in the front seat.  Please be Doe in the front seat.

Lucy was following her mom across the lawn when she saw Doe walking over from the direction of the bridge.

Please don’t be Toadswallow in the front seat.  Please don’t be Toadswallow in the front seat.  Please don’t be Toadswallow in the front seat.

Bracken smirked as Lucy and her mom walked around the car to the driver’s side window.  It was tinted, and started rolling down as they walked up.

Reggie.  Rook’s helper.

Lucy suppressed a sigh of relief.

“Hi Reg,” Lucy greeted them.

“Didn’t expect the momquisition,” Reggie said.  “Hi Mrs. Ellingson.”

“Who are you, why hasn’t my daughter told me about you, and where were you planning on taking her?”

“Ah,” Reggie replied.  “Reggie, that’s Bracken out there, and that’s Doe walking over.”

“Relative?  She’s older.”

“Younger than she looks,” Reggie said.

“So is Bracken, apparently?”

“Fourteen,” Bracken said.

Reggie leaned out of the window.  “Doe’s leaving town, heading over to Thunder Bay.  We were talking about gifts and Lucy helping to pick some music.”

Lucy seized on the thread.  “I thought it would be nice to do something for Wallace.”

“And how did you meet?”

“Class,” Bracken said.  “I was introduced.”

“Okay, um,” Lucy’s mom said.  “No.”

“Mom!”

“No, not when I don’t know you, not when I haven’t heard of you.  If my daughter wants to buy a gift and have it delivered, I can do that with her.”

“Alright, okay,” Reggie said.  “Crap, should we make alternative plans?”

“No, I’ll get in touch.  I can handle my end of things,” Lucy said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she replied.  She looked up at her mom.  “I can text them advice, right?”

“Yes.  But I think it’s best if you and I handle sending any gifts.”

Lucy sighed.

“Very nice to meet you guys.  Maybe we could get to know each other in the near future?  Introduce yourselves some before taking my daughter out?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“Sure,” Bracken said, smiling.  Lucy gave him her best dirty look.

“We should get going,” Reg said. “If I don’t hear from you in ten minutes, I guess we should assume you’re out?”

“I’ll get back to you soon,” Lucy said.

“Come on,” her mom said.

Lucy groaned.

Bracken and Doe climbed into the car, and the car drove away.  Lucy hurried back to the house.

“I know you’re annoyed-”

“Embarrassed.”

“-But I’ve been telling you for a long time now about trusting your instincts.  If a situation or a stranger gives you a bad feeling, you should follow that feeling.  Fear is often founded, even if you can’t pinpoint what it is.  And several of those people, all of those people gave me the heebie jeebies.”

“They’re okay,” Lucy said, as she went inside, venturing partway up the stairs.

“Including the boy who was practically sneering at you?  Bracken?”

“He’s good to his brother.  He might not like me and he might not be my favorite personality, but I like a good big brother.”

“Okay, but… that car had a smell to it that had me nauseous standing outside.  I can’t imagine you spending more than a minute in there…”

Toadswallow?

Lucy’s mom went on, “…I’ve smelled a ruptured abscess.  That’s when pus accumulates inside the body, swells up.  An abscess can get to be the size of a basketball, smelling like something died and rotted-”

“Okay, mercy, uncle, stop.  I don’t need the medical stories.”

“-and that car smelled worse.  Burned plastic, burned sugar, body fluids, smoke.  I can’t decide if it smells like a meth den or a rancid slaughterhouse.  That didn’t look, sound, or smell like a safe ride.”

“Gross.  I’m going to my room.”

“We could go shopping for that gift.  Before dinner?”

“I’m kind of really annoyed.  I love you and I love that you care, but I’m also annoyed that this got in the way.”

“I hope you’ll understand at some point.”

Lucy hurried up to her room.  She shut the door firmly and locked it, then she hauled her window open.

She didn’t have a ton of glamour.  If she used too much more then she’d have to go back to Guilherme for more.  She didn’t want to go back to Guilherme for more.

Still, it was apparently an emergency.

Lucy fixed up a connection block that would buy her some time between now and dinner, then used the glamour with some feathers Verona had given her.  She was pretty sure Verona had hunted and killed some birds while in cat form.

Not taking the time to distinguish some small black feathers from a blue jay from the medium black feathers of a crow, Lucy instead donned the shape of a generalized bird.  She flew out the window, bringing her stuff with.

She spotted the car, parked by the same road out of Kennet that Clementine, Daniel and the other, Aware Sharon had come in from, then swooped down, checking the coast was clear before ducking down by one side.

She shook off the glamour, then stood straight.

“Your mom caught me off guard,” Reggie said, trying to drive while keeping their head out the window to better be able to breathe.  Doe and Bracken were doing something similar.

“Sorry.  Me too, if that counts.”

“We should go.  You should probably ride, or the tether won’t work.”

“Tether?”

Reggie slapped a hand against the dash.

The old, slightly melted cassette player belched out something between fryer grease and blood.  Spindly legs stuck out of the ooze, waving.

“Hey, Montague,” Lucy said.  “Monty’s our tether?”

“A bit of a rough connection between Kennet and us.  He’s pretty okay at working inside folded and knotted spaces.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Lucy pulled the back door open.  A dent that intersected the door and the side panel of the car made it scrape a bit as she opened it.

“Is this safe?”

“It’s got a Montague inside it,” Reggie said, patting the dash.

“Self-driving cars expected to be on the road by- -Today!” the radio buzzed, switching stations to find the words.

I don’t know if that should make me more or less worried.

She climbed into the back seat, manually rolling down the window.  If it had smelled of burning plastic, sugar, and bodily fluids before, it didn’t anymore.  It smelled more like that awful wet cat food Melissa cracked open for Sir on one of their visits, if that smell could crackle its way to the back of her nose, with a blunter smell of warm garbage.

