Pale: 2.7 - Verona

Verona (again)

Verona tossed a chicken nugget into the air.  It was devoured before it could hit the ground.  Violence immediately followed, with gnashing teeth, scraping nails, and weapons drawn.

It was too hot, and it was only May.  If this was like last year and the temperature zig-zagged its way to forty-plus degrees Celsius by mid-summer, she was going to die.  No, worse than die.  She’d overheat, her brain would stop working, and she’d say or do something practice-wise that doomed her.

She sat behind a strip of stores and shitty little restaurants.  A short distance away from the dumpster were a few stacks of wooden pallets, recycleables, and empty cardboard boxes.  Verona sat on the shorter stack of pallets.  There was at least a faint breeze carrying through the passage.

A tiny hand, red like it had been terminally sunburned, appeared beside her, reaching out from behind her, fingers splayed as it reached for the little carton of chicken nuggets.  She moved the box.

It didn’t help that her clothes were from last summer.  Her short sleeved top had light grey and white stripes and black banding at the collar, sleeves, and bottom, but it hugged her weird, and dug in at the armpits, which was way worse as sweat made it damp.  Like it was sawing at her.  Her shorts had the same problem her jeans did.  She wore six dollar flip flops not because they were comfortable or because she liked them, but because they let just that five extra percent of her skin breathe.

She didn’t remember being like this, even a few years ago.  Being conscious of her skin and body and of temperature and sweat.  Every time she breathed, she was conscious of how the fabric of her top hugged her middle.  Her chest was the same feeling but multiplied and pretty damn mixed.  On the one hand, yay, puberty had delivered the one real thing she wanted or cared about.  On the other, this was her life now?  Her shirts were always going to poke out in front?  Dudes her dad’s age were going to do that totally not-surreptitious look?  Unless she wore a sweater, maybe?  Why wasn’t there a sweater, but for summers?  It could be made of some cooling material or have a fan built in, or something.

Yes.  The rambling was confirmation that the heat was frying her brain.  She’d have to be careful.

Her mom had sent the money, and she’d ordered stuff.  Two weeks until delivery, plus or minus five days.  It was still better than shopping with her dad, getting comments and judgments, the ‘this would look nice’ stuff, as he tried to get her to buy something she’d said five times that she didn’t like.  Or logos, which she’d said a hundred times over the years that she didn’t like wearing, because screw actually paying to be a walking billboard for a megacorp.  Then he’d sulk and bring it up a few times, or go back to the store to buy it, or she’d cave and get it.  Then her dad would nag for days or weeks after to wear ‘that nice top’, and him acting like he was so generous and thoughtful, putting in that time and money…

Two weeks wait was worth it to skip the hassle.  She’d have to endure until then.  Maybe she’d try to do something with glamour to resize stuff.  She’d have to ask permission from the others and think about traps first.

She blinked as something moved in the corner of her vision.  A tiny hand, red-skinned, holding a rusty nail, reaching slowly and haltingly for the box of chicken nuggets Verona had balanced on her knee.

Verona placed her notebook down flat on top of the carton, blocking it.  “Question three.  Did you know or ever meet the Carmine Beast?”

Cherrypop had silently stacked up three empty aluminum cans beside Verona’s foot, crawled up them, and now perched on top, reaching.  She stabbed the notebook a few times with the nail, as if it would move.  The cans wobbled.

In front of Verona, Gash had wrapped both legs around Munch’s neck, pried Munch’s mouth open, stuck a ragged bit of wood in, and hit Munch’s chin so the wood would impale the roof and underside of Munch’s mouth.  Once it was secure, he reached into Munch’s open mouth.

Gash was medium-dog-sized, rangy, with a big head and a hatchet of a nose, his eyes just distilled mean, his mouth small but capable of opening wide into a piranha’s bite.  Pretty close to what she might’ve imagined if she thought ‘Goblin’, but his flesh was a pallid Caucasian white, with bruises settled in the folds, when she might have assumed green.

Munch had flesh the color of the kind of bowel movement one might have if they were very sick, brown and yellow, with more bruising in the folds, he had fatty lumps around his neck and shoulders that didn’t correspond with muscles, he had muscles that weren’t symmetric, and his flesh all had a quality to it like it was callused and thick.

Verona sighed.  “I want an answer from all three of you.  Cherrypop?  I know you’ve answered some questions before.”

Cherrypop hissed at her, stabbing repeatedly at the notebook.

Verona knew she had to appeal to their baser natures, and their baser natures were awful.

“If you give me a bunch of answers, I’ll give you a bunch of nuggets,” Verona said.  “That’s less for them.”

The little goblin narrowed her eyes as she looked at the two squabbling boys.  Gash had successfully tripped Munch’s gag reflex, wasn’t letting Munch turn his head to actually expel the vomit, and so it was coming out of the big goblin’s nose and pooling in his open mouth.  Gash fished inside the soup of blood and vomit, disengaging his legs from Munch’s neck to kick away a reaching, punching hand.

Most of Gash’s success in this scrap was due to the deep cuts he’d inflicted at the back of Munch’s heels and the hole he’d put in Munch’s one elbow, but… even so.  Verona mentally noted that Gash was pretty good at fighting, considering he was maybe thirty-five, forty pounds, and Bluntmunch was maybe a hundred and fifty pounds.    Verona wasn’t good at estimating weight.  Cherry, meanwhile, weighed mere ounces.  Verona was even worse at estimating small weights.

“I forget the question,” Cherrypop said, as she watched the fighting through narrowed eyes.  “I’m stupid.”

“Did you know or have you met the Carmine Beast?”

“Nah,” Cherry said, sticking out the hand that wasn’t holding the nail.

“I need a bit more of an answer than that,” Verona said.

“Didn’t know what it was until recent.  I’m so stupid.  Toadswallow says I got a brain like a fart’s shadow on underwear.”

Verona handed over a nugget.  Cherry took it with enough excitement she almost lost her perch on the empty cans.  She devoured it in a messy way that seemed to lose half the chicken and fried casing.

Gashwad pulled a scrap of meat out of the soup at the back of Munch’s throat, which wasn’t chicken nugget.  He ate it himself, then went fishing in again for the traces of, Verona presumed, the nugget.

Munch, a splintered spike of wood impaling the roof and floor of his mouth, closed his jaw, driving the points of the wood in deeper both ways.  Sharp teeth closed in around Gashwad’s elbow.  Gashwad stopped fishing and started fighting back, scraping with the claws of one hand and the pointed nails of both feet, raking face, neck, and shoulders.

“Are they going to be okay?” Verona asked Cherry.  “I’m not going to get a goblin killed and accidentally break my awakening oath, offering nuggets?”

“This is a most days thing,” Cherrypop said.  “They won’t die an’ they’ll be better by tomorrow.”

“Ah, good,” Verona said.

Cherrypop held out a hand.  “I answered a question.”

Verona gave the tiny goblin another nugget that was pretty much a third to a fifth of the little goblin’s size.

“Do you have any idea who might have taken the beast out of the picture?”

“None!” Cherrypop said, eager, mouth full.  She reached out with one hand, fingers opening and closing, while using the other to shove the unfinished nugget further into her mouth.

Verona gave her a nugget.

She’d come with a box of twenty and a spare cheeseburger, trying to account for Munch’s size, and had planned to split the food across the goblins, in exchange for answers.