Doe was in the passenger seat, Reggie driving, with Toadswallow sitting on the hump with the cup holders between them, covering his nose.  Toadswallow took in a breath, snorting.  With his nose covered, his voice was nasal as he said, “Afternoon Lucy dear.”

“Afternoon, Sir Toadswallow.  Afternoon Montague.  Reggie, Doe, Bracken.  Didn’t expect you all to come.”

“More bodies can’t hurt, right?” Reggie asked.  “Rook wants me to give her the direct report, anyway, and Doe wanted to get some weapons.  Someone had to drive, in case an innocent peeked inside the window.”

“Good call.  I was worried my mom-” Lucy coughed as the atmosphere inside the vehicle abruptly changed.  Something like spoiled milk mingled with old person urine.  She wasn’t sure why her mind jumped straight to old person urine, but it did.  She stopped coughing, leaned out the window to breathe, and it wasn’t clear enough.  She coughed again.  Her eyes watered.

“Your mom?” Reggie asked.

“That she’d end up talking to Sir Toadswallow.”

“Ah, do you think I could sweep her off her feet?” Toadswallow asked.  “I’m taken, sadly.”

“Uhhh.”

“I might have the body shape of a shopping bag filled with leaking diapers, but I do have my charms.”

Lucy started to laugh, then regretted it as it got her coughing again.

“We don’t have far to go,” Reggie said.  “I’m glad Montague can mostly drive himself, because my eyes keep fogging up.”

“Hit the road this fall with the brand new -zzt- slasher horror cinematic -bbz- infestation problems.”

“Don’t forget gentleman,” Lucy added.

The radio buzzed happily.

Lucy watched as they passed the construction going on on the main highway, around the road into Kennet.  It apparently made passage through a glacial crawl, which was mostly separate from the fact it took a day to get into Kennet.  Cars had to wait five to ten minutes for people to pick up their things, move out of the way, and for the area to be checked before they could crawl by at five miles an hour.  Maybe that slow traffic area was a way to adjust the finer bits of timing.  If someone had taken twenty-three hours to get this far, then the road here could delay things that extra hour.

“Did you get out okay?” Reggie asked.  “Your mom sounded pretty firm.”

“I snuck out, but if the car’s atmosphere sticks, I might get caught right away,” Lucy said.  “Sorry Montague.”

“Bzzt- All’s well with Allswell Insur-“

The volume tapered off.

The back seat had an armrest that could fold into the seat.  It popped down with a spray of fluids, and what looked like a spiderweb made of veins stretching between it and the void leading to the trunk.  Lucy nearly jumped out of her skin.

She’d just barely caught her breath and reminded herself it was Montague when a many-jointed spidery limb jabbed its way out and through into the back area of the car, making her jump again.  If she hadn’t been belted in, she might have crawled onto the floorspace where her feet were.

It shuddered and twitched, with more of the veiny webwork stretching across the joints like the membrane of a bat.

Bracken, pressed back against the door and the window, snickered.

“Don’t laugh.  You jumped too.”

“You’ve known it for longer,” Bracken said.

“Him,” Lucy said.  “And just about anyone would jump at that.  Hey Monty, what’s up?”

The narrow limb with the sharp tip and the scabrous flesh instead of chitin tracked her hand as she moved it.  She pulled her hand back into her lap.

“Maybe… can we do without the spindly, multi-jointed, spider type stuff?” she asked, voice strained from the coughing.  “Do you have any control over that?”

“Come this saturday and see for yourself!” the radio blared.

The smell in the car shifted into a kind of meaty haze, complete with specks of something black in the air, like infinitesimally small flies, and a fermented cigarette smell.

A bloody hand sprung from the trunk area to the back seat, but she was at least partially braced for it this time.

Tracking her hand.  She lifted it up, and Montague gave her a small high-five.

Her skin crawled despite her best attempts.  “Thanks Montague.”

“The highway’s not far,” Reggie said.

They were out of Kennet.

“So what’s the plan?” Lucy asked.

“We were hoping you could tell us that,” Doe said, speaking up for the first time.  “I was going to shoot at the tires, but I’m told that won’t work.”

“I think our first witch of Kennet would prefer not to kill,” Toadswallow said.  “Forcing an accident might do that.”

“Are we really doing the whateverth witch of Kennet thing?” Lucy asked.

“We’ll discuss that later.  Rook thought you were best equipped here.  Let’s explore why,” Toadswallow said.  “I’m at your full disposal.  Oh.  And here.”

Toadswallow passed her a mask.

Lucy went to check in the rearview mirror, but realized the mirror was cracked.  It gave her an incomplete picture.

She put on the mask, and it was as if her hair had been poised in the air, suspended by gravity, and now fell to earth.  Straight, midnight black, and supple.  When she looked in the mirror, her eyes glowed faintly.

Her clothes had changed too.  Her shirt had holes in it and she had a belt of knives around her waist.  When she tugged on the knives, they didn’t come free.  Too bad.  Her skin was a much lighter brown.

“I’ll be out of sight,” Toadswallow said.  “Montague can’t do too much that’s overt.  His main job is giving us a line back to Kennet that doesn’t take a full day.”

“Things to-” Lucy started, before coughing again.  Her voice sounded different, and it wasn’t the toxic atmosphere.  “Things to avoid.  Two big ones.  First of all, we don’t want to get stranded with Kennet a day away.”

“No,” Toadswallow agreed.

“Not with the Family Man active.  And second, we don’t want to let her past.  That gets in Verona and Avery’s way.”

“I asked about the numbers, to help me decide what to do, what to use,” Toadswallow said.  “Rook thinks if we or your friends can keep this gal from bothering Bridge, we could have up to a fifty percent shot at ousting Musser.  But if we don’t?  Gets harder.  One in ten.”

“No pressure, huh?”

“Pressure,” Toadswallow growled, before coughing.

“Surely someone else could pull this off?  He’s angered enough people.”

“I do believe those numbers are with all the people he’s upset, miss Ellingson,” Toadswallow replied.  “If we can hold onto this advantage, we can work with those people.”

“Hmmm.  I’ve got some spirits, I’ve got something that can probably knock out her protections… but that’s kind of a… I don’t know what the word is.  It’s ironic, you know, because I can knock out her protections but I have to hit her with it, but her protections make her hard to hit, apparently?”

“Yes,” Toadswallow said.

“Coming up on the spot,” Reggie said.

“Do we know when she’s coming?” Lucy asked.

“No.  Not exactly.  But Rook thought she’d be… ten minutes from now.  Could vary.”

“Feels like my life is made up of deadlines with terrible consequences,” Lucy said.  “And boring ones.  Carmine contest, school test, school paper, project, boyfriend leaves for the hospital, deranged pregnancy murder cult, test, homework, some motorcycle girl coming past, ready to screw up bigger plans.”

“Sweet little Ramjam was offering to put nails in your beau until he felt better,” Toadswallow told her.

“That would probably be a bad idea.”

“So I told him.”

The detour road ran roughly parallel to the highway, and had a ditch on the one side, and intermittent trees on the other.  It was hilly ground, but the view of what was coming was fairly straight.  They’d have some warning.

Which might mean their target would too.

“What was her name?  Marlene Roy?”

“Marlen,” Toadswallow said.  “Like the fish, but with an ‘e’.  That’s the letter ‘e’, not the drug.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about, Toad, but I get the impression a lot of those clarifications are rude.”

“Then I’m doing it right.  Some practitioners have an ear for the distinctions.  How to spell something by how it’s said.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“It’s necessary.  A little perk that helps keep a contract with an Other from going awry, usually obtained with careful attention or a small ritual.”

“Huh.”

Reggie parked on a patch of dirt where the trees partially hid the car.

Lucy quickly escaped the confines of the car.  She wasn’t the only one.

It felt bad, reacting so strongly to Montague, when Montague couldn’t help what he was.  He was a good sport about it, but that only made her feel a bit worse.

She could see where the car had left what looked like a thin dribble of oil behind it.  As she bent down to investigate, she saw little spider limbs and veins lift up.  Some were finer than hairs.  They joined individual drips together.

Their tether back to Kennet.

Ten minutes.  About.

“Last of my glamour.  I could use it for a transformation, but I could also use it for something like a… modified Nettlewisp trap.  High Summer Nettlewisp?”

“You do remember what happened when you used Dark Fall glamour to try to ride the sunlight?”

“Got burned.  It healed up fast, at least.”

“The same sort of backlash may happen if you use High Summer glamour to work a Dark Fall glamouring.”

“How much of this do you follow?” Bracken asked Reggie.

“Not much.”

Reggie was a fair bit older, being composed of two seventeen year olds and one thirteen or fourteen year old. It seemed like they were just old enough to drive.  They were wearing a flannel top with jeans, hair drawn back into a low ponytail, jeans, and tattered sneakers.

Bracken wore a black long sleeved shirt that didn’t look warm enough for the temperature, which was maybe five degrees Celsius.  It was the sort of temperature where t-shirts were doable, but only if active.  He at least had jeans and boots.

They weren’t going to be active.  Not for a bit.  This was a bit of a waiting and preparation type of thing.

“Think about the court, Lucy,” Toadswallow advised.

Two cars zipped by.  Toadswallow retreated into the trees until they were out of sight.

“The court?”

“High Summer.”

“Right.  Uhhh… Dark Fall likes curses, traps, afflictions.  Nettlewisp works with traps and the affliction of blindness, but you can weave curses into it.”

“Yes.  And High Summer?”

“Battle, adventure, bravery, challenge.”

“Adapt it, now.  Something being a trap is a matter of framing.”

Three people who were present were people she kind of wanted to respect her, for very different reasons.  Doe, Bracken, and Reggie were all individuals who didn’t get the practice, exactly, though Reggie might have been getting there, with an apprenticeship under Rook.

Impressing Bracken meant she wouldn’t disappoint Verona.  Impressing Reggie meant indirectly impressing Rook.  Impressing Doe meant living up to the standards of the Dog Tags.  Rescuing them had been John’s legacy.

The thought of John warred with what she was trying to parse in her head with the Nettlewisp.

She had to fight past the thoughts of John walking away from her failed attempt at a challenge, entering the Arena.

“If you need-”

“Sorry, can you just- a minute?” she asked, in a voice that the mask turned into someone else’s.

“Yeah.  Of course.  Sounds like you’re onto something.”

She nodded to him and to herself, thinking.  Catching on that scene with John again.  Him walking away…

“Trial by fire, light of the sun, duelist’s ire at cowards who run,” she proclaimed.

She was used to the others picking up where she left off.  But she was on her own, and her friends were mostly very far away.

“Chase their heels as I require, shine bright to blind and stun,” she went on.

She shaped it with her hands.

“Let heroes inspire, let cowards be shunned, I’ll have my challenge, a battle won.”

She turned, saw a yellow ‘slow: construction’ sign and tossed the glamour at it.  The yellow took on an amber hue.

It read ‘DUEL’ now.

She kept her hand extended.  “Stand down, until I’ve given my challenge.”

The sign reverted, but the bright colors swam on the rear side of it, reflecting amber light onto the trees behind it.

Two more cars passed.  Lucy waited until the coast was clear, then put down some yellow post-its with runes along the yellow line at the center of the road.  They were almost camouflaged.

“I can try shooting out the tires,” Doe said, as Lucy hurried back to safe ground, to let another car come barreling by.

“I thought you said that wouldn’t work?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know what else to do.  I’m a good shot, at least.”