Verona had quickly discovered the goblins were happier trying to steal nuggets and fighting one another over a single nugget than the simpler process of getting one each.

“Do you have any involvement or ideas regarding the movement of something large and bloody, possibly the Carmine Beast’s power, from the version of the Kennet Arena in the Ruins, last night?”

Cherrypop fought to swallow the remainder of the last nugget, managed to clear her airway enough to gasp in a breath like she’d been drowning, then choked more down.

“Cherry?” Verona asked.  “Proper answer.”

“Uhhhh… nope!” Cherry said, brightly.  Her stomach was distended.  “No idea.”

Verona held out the nugget, then held it back as Cherry reached for it.  “Do you go to the Ruins at all?”

“Not much,” Cherrypop said, still reaching, wobbling on her perch of cans.  “It’s mostly made up of stuff Goblins can’t deal with.  Stuffed metal.”

“Don’ go telling her!” Gashwad screeched.  “Sayin’ our weaknesses!  I’ll eat ya, Cherry!  Limbs first!”

Verona waggled the nugget, just out of Cherrypop’s reach.  Tiny hands strained to make contact.

“Metal with water running through it, like pipes,” Cherrypop said.  “Metal with electricity running through it.  Metal that’s hot, not so common.  Metal with gas, like more, funner pipes.  Metal with sand or rock running through it would be the same, but that’s rare.  Hurts to be near, makes us weak.  Lots of it in the Ruins.  The other places we’d normally go are missing.”

Verona gave Cherry another nugget.

She didn’t really expect Cherry to be a well of information.  But then, that wasn’t really the idea.

“You’re getting so many nuggets,” Verona commented, making sure the others could hear.  “You call yourself stupid, and they call you stupid, but you’re being smarter than those two are.  Look at you, you look like you could pop at the seams.”

Verona wasn’t lying.  Cherrypop, sitting on a stacked soda can with her nail laid beside her, had a distended stomach.  The little goblin, mouth full, embraced the most recently received chicken nugget, and smiled, showing off missing and mismatched teeth.  Still smiling, the goblin chowed down, gulping down what she could and reducing the rest -most- to an unsalvageable mess at the base of the cans.

The other two goblins fought, but now they were fighting to disengage from one another, each trying to get away and get to Verona while not letting the other do the same.

“Who goes to the Ruins?  Who is tied to the place?” Verona asked.

“Uhhh… don’t know!”

“Think hard, come on,” Verona urged Cherry, eyeing the two male goblins.

“Uhhh…” Cherry leaned back, eyes closed.  She tipped back, the stack of three cans collapsed, and she landed hard.  Lying on her back, she shouted, “Thought hard!  No idea!  Gimme!”

Verona gave her a nugget.  Gash was free of Munch, and scrambled after Cherry, to steal the nugget.  Cherry hoisted the thing and fled for a pile of trash, disappearing into dark recesses, cackling.

Munch sat up, trying to free the wood that had embedded the roof of his mouth.  Blood already traced the lines and crevices between the pointed fangs of his mouth, from his mangling of Gash’s arm, but as he pulled at the wood, his own blood flowed out and down.

“I’ve got your attention?” Verona asked.  “I have one third of a cheeseburger I’m not interested in finishing, and one nugget.  I intend to give both the remains of the cheeseburger and the single remaining nugget to whichever one of you gives me more information, with the least amount bitching or distraction.”

That had their attention.

“Who’s going to be the loser today, hm?” she taunted them.  “Lower on the totem pole than even Cherrypop?”

“Out with it,” Munch said, surly.  “Ask the questions.”

They were both eager now.

“Do you have any involvement in the Carmine Beast’s death or disappearance?”

“Nah,” Bluntmunch said.

“Better answers count for more.  Try to give details when you can,” Verona told them.  “Can you tell me where you were and who you saw, on the night she disappeared?”

“Yes,” Gash said, before Bluntmunch came up behind him and shoved him from a standing position to being face-down in the road.

“We sniffed trouble,” Munch told her.  “All of us together.  Smelled the hurt, the violence, we realized something was up, so, ‘course, we went straight there.  We saw the beast.  We followed her, ran into the bi- woman.  Whatshername.  We followed her to downtown, not far from here, couldn’t go in further.  Then we split up, told others.  According to the deals.”

“With the Others in Kennet.”

“Okay, good.  Tell me about these deals?”

“Keep the worst goblins out.  If we make trouble, it can’t be in this town.  If we notice trouble, we gotta tell the locals.  There was trouble with the Beast, so we told.  Job done.”

“And in exchange for these deals, you get… what?  To be the sole goblins of Kennet?”

“There are others,” Munch said.  “They pass through.  Nah, we each get different things.”

“Sir Toadswallow needs a place to hide out.  Somewhere without practitioners,” Munch said.

“How does he feel about us?”

“You swore a deal, you’re not his problem.  Nah, if he’s gonna be summonable, he’s gotta be free from interference, see.  If some practitioner wants to teach her twat-rat how to handle a goblin or learn some dirty tricks from the dirtiest, she’ll pick something like Toadswallow, work her way through more serious goblins as the brat ages up, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “I’m not connecting the thought.  I blame the heat.  Interference?”

“Well,” Munch said.  He shifted his weight, still sitting on Gashwad’s head and driving Gashwad’s face into the pavement.  “Imagine what happens if some mommy practitioner has an enemy, that enemy finds Toadswallow, messes with the deal and gets him to change up how he operates.  Next time he’s summoned, he sticks around.  At five in the morning the next day, mama witch hears screaming, comes to find out her little girl’s got a hundred improvised piercings while she was sleeping overnight, and each piercing is wired or threaded to something else.  Tied to the bed in fifty different ways, Two earrings wired to the same light switch so she gets a bit of a btzzt through the brain-pan, nose ring and eyelid studs to the door mama just hauled open, say nothing of the wire around the kid’s throat that pulls tight…”

“Got it,” Verona said.  “So that’s a goblin type thing, huh?  Something you can do?”

“It’s not something we can’t do,” Munch said.  “Just an example.  Sanitized a bit from something that really did happen.”

“Nah.  Distant.  Goblins talk, share stories.  But I gotta leave out gorier details, gotta keep to my own rules and deals, as one of Toadswallow’s apprentices.”

Gashwad clawed at the pavement, trying to get an angle where he could scratch or hit Munch, while he was being smothered.

“So he has to stay away from practitioners?” Verona asked.

“Certain ones.  He can’t make certain deals, and a lot of your sorts out there would kill him once they realize they can’t use him.  Most kid-friendly goblins like him stick to the wilderness, but that makes ’em more animal, less able to work with humans.  He’s got it good here.  That’s his reason.”

Verona nodded.  “And the rest of you?”

“A goblin queen, one of your types, that works mostly with goblins, she was getting started out, recruiting every goblin over a certain size.  I ran.  She’s only gotten bigger since.  If I get seen by her or her soldiers, they’d make me enlist or kill me.  Here, it’s close enough I still know my way around the local Warrens, but far enough away I’m not in her way.  I keep in touch with goblins from the Warrens who know enough to keep their mouths shut.”

“Do we need to worry about her?” Verona asked.  “One of the outside practitioners?”

Munch shook his head.  “If there was a chance, I’d be told and I’d be gone.”