John had a bit more imagination, Lucy thought.  “If it comes down to a fight, back me up?  Back us up?  I’m not sure many of us are the best in a brawl.  Though Rook did suggest this woman’s more of a runner than a fighter.”

Toadswallow addressed her from the woods.  “Someone that’s spent as much time thinking about how to avoid a fight as this one has has probably spent a lot of time thinking about what she might have to do if forced into one.”

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favor and don’t mention this to my kin, but I’m roughly of that type.”

“Not a fighter, Toad?” Lucy asked.  “I respect that.”

“I know you do.  But if I’m cornered, you’d best believe I won’t fold.  For one thing, I can’t.  I’m possessed of the physique of a grocery bag filled with sopping diapers, I remind you.”

“You’re really drilling that mental image into my skull, huh?” Lucy asked.

Toadswallow chuckled.

“If it comes down to a fight and she comes after you, I’ll do what I can,” Doe said.

“Thanks,” Lucy said.  “I’d appreciate that.”

The soldier nodded, blue eyes with a thousand yard stare turning to look east.  The direction Marlen had to come from if she would head toward Thunder Bay.  Or territory near Thunder Bay, anyway.

“What do I do?” Bracken asked.

Lucy shook her head.  “I don’t know.  Why did you come?”

“They thought more hands would help?  Offered to deal with the Family Man.”

We were going to have to do that anyway.

Lucy glanced into the trees, saw the light glinting off the monocle, and saw the smile.

Ulterior motives.  Maybe getting Bracken more on board.  Showing him what the greater picture around Kennet was about.

She wondered if that was a Toadswallow ploy or a Miss ploy.  Because she couldn’t forget that Toadswallow’s ploy had involved making Peckersnot kill, as a way of raising him up.  Or that Miss’s ploy had meant letting the Carmine die.

Two very different kinds of decision.

“Can you throw?” she asked.

Bracken nodded.

She got the ball out of her bag.  “Hit her with this.  Don’t kill her with it, but if you can tag her, it’ll put us in a good position.”

He caught the ball.

“You’ll want to power it,” Toadswallow said.

“Power?”

“Bit of your Self.  Spit works.  So does sweat, but it has to be earned sweat.  Blood is the usual way.  If it comes from your hand, that works too, but his?  He’s not Awakened.”

“I thought it’d be a magic item.”

She got her knife out of her bag, then nicked the back of a finger.  She walked over to Bracken and pressed the finger against the material of the ball.  “For Kennet.  For the security of Kennet’s people, above and below, for Other, for practitioner, for spirit, for Kennet’s dreams-”

She glanced at Toadswallow.

“-legacy-”

She looked at Doe.

“-and so it may have a future.”

She met Bracken’s eyes.

He tugged the ball out of her grip, then turned away, tossing it into the air and catching it.

“You’ve always been a fair hand with the speeches,” Toadswallow said.

“I guess.  We’ve got the ball, the battlewisp, some runes on the road, I’ve got some alchemical smoke, I’ve got spirits I can tap into.”

“I set some things in the woods.  Let me put something in the ditch.”

“Monty?” she asked.

“Maintain your ties to home with Signet greeting cardstzzzzz…”

“That’s helpful.  Do you think, uh, if she swings by, you could make a grab for her?”

“Rising steel prices due to tariffs have led to the closure of major plants for the motorcycle distributor…”

“The motorcycle?” she asked.  “I’m not as good at Verona as reading intent into some of this stuff.”

“He’ll nab it if he can,” Toadswallow said.  “But he’ll have to stay hidden.”

“Okay, right.  That’d be great.  Might make getting home harder if Monty’s got the bike and not the car.  But if we could strand her…”

“Indeed,” Toadswallow purred.

“Okay,” Lucy said.  She wasn’t sure what else to do.  She made sure she had everything.  Some of this would have to stay out of sight.  It was stuff Musser might recognize by description.

She needed to sell herself as more of a Hennigar type than anything.  Some random practitioner or Other who Charles might have empowered.

With the very last of the glamour, she dressed herself up to suit.  Barbed wire around the legs, red makeup, bloodstains on her clothes.  She made herself a bit taller.

“Two ninety nine…” Montague’s radio blared.

A car raced by.  Lucy leaned against a tree, arms folded to hide the blood.

She looked back at Montague in time to see a spidery limb snatch out from the window, grabbing a bird from a tree branch, and stuffing it under the hood.  There was a grinding sort of wet chewing sound, with only a single ‘peep’ from the bird in a moment where the hood lifted up enough to let sound escape.

“Two fifty…”

Freaking deadlines.

“You’ve been quiet, Sir Toadswallow.  You haven’t been around as much,” she told him.

“Indeed.  Trying to get things square enough.  I don’t want to make any major moves until I have a proper goblin sage.  Ramjam’s a good sort, but he won’t fill the niche I need.  I’m doing some work behind the scenes, lending some aid to my girl.”

“…For only one seventy-five!…”

“How are the Dog Tags, Doe?” Lucy asked, leg bouncing nervously.

“I’ve talked to a few who went out.  Those Lordship contests tug at something inside us.  It’s the sort of thing we’d normally answer.”

“…One and get one more with half off!”

“Because you serve War?”

“I guess.”

“Huh.  Maybe hold off on that?  Because a lot of those guys-”

“…One!”

“-are also really good at binding Dog Tags.”

“Then I really want to slap them down, put a bullet in them.”

“Dangerous.”

“Fifty percent off!”

“Grandfather thinks fear and a healthy respect for mortality is something that takes a while to develop in us,” Doe told Lucy.

“Well… work on that?”

“Mmh.”

“In stores now, now, now!”

Montague’s distorted radio boomed, squealed, then cut off.

“She did say it might not be exact,” Reggie said.

“Is this the sort of thing where it could take five minutes?  Fifteen?  An hour?  Five hours?”