“Gash, similar thing, but he made an enemy of a bigger goblin.  Cherry showed up at one point, like other goblins sometimes do, jus’ wandering.  We grilled her, she’s fine.  Toadswallow recruited her.  Recruited me too.  Promised us more mischief, more chances to ask for favors from practitioners, if we agreed to the same deal he made and learned under him.”

“And… it’s something to do,” Munch said, heavily, not sounding very happy.

“What’s your daily routine?” Verona asked.  “What do you actually do?”

“Me?  Sleep.  When I think I can get away with it, I mess with people.  I’ll hitch a ride on whatever I can to get to another town nearby.  Then I’ll knock over garbage cans, then go into their houses while they clean up.  I grab what I can that I think I can trade at the Warrens.  Radios, laptops, phones.  Some goblins like to study people, so they can do stuff specific to those people.  Family albums, purses, bits of clothing.”

“Innocents?” Verona asked.

“Sometimes.  More when there’s a quick opportunity, see?  It’s easier to do stuff when they deserve it, and for the little stuff, it’s a moment of carelessness, not watching a bag.  I specialize in the big stuff.  The ones who really deserve it.  Think heists, but the stealing is only a bonus.”

“Like last month, might’ve been a few days after the Beast died, I caught a train to Winnipeg.  Some acquaintances of mine sniffed out a fun one, couple renting out a place on this Bedsurf thing, yeah?  Five stars, nice view, right downtown.  Built cameras into the place to record their guests, all over the place.  Cameras that are hard to find with your usual wave of a spyfinder wand.”

“That sounds like a lot of work for something pretty boring.”

“Well… the goblins handling the project needed muscle.  Gremlin climbs into the walls to fiddle with the camera, get a certain red light blinking again.  Move a wire so it looks suspicious, then camp out in the attic and wait.  Guest causes a commotion, couple goes to handle it, we get into the apartment, loot some of the recordings, hard drives of weird porn, contacts so we can find more like ’em for future moves.  My job’s to handle the dog, block the door and carry.”

“So you’re doing something good?” Verona asked, a bit skeptical.

“No, kid,” Munch said.  “A lot of the bad lands on the bad people, that’s the way it works, and that’s an easy thing to facilitate.  But the police are left wondering if they had accomplices who took the data and recordings.  Wild goose chase, and the couple gets a harder time with the law because they can’t and won’t name their accomplices.  Victims are freaked.  Those who are low are brought a little lower, see?  A bad situation gets badder and messier.  And us, we reap profit.”

Verona wasn’t sure how to feel about that.  That profit, if it was going from vulnerable people to goblins, did that mean it was essentially not in this world anymore, not affecting innocents?  That was a reach, but handling things like this did mean that the couple was stopped.  Messy and bad, yes, but… over?  Kind of?

The whole thing with Lucy getting as mad as she had about Avery kissing Pam had her second guessing her values.  She wasn’t sure her ‘caring’ meter was calibrated right.

She would talk to the others about it, she supposed.

“That’s your day to day, then?” she asked.

“And some talking with the Warrens.  I go back and forth, pass on messages, get information.”

“And the other goblins?” Verona asked.  “What do they do?”

“Gash-” Munch shifted his weight again, smushing Gash’s face into the pavement.  Verona was surprised the smaller goblin wasn’t dead and still had the strength to struggle.  “-wants to rise to the top of the heap, see?  But he isn’t strong enough.  He’ll help Stiles sometimes.  Collects dead things and scraps to make weapons.  Plots revenge against his enemies and gets nowhere.  He’s a better blighter than a fighter.”

Munch shrugged.  “We have terms.  Don’t try to remember them, they’ll change or get forgotten.  Goblins don’t like labels.  You’ve got your bumps, they go bump in the night, scare kids, mess with people.  You’ve got the snots, they’re just gross, they make gross things grosser.  The scrappers, obvious enough.  You could call me a lunk, you could call Gashwad a blighter who thinks he’s a scrapper.”

“And blighters do what?”

“Ruin and steal what’s pretty and precious, especially if it’s left unattended.  Rummage through hoarder’s piles, flood old storage lockers, steal a precious toy, knock over a statue… he’s a waste, not keeping up with that.”

“What would you even gain, doing that?”

“They’re things with value, emotional attachment.  Can give to something that eats emotion, maybe, or if you take away the value, you took it someplace else, didn’t you?  Now you’ve got some value to spend.”

“Not… really sure I get that, and I think I’m above average at getting a lot of the practice stuff.”

“We get a bit stronger, when we keep up with that sort of thing.  That’s the value finding a new roost.  Scare the wits out of someone, where’d those wits go, hm?  Beat the snot out of someone, then-”

“Okay,” Verona cut him off.  She sighed.  “Okay.  Right.”

She supposed she’d never be a ‘goblin queen’ or whatever.  This didn’t feel as intuitive as a lot of the other stuff.

“Cherry’s too witless to have much of a role or way of doing things.  All opportunity.  Sometimes it’s too much, sometimes too little, but she’s good at keeping it out of Kennet.  Toadswallow works out new tricks and things to teach, or lounges around, when he’s not out being summoned.”

“We got off track, huh?” Munch asked.

“I like getting off track,” Verona said.  She just wished she could do it in a place with air conditioning.  She was sweating more than before.

“I want my burger and chicken,” Munch said, eyeing the food.  “Can’t let Cherry walk away the winner in this.”

She’d pricked a nerve.  She resisted the urge to smile.

“Then I’ll ask the other questions.  You went from the Carmine Beast to notify others?”

“I went to find Charles, Matthew was there.  I stayed after.  Stole some of the beer Matthew brought the old man.  Kept my head down.  If you hang around too close to things that big, people start asking you to do crap.”

She couldn’t argue with that logic.  More or less lined up with her attitude toward her dad, and why she was out on her own this Saturday.

“Did you ever meet or know the Carmine Beast?”

“Couple times.  Once with John and the others.  Once in the Warrens.”

“Tell me about that.”

“When Stiles shot his dog, the black dog, whatever her name was.  A few of us were there, in case of a problem.  Me as a favor to John.  After he put a bullet through her, y’know, winds changed, a whole lot of bad settled on John’s shoulders.  The ah, white one, the deer woman.”

“That’s the one.  Her and the Carmine appeared.  I think to see what was up.  They talked to John, then left.  I think that’s when they decided they wanted him as a replacement, if anything happened.”

“And who was there?” Verona asked.

“Miss.  Matthew, Edith.  Matthew was barely more than a teenager.  I was there, Guilherme was there.  Maricica may have been in the city, but not at that event.”

“Would a Faerie miss drama like that?” Verona asked.

“Who the fuck knows?  Faerie,” Munch almost spat that last word.  He made a face, “And now you’ve gone and spent my f-word.  I hope you’re happy.”

“Under the terms of the deal, we get one a month.  PG-13 rules.”

“Ah.  Okay.  Can I ask Gash?”

Munch made a face.  “I want my burger and chicken.”

“You’re doing well, but if you get in the way of me getting answers from Gash, that hurts your standing with me, and it means your chance is lower.”

Munch got up off Gash, who picked himself up.  Some of Gash’s teeth had broken.

“On the night the Beast died, where did you go after all the goblins split up to notify people?”

“Ugghgh,” Gash groaned.

“Come on.  You’re behind, but you can still catch up.”

“Edith,” Gash mumbled, picking up a broken piece of tooth out of the shallow pool of blood.  “Supposed to be Moss, too, but he was gone.”

“That’s Matthew’s last name?”

“And you,” she asked Munch, “Saw Matthew?”

“He was there with groceries and small construction materials for Charles.  Screws, some planks.”

The man who could lie had an alibi, backed up by a few sources.

“So… Edith James,” she returned to Gash.  “What did you talk about with her, after running into her?”

“We didn’t talk about much.  She wanted to go handle the Beast.”

“Figured Moss called her.”

Verona turned to Munch.  “Did you see or hear this?”

“Where was she and what was she doing, Gash?”

“She was at her house.  She wasn’t doing nothing.”

“By which you mean…?”

“She was by the front door, boots, coat, and hat on.  She nearly tripped over me.  I told her, she shooed me away before the neighbors could see me, said I was being careless.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “Interesting.”

They’d never had the formal interview with Edith and Matthew.  It was the only interview left, besides talking to the witness.

“We done?” Munch asked.

“The Ruins.  Did either of you move something from the Kennet Arena to another location last night?  Or earlier yesterday?”

“No,” Gash said, eyes narrowing, at the same time Munch said, “Nah.”

“Do you know who might?”

“Who would go to the ruins?  What Others are comfortable there?”

The two goblins talked over one another,  Verona held up a hand, then pointed.

“The Choir has a bunch of kids there most of the time,” Gash said.

“There aren’t many who go there because they like it.  The Ruins are this thing, for a lot of Others, like they’re in a tunnel, there’s a light of an incoming train, but they can’t tell how far behind them it is.  Echos, incarnations, especially the weak incarnations, uhhh, spirits, but not all spirits.  The special ones.”

“Yeh,” Munch confirmed.  “She could go there, but it wouldn’t be fun.  Rain to you or me, acid to her.”

“But it would be a potential hiding place.  She could go there on her own?”

Munch gave her a lopsided shrug with lopsided shoulders.  “Yeah, sure.”

Verona took some notes, keeping track of it all.

She went back to check some notes and copies of Lucy’s notes.

“Where’s Charles’ place?”

“Southwestern end,” Munch said, at the same time Gash loudly said, “Uhhh!”

It wasn’t an ‘ugh� of pain this time, but rather, Gash was trying to get in with an answer, but this wasn’t like a game show where someone could buzz in.

“Close to where we had the Awakening ritual?”

“Uh huh,” Munch said.  Beside him, Gash nodded dramatically, as if giving a very enthusiastic answer would count for more.

It kind of did, it was funny.

“And you started at the Northeastern end of the city?”

“Matthew and Edith’s place is in the middle of town.  Why did it take you so long to find Edith, Gash?”

“I went, I knocked.  No answer.  I looped around.”

“I guess.  Is that helpful?” Gash asked, with a hopeful note in his voice.  Beady little black eyes opened wider.

“It’s something.  Did you notice anything weird?  Strange expressions, breaks in pattern…?”

The goblin stared at her blankly.

“No,” Gashwad said.  “But I don’t pay attention to humans.”

Verona nodded.  She began to pack up her things.  As she moved the food, the goblins perked up.

“How long have you guys been around here?” she asked.

“Eighteen years,” Munch said.

“Six,” Gashwad told her.

“And Cherry?  Toadswallow?”

“Couple years for Cherry.  Fifteen for Toadswallow.”

Verona nodded, making some notes.

“So… Munch, you and Toadswallow were the only goblins there when Yalda was shot?” she asked, penning down stuff around the timeline she was making.

Munch gave her a blank look.

The blank look continued.

“John Stiles’ friend.”

“The Black Dog,” Munch grumbled.  “You’ve got special, specific terms for everything… labels, labels… goblins don’t truck much with that.  Call a spade a shovel, then use the shovel to beat the person who crawls up your ass about it being a spade, specifically.”

“You were the only Goblins there?”

She made a note, then put the notebook down.  “Munch.”

She tossed the food up, so it was in his reach.  He caught the wrapped burger and nugget.  Not that it really mattered.  Gash immediately went after him, full offensive.  Whoever got it, the other was going to attack them.

Kind of like the Carmine Beast’s throne.

Verona sorted her things out, throwing some stuff out in the dumpster behind the restaurant.  She remembered what Munch had said about people ‘deserving’ a bit in the way of shenanigans if they left their stuff unattended, and closely watched her bag and the empty plastic bag with the last bits of stuff from the fast food place.

The squabbling continued as she walked back over.  She wet a few napkins using still-cold water from a water bottle, and wiped down her neck and pits with two-thirds of the napkins, and used the last third to get her mouth and hands clean of any stray condiments.

She balled them up together and pitched the ball toward the dumpster.

Gash scrambled, crawling up Munch, then leaping off Munch’s shoulder, catching the wet ball of napkin out of the air.  He shoved it into his mouth.

“Tell me that’s not a curse or a goblin thing, please,” she said.

“Salty,” Gash said, as he chewed the wad of sweaty napkin.

“I’m going to go.  Gotta figure out what I’m doing today,” she told the goblins.  “Communicate with my friends.  I won’t bug you for gifts, but… it’s something of a convention now.  Others have given theirs.”

Something brushed against her leg, and Verona pulled back.

Cherry held up a twist of wire stuck through what might have been the skull of a rodent.  The wire extended out of the mouth and then wound around the mouth like a muzzle.  It ended in a fork shape.

“Toadswallow made it,” Cherry said.  “Gave it to me, said I could give it to you girls as a gift.”

“Opens stuff,” Cherry said.  “Like a key for most stuff, might break if it’s used on a thing sealed with practice, I guess.  But after you open something it jams the lock.  Original key won’t work.”

“Cool,” Verona said.  “That sounds useful on its own.”

“Good,” Cherry said.  “I’m done?”

“I guess so.  You’re getting to be my favorite goblin, Cherry.”

Both the truth and it nettled the other two.

“Give me more nuggets someday, then,” Cherry said.

“Will definitely consider it.”

“Oh!  Gift,” Gash said.  He stepped forward, holding it out.  Verona had to bend down to take it.  She was reminded again that her shorts were too small.  Uncomfortable around the thighs and waist.  Gash warned her, “Careful.”

She was careful, taking the offered object.

It was a cone-shaped thing that could have been a thorn or the end of a very black nail.  Surprisingly heavy, despite being a half-inch long and relatively thin.

“I haven’t forgotten what I’m good at,” Gash said.  “You’re dealing with some practitioners?  John told us there were some outside the city last night.”

Verona nodded.  “Yeah.”

“That there’s a thorn in the flesh.  Buried in some loser’s guts.  Best if it’s kidney or spleen.  It healed over, left to stew in bile, picked out again after a few years, leaving some of the organ around the outside.  Dried it in the sun, and with a hair dryer.”

“Push it into a practice.  Summoning, diagram, object, whatever.  Poisons it.  Makes it uglier, a little weaker, and harder for its maker to break.  If there’s someone connected to the practice, they’ll get sicker and sicker as long as the connection’s there.  They’ll know it’s something like the thorn, so if you don’t want to lose it and get it used against you, you’ll want to pick it back out before they show up.  Otherwise, they gotta end things from a distance, which can hurt if the thorn’s stuck in it, or come and pull the thorn out themselves.”