“I don’t know.  I think she’d have phrased things in a different way if it was five hours.”

“But you’re not ruling out this wait being an hour?”

“No,” Reggie said.

“Hey Reg,” Lucy said.  “She treating you okay?”

“Yeah.  Why?”

“Just wondering.  I respect Rook a lot in a lot of ways.  Just curious what she’s like to… work with, I guess?”

“Work for, you mean?  Because you work with her.  You’re working with her right now.  I work under her.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Sure.  You know Reagan was going to go to college, eventually?  She wanted to get out of Kennet, learn stuff, figure out how to make her own difference in the world.  Had plans to go with her friends.  But they all had their demons.  Ones the Choir was supposed to fix.”

Reagan felt so long ago.  The one-eyed contestant in the Hungry Choir’s game, that first night.  “Her friend competed, right?”

“Yeah.  I don’t want to get into that.  The way I see it, if you go off to school, you have to endure a lot of crap.  Paying thousands, working your ass off, screwy schedules… and here I am, I’ve got a teacher with more experience in her field than a lot of professors have in theirs, world experience, she’s seen wars, she’s seen all sorts of Others.  She teaches me one-on-one.”

“Nice.  Sounds positive, like that.”

“We’ll see if anything comes of it.  I’d like to not be… this.”

“What part?”

“Being a parasite,” Reggie said.

“There!” Doe called out.

In the distance, someone rode a motorcycle.  Barely a speck.

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “She might be on the lookout for connections.  So… I know this sounds weird, but hold back your intent.  Don’t stand ready until you have to.  Don’t look directly at her, don’t be too prepared.”

These were things Guilherme had taught her.

There it was.  One of those out-of-the-blue wallops.  Smack to the heart.

There weren’t any incoming cars from that direction.  One coming from the other direction- would they pass by quick enough?  Or would they see the signs about construction?

Lucy used the weapon ring on a tree branch, forging a long-handled wood axe.  It wasn’t her usual weapon, but she didn’t want to be her usual self.  She had to be a duelist of not faerie style, but of fang and smoke, without showing too much fang or smoke.

In her other hand, she tucked one of the shamanism charms.  Engine Head.

The woman came closer.  Into a dip in the road between hills… Lucy kept her eyes on the woman’s general position as best as she could.  That would be a good time to divert, going off to one side.

And up from the dip, onto the flatter stretch of road.

Lucy looked more in the direction of Kennet, listened with the earring that was hidden by the mask, heard the approach-

And the car that was coming the other direction passed.

At the last possible moment, bracing herself as if she meant to get hit, Lucy strode out onto the highway.  Into the woman’s path.  She kept her hand on the Engine Head charm, just in case Marlen didn’t move to avoid her.

But Marlen Roy slowed, and in her effort to stop before getting too close, her tires skidded.  She put one foot down to the road.

Lucy hadn’t thought the woman would be able to stop in time, with the speed she was going.

From behind the clear visor of her helmet, she looked at Lucy, and at Reggie and Bracken, who stood off to the side.  The car was parked by the trees, a trail of crimson oil trailing across the road to its position.

Lucy, standing in the road, pointed the hatchet at the sign.  The letters dropped away, leaving only lines that solidified into a single word: ‘Duel’.

A swipe of the axe through the air scattered the fallen letters and flakes of paint and seeded more signs on either side of the road.

Bracken tossed the ball into the air and caught it.

And Marlen peeled out, back wheel fishtailing as she turned ninety degrees, then rode full speed into dense foliage.

“Shit,” Lucy swore.  She could hear the motorcycle and get a sense of where it was.  “She’s going around!”

Going through the trees faster than some cars can drive.

“On it,” Toadswallow croaked.

Toadswallow’s traps erupted.  Clouds of yellow-green gas rose higher than the treetops, chaining off one another in advance of Marlen’s approach, so she’d be riding into the worst of it.

The sound of the motorcycle shifted.

“She’s-” Doe said.

“Coming,” Lucy finished.  She judged the sound, then sprinted.

Lunging, she swung the two-handed wood axe out with just the one hand, because using two would have shortened her reach.

Green-yellow gas streaming off her, Marlen came blasting out of the trees at an angle, aiming for a point between Lucy and the sign.  Lucy’s weapon was already reaching out, and grazed Marlen’s shoulder.

The woman fell from her bike.

Except it wasn’t a fall.  It was a slip to the one side, an improbable shift of gravity that let the entirety of her weight hang off the bike, arm and hip tracing concrete as she made it tilt, turning sharply.  Narrowly avoiding driving into the ditch.

Lucy stomped on the runes she’d set up on the meridian.

They activated one after another.

Flashes of light and fire, shaking Marlen’s balance, but not shaking her off the bike.

And Montague, keeping most limbs out of sight of Marlen, did extend some out to trees on the side of him where she couldn’t see, and fast-reversed out onto the road, the butt end of a junker car obstructing the lane, horn blaring in a distorted, staccato way.

To disorient, to slow.  Unsuccessfully.  She swerved around him.

She was getting away.

Lucy hurried to grab the jar of alchemical smoke.

Marlen was a hundred feet away.

“Toss this after her!” Lucy called out, before hurling the jar of smoke into Monty’s open side window.

Two hundred feet away-

Marlen looked back at the group of them, and the signs erupted in light.  Each of them as bright as looking at the sun.  Marlen wavered more than she had at the explosions.

Battlewisp, targeting a coward who ran from a confrontation, Lucy thought.  The attention and justification fed the glamour, making it brighter.

But cars were coming.  This would hurt them.

Montague hurled the jar down the road, toward Marlen.  It flew about four hundred or so feet.

“And give me a ride!” Lucy called out.  She snatched up the glamour she could from the signs, tearing it away.  Something bright.  And she leaped partially into the window, one foot on the backseat, hand gripping the headrest of the passenger seat.  One leg dangled, and she hung halfway out, glamour in one hand.