“How sick?” Verona asked.

“After a week to a month, depending on how strong they are, their karma, crap like that?  Bad cold sick.”

“And after that?” Verona asked.

“Bad cold sick.  That’s it.  If we left it buried for longer, it’d be better, but the twit was going to go see a doctor.”

“Huh.  Assuming you guys aren’t fucking with us too, I gotta say these gifts are better than the average Faerie gift.  Nice and straightforward.”

Gashwad spat a bit of blood and a tooth onto the ground.  “Faerie.”

“I’ll get you a gift soon,” Munch said.  “Been thinking, but I don’t have much.  Got a thing with some goblins this summer.  Guy and his gun nut buddies are getting spare animals from shelters, using them as moving targets for practice.  It’s like the Bedsurf camera couple.  Universe doesn’t like it if you invite someone or something into your home and mess with them.  We were going to try to make some Dog Meat.”

“Like we get enough of them together, they invite their friends in from the States, including some who can maybe make some fostering and adoption paperwork disappear for kids.  Then we see if we can’t kill enough of them in a messy enough way that there’s a Dog at the end.”

“Like Stiles, but not,” Gash clarified, a smile creeping out around the sides of his face.  “Different breed.”

“Want to borrow it if it works?” Munch asked.  “Could be my gift.”

“Uhhh,” Verona said.  “I was going to ask.  Instead, maybe something that could break a glamour, if we needed it?  In case of Faerie emergencies?”

“I’ve got some things,” Munch said.  “Firecrackers I’ve messed with a bit, emphasis on the fire and the crack.  A stinkbomb with enough stank it’ll clear everything away.”

Munch gave her a funny look.  “But… firecracker in one hand, right?  Then in the other hand, a feral, crazy murder beast with some really cool scars.  Won’t die easy, and they can turn up with powers, I’ve seen one that could climb walls as fast as you or me could run, and another that could immobilize people with deafening screams, for as long as she could scream.  Firecracker… feral murder beast.  Firecracker, or feral murder beast.”

Munch weighed the two options in one hand, getting more dramatic each time.

“Feral murder beast,” Gash urged.

“Firecracker and stink bomb,” Verona said.  “Would be some peace of mind.  Great gift.  Especially if you’ll keep us supplied.”

He handed over the stuff.

Verona took it with care, put it away with equal care.  She gave some more care to the fleshy thorn thing.

“Thank you for your time.  This was useful.”

“Gotta learn manners specific to goblins, kid,” Munch said.  “Something like, ‘Go take a bath!’ or an insult.”

“Get lost!” Cherry piped up.

She gave them the finger and walked away.

Okay.  That was one more interview down.  Nothing hinky with the goblins specifically, which was something of a relief and a bit of a disappointment.  Goblins, at least, felt like they were a problem that could be faced head on.

Maybe two points of weirdness though, that might warrant questioning others, and re-questioning Others.

She was eager and excited to talk to the others, give them the update, and get their takes.  Maybe she’d tidy up her notes first, but… it was exciting and interesting.

Problem was, her friends were grounded.  They’d gotten home at half past two or close to three o’clock, with anxious parents waiting up.  A simple excuse of ‘we lost track of time’ didn’t really suffice.

Verona’s dad had been fast asleep, so she’d skirted the punishment.  Tired as she was, she’d rigged a simple connection breaker around the landline phone in the basement, by the laundry room, and she’d made it specific to Jasmine.  The diagram had faded out, which suggested an attempt had been made, and no call had gone through.  Yet.

It was possible Jas would try and call again and talk to dad, but Verona was pretty sure she could get away without a grounding.  She’d have to turn things around on her dad and stuff, blame him for being unaware.  Maybe provoke a meltdown or mislead him into other topics, but it was doable.

The way she saw it, she had racked up more than enough hours of being moaned at, shouted at, and told what she was doing wrong when she hadn’t deserved it, that she was due some back-credit.

She wasn’t sure what to do with herself, with her friends grounded, the weekend open, and weather this hot and awful.  She didn’t want to go home, exactly, because yes, she could do some practice stuff, and sort out her notebooks, compile notes and send stuff to the others, but her dad was home.  She’d checked and he didn’t have work later.

How freaking sad was it that the library was an option she was legitimately considering?

It was air conditioned, though.  She could while away a bit of time.  She wouldn’t be able to paint, probably, without someone fussing about her making a mess, and there were about fifty other supplies she had at her place that she’d miss having at the library.

Her flip flops were dragging at the space between her big toes and her second toes.  Her top was sawing at her armpits.  The small of her back was practically a pool of sweat, and her head felt hot.

If she had scissors or clippers or anything like that in easy reach, she might have given herself an impulse haircut, just to see if it cooled off her head.  And she did like her hair, a lot.

That was the distinction.  She liked her hair, most of her clothes, her stature, her nascent chest, her stomach that her top was clinging to, and her face.  A few boys in her class apparently liked those things too.  She just wished it didn’t all come with so much hassle.

If she could only leave it behind.  If she could only become something else, something Other, and if Lucy and Avery but especially Lucy could be okay with it, she’d devote her existence to helping them out, backing them up.

Miss had clarified that an Other that paired with a human became an animal, and could switch back and forth between their form as an Other and the animal form.  Some preferred one or the other.  The black cat for a witch, or a mouse, or a snake.

If she could be Lucy’s familiar?  How cool would that be?  To stay with Lucy and not worry about anything, even eating and using the bathroom?  No needs except the relationship.  No stresses, no burdens, no looming future where she’d be broken, fat, depressed, and in debt.  No looming future where she might avoid some or most those things, but in her effort to hold onto her own identity and integrity, she could end up unavoidably becoming the kind of bitch that left someone else broken, fat, depressed, and/or in debt.

She had how many more years of school left?  Three more of high school, if she didn’t slip up and fail one?  How many years of University?  She didn’t even have the beginning of a sense of what that involved, but she’d heard of people in their thirties who hadn’t graduated yet, who were going for or getting or had PHDs but were still there.  She didn’t know what a bachelors was or what programs people were supposed to go into, but Booker had been making noise about it, sounding excited and apprehensive, and all she’d felt when thinking about it ever since was apprehensive.

Jasmine had taken Booker to visit with a bunch of universities he was interested in, and Verona had seen some of that from a distance.  Verona was pretty sure her dad wouldn’t do that and she wasn’t sure she’d welcome it if he did.

Three more years of high school?  One to ten years of university?  How many years of working?  To do what?  She didn’t know a single adult who had paid off their house, so… massive debt and the imminent possibility of losing her home?  And a possible relationship, when each person was like a collection of five to ten jigsaw pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, trying desperately to fit themselves together with jigsaw pieces from other puzzles.

Sometimes you could jam that fit of personalities and sexuality and introversion-extroversion and hobbies and whatever else together.  Force it and stress and fight and be uncomfortable a lot of the time, and even if you could make it fit sometimes, a situation like Jas and Paul could happen and you could get your heart torn out and never be one hundred percent okay again.

Dating didn’t sound all that fun.  Living with someone didn’t sound fun.  Getting engaged didn’t sound fun.  Weddings could be fun if there was an off the wall theme or something like a costume wedding but that really wasn’t the point and then what?  Being married just seemed like more hassles.  Getting separated and divorced felt like an even bigger hassle.