Montague used limbs to help propel himself forward into the smoke.  Incoming cars had stopped on seeing the dense cloud, and Montague charged directly into it.

Lucy didn’t have her usual mask on, so she didn’t have her usual protection against smoke.

Montague wasn’t quite fast enough to catch up.  He could use his spidery legs to race forward faster while in the smoke, but that wouldn’t keep.  And then Marlen would pull away.

Lucy’s hand worked with glamour, shaping, finding the lines of the smoke.  She made the pinch-and-twist gesture for color, and she painted it all orange-red.  Fingers streaked her face, chest…

To the outside and innocent observer, a massive cloud of smoke had erupted with little warning.  Maybe they’d seen something fly through the air, but they wouldn’t have seen the particulars.

Then, within that smoke, they’d see the explosion erupt, filling up that cloud.  As if something within had caught.

A heatless, fireless explosion.  One without a shockwave, quick and bright.

Lucy used glamour to paint herself with light and explosiveness, and she chased that ripple, becoming the forefront of it.  Just as images could appear in clouds, there were hints of a face -the face of the mask she wore- in the midst of it.

Marlen, ducking low, eyes shielded, still recovering from blindness, glanced in her side view mirror.

She saw explosion-Lucy reaching from the right and veered left.  Avoiding the grasping hand.

Lucy let the weapon ring’s effect fall from the axe and hurled the stick, spinning, toward the back tire.  Glamour smudged it, and it came away from the explosion with orange-red blaze touching it, propelling it.

The movement of the tire kicked it up into the diagonal struts that attached the back end of the motorcycle to the wheel.  The stick was trapped there, end dragging, bucking wildly-

And Marlen struggled to control the bike.  But the struggle was weird.

It wasn’t until the bike bucked and slid out from under her and Marlen leaped into the air, landing in a decidedly odd way that Lucy got any idea of what was going on.  The maneuver earlier, with the odd shift in weight?  That had been Marlen’s normal.

It was the usual control over the bike and having it react like an ordinary bike did that was weird, and possibly practice-driven. It only became clear when Lucy saw that the woman didn’t take the fall hard, and even seemed to take the time to glance back at Lucy mid-fall, tumbling to the side of the road while the motorcycle skidded against pavement and came to a stop.

“Are you okay!?” a man shouted, as he climbed out of his car.  His hazard lights flashed behind his vehicle.

“I’m fine,” Marlen said.  She stared in Lucy’s direction, while Lucy remained in the cloud of smoke, post-explosion.  Marlen glanced at the man.  “Thank you for your-”

Montague came roaring out of the smoke, weirdness withdrawn, car interior dark, and drove over Marlen’s motorcycle before driving into a ditch.

“Jesus Christ crapping himself,” the man swore.

Marlen’s expression was hard to read.

I’m not going to let you help Musser.  I’m not going to let you become a problem for my friends, Lucy thought.

She reached behind her back, pulled one of the bundles of twigs and scrap, and snapped it.  Giving the signal.

The sticks worked best within Kennet, but they weren’t far from the perimeter.  It sucked that this was one of the southern shrines, and they were to the north of Kennet, but… she could feel him coming.

“Stay there, don’t move too much!  You might have a head injury!” the man shouted.  “I’m going to check on the car!”

He hurried to Montague, and banged on the driver’s-side window.  “Hello!?”

And Marlen immediately stooped down to the side of her bike, opened a side compartment, and pulled out something that looked an awful lot like an egg beater.  She shoved it into the most damaged part of the bike and began spinning it.  Metal churned and spat, and as she moved the egg beater through the bike, it left things fixed in its wake.

Her head turned as Grabsy moved through the ditch.

She looked back at Montague, and Lucy could see her eyes trace a path down that thin trail of Montague-stuff that tethered him and them to home.

Can’t let our way home get cut off.

It’s like we’re astronauts, a thin cable keeping us from floating off.

Lucy adjusted just a trace of the glamour.  She’d put blood on her shirt as a threatening measure and now she made it blood on her shirt for other reasons.  She stepped out of the smoke, coughing.  “Help!”

The man perked up.  “Miss!”

She coughed, staggering, putting the bike and the work Marlen was doing between him and her.  So the innocent was looking and Marlen couldn’t use that little bit of repair magic.

“Are you okay?” he asked.  “Don’t move.  Stay off the road.  Do you have any idea what happened?”

“I think that vehicle over there,” Lucy turned, looking back the way she’d come, “It had something in it.  It crashed.”

Sorry Monty.  I might be looking back through the smoke, but I mean you.  You definitely are something in that vehicle, and you did crash into a ditch.

“Jesus,” the man swore.  “Get clear of the smoke.  Don’t breathe anything in.  Are you burned?”

Lucy shook her head.

“Miss, if you’re okay enough to get up, can you check on that car?” he asked Marlen.

Marlen paced around her bike, not taking her eyes off Lucy.

“Miss?  Can you hear me?”

He reached for Marlen from behind, and she moved abruptly, pulling out of his grip before he could put a hand on her.  Even though she hadn’t even been looking in that direction.

She glanced back at the ditch, where Grabsy quietly lurked.  And then looked down and over at the ‘oil slick’ that Montague had left.  Little spider limbs reached in the direction of the motorcycle.

“We should get everyone and everything clear of the road,” the man said.

“Yeah,” Lucy said.  “Do you need help with your bike?”

“No,” Marlen replied.  She lifted it and very carefully walked it over toward the trees.  She was on the lookout for Grabsy, and stopped as she saw the branches rustle.

Montague, leaving the car behind to occupy something else.  Marlen couldn’t see what.

But he crept closer to where she’d carried the bike.

Lucy saw Miss, when Marlen didn’t.