Who cared?  And who cared enough to work their asses off for years at school and careers?

If she could be an Other and then be a familiar, couldn’t she just be Lucy’s friend forever?  Sleepovers every night?  Visiting Avery and helping Avery find some girl that was her type?  Helping with practice stuff?  Vicariously enjoying what Lucy enjoyed in work and love?  Rooting for her friends and supporting them?

Being a family with Lucy and Jas and Booker?

Except if she brought it up to Lucy, she was pretty sure her friend would flip out.  Which kind of made her want to cry, even though the tears weren’t readily available.

She’d thought she had found a way forward and she’d just hurt Lucy instead.  She was trying to focus on being the backup, on shouldering burdens and keeping things moving, and watching the flanks for other crap, because whatever decision she ended up making, she wanted to do that for Lucy.

She wanted to tell Lucy all about her morning and early afternoon, and hear about Lucy’s morning and early afternoon.  She wanted to help Lucy more with the Paul thing, which had exploded when she wasn’t there.

She wanted to help Avery but she felt even more gunshy about that after the Pam thing and the accusations she hadn’t been looking out, when she hadn’t even thought it was a thing to look out for.  Lucy had been right and Verona felt like crap, and it made it hard to interact with Avery because she didn’t want to do something wrong without realizing.

Which went back to the backup.  Getting the a-ok from the others and then interviewing the goblins, collecting three gifts.

She felt so frustrated, about everything, and it was worse because it felt like her life was becoming a shrinking box, and there was a clear way out of the box, and she wasn’t allowed to take it.

The frustration was worse because her freaking clothes didn’t fit, and her hair was hot, and the small of her back and her bra and her ass crack were all collecting sweat.  Her flip flops were wearing into the skin between her toes, but the ground was too hot to walk on, and it was supposed to get hotter this summer and how was she even going to juggle laundry for the next two weeks while her clothes arrived and she didn’t trust her diagrams quite enough to try warding off the heat because she’d tried with another top and reduced it to cinders and-

Verona perked up.  At one corner of her neighborhood, there was an empty lot that didn’t have a house in it, and it might’ve belonged to one of the neighbors, but for the time being it was something of an impromptu field and play area for younger kids in the neighborhood.  Older kids went to the ski hill when it wasn’t covered in snow, and there were a bunch of places to sit.

Those Verona’s age got the stink eye for being older kids among the younger ones in the empty lot, and for being kids while at the ski hill, if there were any teenagers there.

Jeremy from her class was in the empty lot, and he was sitting in the grass, a few feet away from a kitty.  A juvenile cat, with a black face and light brown fur that formed wisps all around it.  Fluffy.

She watched from a distance, venturing forward a few steps at a time, while not stepping onto the lot.

Jeremy had a plastic bag beside him, and was cranking at something.  The kitty kept tilting its head one way or the other.

Verona stepped to one side to get a better view of what Jeremy was doing, and he saw her.  He waved her over.

She approached carefully, so as not to spook the kitty, crouching down about ten feet from the little critter and Jeremy.  It looked like a can of cat food, and he had a cheap can opener that seemed to need a few passes at each part of the can to open it up.

“Do you know her?” Jeremy asked.

Verona wasn’t sure if he was talking to the kitty about her or her about the kitty.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before,” she admitted.

“Where’d you come from, beautiful?” Jeremy asked.  He got the can open, bending the lid back rather than actually removing it.  He made a face at the smell, then used a plastic spoon to get some out and offer it to the kitty.

The kitty gratefully accepted.

“Woohoo,” he breathed.  “She likes it.”

“Good for you both,” Verona murmured.

Jeremy smiled.  He was a bit gawky, like he hadn’t grown into himself yet, and like her, pretty much every inch of his clothes was damp with sweat or humidity.

He still wore it better, in Verona’s opinion.  No bra outline standing out in relief.  He just had a guy chest.  He’d pushed his hair back out of the way – it was dark and long on top and very short at the sides and back.  Her hair was probably scruffier than the stray cat’s.  She’d trimmed it to have a shape and there was zero chance it was holding that shape.

“How do you like this stuff, huh?” Jeremy asked the cat.  He offered the spoon at the same time he reached out to pet it with his other hand.  It ventured closer to the partially open can, which let him pet it.  “It smells so bad.”

“It probably smells amazing to a cat nose,” Verona said.

“Do you have one?” Jeremy asked.

“My dad says he’s allergic.”

“Would you if you could?” he asked.

Verona nodded with emphasis.

They sat there in the grass, while the cat ate.

“Got some on my hands.”

“I’ve got a water bottle I’ve drank from.  Can’t guarantee there isn’t a bit of my spit in there, though.”

“It’s gotta be better than this,” Jeremy said.

Verona gave him the bottle.  He seemed to use the bare minimum necessary to get his hand wet and wipe it off.  She gave him the last napkin she had from her lunch, as well.

She wondered how he’d take a really bad pick up line?

If you don’t mind my spit, how’d you like to swap spit?  Just for practice, no strings attached.  Because I’m curious, and you’re kind of cute in a weird way.

Not that she’d actually ever say something like that.

She poured a bit of water into her cupped hand, and held it out for the kitty.  After a tentative first sniff, it went for it, drinking greedily.  Verona refilled a few times, squinting through the sunlight.

She pet it, and it was soft as heck.  It was also warm to the touch.  Probably overheated.  It needed a groomer to cut all that extra hair off, pretty as it was.

“Scoot over one foot to your left, Jeremy?” she asked.  “Not- left.  Come on.  You’re an artist.  You should know left from right.”

“Is that really an artist thing?” he asked.  “Also, you knew I’m an artist?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Look, see, now you’re giving shade for the kitty.”

“Bit of shade for you too if I just, uh…” He sat up a bit, kneeling in the grass, his butt not touching his calves, and put his hand over his head.  The hand just barely blocked the sun from shining in her eyes.  He adjusted a bit.

“You might get too tired, doing that,” she said.

“I know, but it’s kind of worth it, right?”

“I’m not complaining,” she said.  “Thanks.”

“Hi, by the way,” he told her.

“Hi,” she said.  Why’d he have to go and make it awkward?

“Out enjoying the nice weather?”

“I’d rather it was winter,” she said, combing the cat with her nails.  “Cold weather, blankets, sweaters, the comfort food is better and doesn’t make my teeth hurt like cold stuff does.”

“Cavities or something?”

“Nah, I’ve had the issue since I was a kid,” she said.  “You don’t have sensitive teeth, kitty.  You were deprived, weren’t you?  Poor kitty.”

“If it’s any consolation, you definitely look like someone that’s in their element in warm weather,” Jeremy said.

She made a face, looking at him.

“Was that cringe?” he asked.

“If I had to rate it, I’d rate it kind of smooth, actually.  Eight out of ten, in my books, as compliment delivery.  And I’d rate it two out of ten on the honesty scale, but thank you for trying.”

A herd of kids were making their way onto the lot, including the mom from the wavy tree dance studio and her triplets, all aged five to nine or so.  They were dragging this giant plastic mat covered in circles of different colors.

Verona tried to shield the kitty from view, moving around until she was beside Jeremy, her back to the kids, but it was too late.  Squealing and cheering, they came running over.

The kitty bailed.  Smart.  Some of the kids gave chase, until they were called back by their parents or the instructor.

“Well, she ate most of it,” Jeremy said.  “Two dollars and ninety-five cents well spent.”

“It was nice of you,” Verona said, standing up, and picking up her bag so it wouldn’t get kicked by kids.  That would be bad, especially with a ‘firecracker with extra fire and extra crack’ and a ‘stankbomb’ in the one pocket.  And the flesh-thorn thing.

“Got any plans for the day?” Jeremy asked.

Verona huffed out a breath, mostly from the heat and lingering frustration, her one hand closed in a fist.  “Nothing explicit, but I want to check in with my friends.  We lost track of time last night and it was two in the morning when we realized.  They’re grounded.”

“Oh man.  That sucks.  But I’m also kind of glad?”

“Well then you’re a jerk.”

“It’s kind of hard to talk to you when you’re always a duo or a trio.  I know, uh, you voted for me in the app thing.”

“You’ve got an expression on your face like that’s the last thing you ever wanted to hear,” Jeremy said.  “Did I misunderstand?  Because if it was a pity thing…”

“It wasn’t a pity thing, explicitly.  If I was going to do a pity thing it would’ve been for Gabe, specifically, but…”

She blinked twice.  The heat was baking her brain.

She waved him off.  “You don’t know him, I don’t think.  Doesn’t really matter as far as this conversation goes.”

“I’m glad it’s not a pity thing and I’m also really confused.”

“You’re cool.  If I was going to have a boyfriend, you’d be the first or second person I’d think of.”

“Who’s the other?” Jeremy asked.

“I voted for Wallace.  Don’t tell him, though.”

Jeremy shook his head.  “Nah.  Interesting though.  I’m getting a better understanding of you, I guess.”

“I gotta figure some stuff out first.  Might be a lot of figuring,” she admitted.

“But you would pick me, if you had to pick someone?” he asked.  “And there’s a chance you could tap me on the shoulder sometime and ask to do a date type of thing?”

“Small, small chance.  I don’t really get dating.  Sorry.”

“But it would be me?” he asked.  He seemed like his ego had inflated about ten times.

She shrugged.  “Yeah.”

“Cool.  Awesome.  Kind of glad we did the Class Ranker thing.  Even if I felt bad for some of the others.  Half the guys got no votes at all, and Lucy…”

She was worried about Lucy.

“That part sucked a bit.”

“Speaking of, I’m going to go check on my friends, I think,” Verona said.

“Cool,” he said.  “If I run into the kitty again, should I bring her by?”

“It won’t bother your dad if I do?”

“I don’t really care if it does.”

“Ah, that type of dynamic, then?”

“Cool.  Well, see you later.”

Things had been nice until the weirdness with expectations and roles and boyfriend girlfriend stuff, but at the very least, it didn’t feel frustrating in exactly the same way as it had before.

She made her way to her house, and let herself inside.  The interior was dark and cool, with the air conditioner’s rumble loud but not obtrusive.  White noise filling the space.

Fist still closed, she made her way upstairs.

“Verona!” her dad called out.

She passed her own room, and ventured into the doorway of his room, standing there.  He lay in bed, wearing an undershirt, blanket draped over his lap for modesty.  Even with the air conditioner in the stairwell, he had a bit of a sheen of sweat on his face.

“Have you had lunch?” he asked.

“I was going to ask if you could make me something while you were at it.  Oh well.”

“Want to come in?  Lie next to me, watch a movie, have a daddy-daughter day?”

“I was stopping in to charge my phone a bit, drop stuff off, and change.”

“After you’re done changing, we could watch a movie.  Order pizza in a few hours…”

He tried to make it tantalizing.  And the ease of pizza was tantalizing in its own way.  Her stomach, though, felt heavy with lunch.  She didn’t need much food to keep herself going, and it wasn’t like she was in the middle of a growth spurt.

“I’m going to go do the stuff,” she said.

She entered her room, and only when she was at her desk did she open her fist.

In the process of petting the stray cat, she’d collected hairs.

She had other things she’d collected.  A little slip of vellum.  Skin with a silvery tint to it.

She’d put it in a clear resealable bag, and when she’d done so, she’d noticed the dust accumulating in the corner.

She had another, the slip of paper Avery had gotten, also in a bag.

She investigated as best as she could, and there was no difference in the consistency, color, or properties of the dust.

I want to do some faerie related practice.  Transformation.  I’ve got some glamour-breaking stuff from goblins, plus more stuff.  Would drop in to see you.  Have info.  This doesn’t feel like a trap but am open to input, can give more details.

Avery’s reply was immediate.

Lucy’s took another ten minutes.  Verona spent those ten minutes changing clothes and getting her notebooks sorted out.

Lucy’s response was brief.

Can’t really talk atm.  Check in regularly, plz?  Keep careful notes?  If I don’t hear from you at least every 30 min, I’m going emergency mode.

Verona sent her confirmation.

Then, shaking as much of the stray glamour from the vellum as she could, she did a little test on the shirt she’d just pulled off, trying to adjust the dimensions and scale.  Anything funky?  Weird?

What kind of trap would this be?  Was it related to the vellum and the source of the vellum?

She used the dust from Avery’s thing first, picking up the cat hair, and then putting it against her own hair.  Twist, roll, spread, extend.  Twist, roll, spread, extend.  Slight color change to darken it.  Twist, roll…

Weaving it in.  Twisting it in, until the smudge of hair blacker than her own extended over most of her head, and a pass of her hand could spread it out to the back of her head.

The bones were harder.  She kneaded those, to change direction and shape.  With the cat hair in the mix, all she really had to do was fight to control the texture and color.  The rest came pretty easily, as the glamour tried to take on and impart cat properties.

Her fingernails raked against her flesh digging in like they were digging into clay.  Claw away, press in, condense.

I am a little cat.  I am a dense, lithe form.  I am beautiful.

A bit of a break from the hassle of her regular body.  A full body massage, and a body that felt nice to wear.

I am a tiny predator.  I am related to humans but not confined by that relation.

Her fingers dug into her skull, opening up the ear, large and wide.  A moment later, she felt the rustling and heard the footsteps.

There was a sharp knock at her door, followed by it opening a second later.

“Verona?” her dad asked.

He stepped away, leaving her door to swing open wide.  He called downstairs.  “Verona!”

Verona licked and kneaded at herself to reduce her form down further.

Six year old Kerry Kelly was ten times her size.  Verona could feel the footsteps rattle the ground as the kid charged toward her.  She ducked away and around behind the couch.

The entire couch, which might as well have been the Kennet Arena, for scale, slid two inches closer to the wall as Kerry threw herself at it, clambering over to see behind.

“Did we get a cat?  Why didn’t we get a dog?  Is the cat ours?” Kerry asked.

“There’s a cat?” Declan asked.

“It’s a kitten!  Black with a white belly!”

Verona had slipped into the house, using the door that was left open because apparently this was a house with twenty people in it and no air conditioning.  She’d gone looking for Avery and found chaos instead.  She darted left, and Kerry moved to cut her off, the entire couch sliding again.  A practical mountain moving within inches of Verona.

Kerry’s voice became shrill and unintelligible.  Declan’s footsteps were audible too, something clattering violently and sharply as he tossed it onto a table.