This was it.  Miss behind her, Montague to her right, in the trees, Lucy in front of her, Grabsy to her left, in the ditch, across the road.  Innocence looking.

“Marlen Roy,” Miss said, from the trees.

Marlen half-turned, but didn’t see Miss.  Miss had shifted locations.

“Yeah?” Marlen asked.  She glanced back at Lucy.

“A letter written and signed by Basil Winters’ own hand is on its way to Abraham Musser as we speak.”

“Yeah?” Marlen asked.  “And?”

“It wasn’t sent with you as the courier.”

“Sounds fishy.”

“You might be able to draw your own conclusions if you know the contents.  Basil was to help Musser obtain London.  He wasn’t meant to take the Lordship.”

“And?”

“And the message is one Basil himself already hates seeing released into the world.  He felt coerced by his present circumstance, you see.”

The man smashed the window of the car.  “Nobody inside!”

“Good!” Lucy called out.

“What did Basil do?” Marlen asked.

“That letter contains an offer to marry into the family.  Immediately, to cement the London deal.”

“Raquel?  A child?” Marlen asked.

The everfreaking fuck, Miss?  Rook?

“If the offer were accepted, he would seal a deal to give Musser inroads to London, a lesser alliance with a powerful family… an opportunity that almost slipped away.”

“Fine,” Marlen said, watching as the bystander talked with some others.  “Let him.”

“You could intercept it.”

“Yeah?  What’s your interest in this?”

“We don’t want Musser to thrive.  We’re fine with Basil as he is.”

“I don’t interfere with family politics,” Marlen said.  She looked more upset and tense than she had after crashing her bike or seeing Lucy.  She pulled her helmet off, fixing her hair.  Lucy couldn’t help but feel it was taking longer to fall into place than hair should.  As if gravity worked differently around this woman, but only by hundredths of a second.  “You can’t use me to get at them.”

Marlen moved around her bike, putting herself between Montague and the machine.  As people approached, she walked the bike a few steps.

Miss was partially visible in the trees to Lucy’s right.

“She’s hard to read,” Miss murmured.  “For the same reason she’s hard to get a good hold on.”

“Mmm.  What the heck did you do to Raquel, Miss?” Lucy asked, tense.

“Nothing.  The regrettable letter was sent the night Bridge and Basil were drunk, by Bridge’s design,” Miss murmured.  “And it was a ribald and poorly written offer to marry Musser’s horse to cement the deal.  Toadswallow’s suggestion.  It is not entirely out of character for Basil to partake of drink, and by all accounts, by Rook and Bridge’s design, Basil is chafing at the Lordship.”

“What happens?” Lucy asked.  She watched as Marlen took the scene in, still wary of possible attack from all corners, her bike still too damaged to ride.

“With luck, Musser sweeps the letter under the rug, accepting a supposed embarrassed apology.  We weren’t sure if Marlen would go chase the letter and then avoid Basil afterward, or if she’d take this tack and avoid him out of disgust, thinking it was Raquel.  Something she’s heard about by rumor.”

“But you don’t know for sure?”

“I might have a better sense if she were easier to read.  I only aim to deflect, to poison her tie to Basil.  Her nature is to avoid.  To fall away.  If she’s upset with him, she won’t interact with him.  I suspect.”

“You think.”

“I suspect, but that suspicion grows thinner.  I’m no Fae, Lucy.  I’m a fair hand at deflection, I’ve made my attempt.  I feel as if she should have left by now, to go to someone or some place that isn’t Basil or Basil’s territory.  Or she could have talked to us, to bargain an excuse to leave.”

“And she’s not?”

“No.  What a shame that Montague couldn’t access the bike.  Too many innocent eyes, and we can’t let her clearly see him either.”

“Right,” Lucy said.  “Is she going to fight, negotiate, flee?”

“I don’t know.”

“Toad said she might attack if cornered.  Or pull out tricks.  It’s what he’d do.”

“I would trust Toadswallow’s instinct in this.”

Lucy looked back at Doe, and then began to back away, while Doe ran forward.

The sudden movements seemed to provoke Marlen.  She grabbed the egg beater, held it down at the side of the bike, jammed in the most damaged part, then kicked it, hard.

The egg beater exploded into the various ‘repair’ energies that had driven it, and the bike was more or less restored.  A burst of restoration at the cost of a magic item.  Marlen mounted it, reached down into a side panel, and withdrew a gun covered in runework.  She turned-

And Doe shoved Lucy back and away, stepping in front of her before falling.  Lucy grunted as Doe’s mass crashed on top of her.

A soundless gunshot.  The crowd hadn’t even seen or noticed.

Marlen was immediately off, motorcycle revving.  The road was blocked by various cars, so she dipped into the ditch-

Where Toadswallow had laid his traps.

It sounded like fireworks.  Whatever it was wasn’t fire though, and the car of the first bystander blocked a lot of the view from the various parked cars.

Lucy saw one of the projectiles that was flying around as it crossed her path, bouncing off Doe.  A rat, made airborne by a steady and violent stream of diarrhea.

Toadswallow’s trap had consisted of about two hundred of those rats.  Some had streaked by Marlen, others got into machinery.  Others found her, latching on and scurrying over her, leaving trails where they went.

She revved, trying to find traction, then turned.

“Tarnation!” Toadswallow cursed from the shrubbery.  “I had a whole arrangement of traps prepared there.”

Lucy pushed Doe off her and climbed to her feet.

Marlen had done an about-face.  Heading back the way she came now.  Up and out of the ditch, getting a bit of air that Lucy hadn’t expected.  She landed and pulled some angry, shitting rats off her.  Lucy saw some of the ones that hit the ground hard enough were disintegrating.  Not real rats.

“Someone warned her that Basil wasn’t himself,” Miss said.  “She’s suspicious, she’ll go to him.  But she needs to get away from us.”

Lucy hurried, running on foot.

Reggie and Bracken were in Marlen’s way.  She revved-

And Bracken threw.

The wheels skidded, too slick with unrealistic amounts of liquid rat shit to get any traction.  She ducked, hand swiping out-

She caught the ball.

Immediately, she fell, balance lost, bike crashing, Marlen sprawling.

There go the protections.

Lucy ran after Marlen, while Bracken and Reggie did the same, closing in.

There was a bit too much distance.  By the time they reached her, she was upright, revving-

“Get the car!” Lucy called out to Reggie.  A rat splatted into the road a few feet to her right.  More than one kind of splat.

Doe whistled, and Marlen turned, looking.

Doe had a gun.  Lucy made sure to stand so she could block the view.  People were too distant to clearly see, most stuck in traffic.  Most of their eyes were on Marlen, who had suffered a recent fall and was now motorcycling around recklessly.

“Stay put!” Doe shouted.

Marlen took the only road available that would keep her out of trouble.

Into Kennet.

“Disastrous,” Toadswallow said.

“It’ll have to do,” Miss said.  “She was always going to go to Basil, it seems, no deflection possible.  It’s a question of capture, now.  There’s no other option.”

“Okay,” Lucy said.  “Shit, if she’s on her way into Kennet and there’s no tether- won’t she break down?  Or find delays?”

“We’ll see,” Miss said.

The car lurched out of the ditch, helped by a push from a spidery limb that came out of the side of the car that wasn’t crowd-facing.  Reggie steered it around, then stopped.

And Lucy climbed in.

“Don’t waste time,” Toadswallow said.  “She’ll slip away if we’re not careful.”

“Go,” Doe told them, hand to the gunshot wound at the lower ribs, that had bowled her over and onto Lucy.

Lucy climbed into the car.  Reggie and Bracken came with.  Toadswallow couldn’t get in without risking being seen.

They followed.  The road was an improvised one, and Marlen’s tracks had kicked up dust.  She looked back, saw them, and then drove straight into the ongoing construction, and ignored signs telling her to wait and stop.

“Shit shit shit,” Reggie swore.  He steered, but the car moved in a way that ignored that steering.

They chased Marlen toward Kennet.

She’s gotta break down, right?

But Marlen was a navigator.  A courier.  She did funky things with being evasive, city magic, and whatever else.  Stuff that made her hard to target was only part of it.

Lucy realized what the other part was as the skyline shifted.

Marlen slipped into the Undercity, and somehow she ignored the one-day-to-Kennet restriction.  It wasn’t that she was following the trail that Montague had laid, either, riding along the tether.

Lucy twisted in her seat, looking back, trying to decipher just how.  She looked for landmarks, trees, rocks…

Maybe if they could retrace that, or decipher it?

That was a tool.  One that affected how they might get at Charles.

“We have to get her.  We need answers from her!” Lucy called out.  “Can’t let her get to Basil, especially not when she knows how close we really were to Kennet.”

Reggie answered, “She’s fast and she’s nimble and our car has half an engine.  The only reason this thing moves is because it’s got a bleeding hell spider horror in it!”

“Bleeding hell spider gentleman horror!  And he’s doing a terrific job so far!” Lucy told him.

The radio buzzed happily, before putting on jaunty music.  The car increased its efforts.

They barreled into the downtown Undercity.

But the turns were a bit too slow, and as they had to avoid several people on the road, they lost sight of Marlen.

“There’s two major ways out of Kennet,” Reggie said.  “If she finds the other…?  It’s supposed to be closed, but I don’t think that necessarily stops her.”

Lucy undid her seatbelt and climbed out the window, sitting in the window while holding the roof-mounted handle above the door.

She saw a flock of birds take off.

“Over there,” she told Reggie.  She almost bent down to give directions, then remembered she was telling Montague too.  She pointed, and the car responded, engine squelching.

Through an alley, to the next street over.

Where Marlen had stopped.

It was the corner of Downtown, not all that far from the house on half street, and the Witch of Bitter Street was there, with three of her many brothers.  She couldn’t stand very long, so she sat on the road, stooped, hair unwashed, wearing a lot of clothes in various shades of blue with black feathers attached to them.  Her stick had her gang sign dangling from the top.

A short distance away were people in homespun linen, layered for the cold, mixed with the occasional bit of clothing, and lots of decoration.

Among those people was a singular man, dressed in white, hair a white-blond, eyes such a vivid, dark blue that it made the rest of him seem bleached out.  He wore several necklaces of varying types and styles, which might have been pearl, ivory, diamond, moonstone.  Keeping the white theme.

He looked too good looking, but when his head turned, his neck bulged, then sorted itself out, as if muscles that shouldn’t be there had to slither in and out of place.  Something similar happened as he reached out to put a hand on the shoulder of one of the pregnant women who stood around him, holding rifles.

Lucy wasn’t sure why, but she had a vivid recollection of a certain not-for-kids movie that she and Verona had watched as kids.

The Family Man.

Matthew and Rook were bystanders, and not especially happy ones.

They weren’t happy because this wasn’t a fight.  It looked more like an alliance.  It didn’t look like any women were any less pregnant, didn’t look like men were castrated, but that didn’t mean the Family Man was doing nothing.

Marlen had stopped short rather than weave through a crowd where some people had makeshift spears.  Lucy saw the Family Man’s lips move.

“Come.  I’ll give you sanctuary.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be on my way.”

“Take the sanctuary first.  You’ll need it.  You have my sworn protection, then I’ll get you on your way.”

Marlen seemed to think for a second.  She looked at the car where a disguised Lucy sat, then around at the rest of the scene, pausing as she saw Matthew and Rook.

She nodded, and steered the bike around behind the Family Man, who gestured.  At his unspoken instruction, his people fanned out, forming a loose wall between the various members of the Kennet council, Lucy, and Musser’s courier.

Next Chapter