Verona reversed direction, slipping into… dining room.

There were three people in the dining room.  Mostly adult or adult-ish.

I was joking when I thought this house had twenty people in it.

“Who- Kerry!  Did you bring the cat inside!?”

“No!  Where is it?  Oh my god, kitty kitty, don’t go outside!  Stay in!”

“Mom, close the door!”

The ground thundered with kid footsteps.  The adults, even though they were massive, were somehow gentler.

Verona checked outside.  No Avery.

Kitchen, adjacent to dining room.

This is my hell.  What are these people?

“Get it into the kitchen and close the door behind it!” Declan called out.

Cutting off escape routes.

Verona reversed direction.  Her body was lithe, agile, quick to react.  She was a coiled spring and she could go anywhere.

Mostly she wanted to get away from the kids.  She had to get to Avery and distract.

Her eyes refocused, and the side-to-side movements of the kids became clearer, up-down movements and planes of vision a little blurrier.  Her Sight brought things out even more.

She’d wanted to use her Sight more, but if she got to the point it was always on, Lucy would start to catch on, then Lucy would worry, and Verona didn’t want to add to Lucy’s worries.

She ran around the kid.  Off to the side, with a grind and a rumble, and faint metal-on-metal squeaks, the sliding glass door closed.  Another door slammed.  The front door.

If that little kid grabs or hugs you with any strength at all, it’s going to spoil the glamour and you’re going to be a thirteen year old girl in the middle of their living room, and they are going to be very confused.

She had to get upstairs.  but for now- maybe if she got up?

And in that armchair, she realized as she bounded up, there was a man, so still her eyes hadn’t registered it.  It was all she could do to avoid springing away in the same way she might if she had jumped onto a hot stove, legs and tail splayed.

“Unf,” the man mumbled.

He moved hands nearly as big as she was closer to her, gently and cautiously.

And, Verona noted, the kids weren’t storming toward her anymore.

“Grumble’s got him,” Declan said.

Hands, stiff and slow moving, pawed at her with less manual dexterity than her own paws offered.

Being stroked felt nice.  Weird but nice.

Kids hovered.  Their faces were huge.

“We can’t keep him, no Declan,” the dad was saying.  “If we add a pet this house might collapse from the added stress.  Besides, your mother isn’t home.”

Verona settled down, curling up a bit.  Kerry cooed and reached over the arm of the armchair.

“She trusts us!” Kerry said.

I do not.  I barely trust myself.

“She’s lying down.  Oh, are you sure we can’t keep her?”

Kerry turned away from the chair to continue the argument and plead with her dad, sometimes in the same sentence.

“Just what we need, hm?” the old man said, his voice a coarse creak of a sound.  “A bit more liveliness in this house?  More energy?  At least you can settle down in all this bustle, hmm?”

This is a feint.  Trickery, Verona silently pledged.  I am a badass predator.  I am laser-focused on my prize and my prize is talking shop with Avery.

The kids were sufficiently distracted.  Avery stood in the stairwell, a smirk on her face.

Quietly, and with some care, she slipped down to the ground and raced to Avery, who scooped her up.  Verona immediately hid beneath the bottom end of Avery’s shirt.

Avery escaped into her room, closed the door behind her, and sat down at her desk.  Homework was spread out in front of her.

“Infiltration successful,” Verona said.

“Having fun?” Avery asked.

“Well, I appreciate the visit.  Today was looking to be really dreary.  Nobody has any activities and I’m grounded for the weekend.  I’ve been in a funk, thinking about Reagan and the others.”

“I thought I’d look in.  Give some emotional support.  Backup.”

“The word of the week, huh?  Thanks.”

Verona made her way from Avery’s lap to the computer desk, stretching.  She liked these muscles, and she liked how they worked.  Lots of explosive, easy power.  The tiredness sat differently though, walking from her place to Avery’s, as contrasted with the walk from downtown to her house.

“Well,” Verona said, “We can talk about that.  That’s an option, I don’t know what to say or do, but I can listen.  Or we can talk about my interview with the goblins, and the gifts.”

“Three gifts.  I thought we’d each take one, trade them between us.  There’s-”

Her ear twitched as she heard incoming stomps.  Not kid stomps.

She hid, ducking down to Avery’s lap.

“It’s my room too.  What are you doing that you care so much about privacy?  Looking at porn?”

“This is homework, Sheridan.  Ever hear of it?  You kind of have to do it to succeed at school.  Ever hear of that?”

“Kerry’s going to have a full-on meltdown if we can’t find this cat that got into the house.”

“Good luck with that.  I’m grounded, I can’t leave my room.”

“Yeah, well thanks.  Stand by for one six year old freaking the fuck out.”

The hallway was filled with the stomps of -Verona counted- two kids.  The younger ones.  And one adult-ish person.

“I don’t know how you manage this,” Verona murmured, standing up so her back legs were on Avery’s thighs and the front ones were on the desk.  She surveyed the homework.  “Or this.”

“I don’t know how you manage your dad,” Avery said.

“You learn,” Verona said.

“Can you learn to not put your head directly in the way?  Distract me, please.”

“Do you want to talk goblin interview, gifts, or two weird little things that I think might be pertinent to the investigation.  Maybe clues or suspicions?”

“That last one.  Please, yes, I need a win right now, or… a hint of a possible win.”

“Okay, but you gotta give me pets.”

“I was wondering, would that be weird?  Because-”

Avery’s fingernails were frustratingly short, probably because of the sports thing, but it was still nice.  Verona closed her eyes, and talked, ears peeled for more Kelly family members tearing their way into the room.

“Okay, well, it came up during the interview, when they mentioned…”

Getting into Lucy’s house was harder.  It wasn’t air conditioned, but it was properly screened in, with no doors left open or anything.  The car went in the garage, so it was hard to tell if they were home, and window positioning made it tricky to tell where they were in the home.

Verona leaped from windowsill to windowsill to get to Lucy’s window.

Lucy wasn’t home.  A bit more exploration confirmed it.

She settled in among the plants outside one window, which provided some shade, and baked a bit in the sun.  There were a few times bugs got close to her, and she batted at them, testing her paw-eye coordination.

It was hard to be a cat and not to feel very good at everything that thousands of years of evolution had honed cats into being.

How were humans so bad at being humans, by that same measure?

Sick frigging joke, it was.

It took maybe an hour for Lucy to turn up.  Verona could sense the movements and the shuffling as doors were firmly closed, and someone -Lucy- jogged up stairs.

She meowed loudly, then meowed again, because it was fun to try the variations.  It felt a lot more like her vocals were attached to the emotional part of her ‘heart’.  She played with it again, for a third meow.

Lucy popped the window open.

“You’re ridiculous.”

Lucy pressed a finger to her lips, pointing.

Just two rooms over, a light flicked on.

Lucy picked her up, holding her all wrong, and carried her over to the bed.  Then she settled in, moving blankets to provide visual cover in case Jasmine came in.

Then she stepped out of the room.

Verona tested her hand-eye coordination more, targeting a stray thread sticking out from the sheet.

A minute passed before Lucy returned, with some snacks.  She held her finger to her lips again.

“Had my counseling appointment,” Lucy murmured.  “Kinda really wish I didn’t have to explain things from the beginning.  It’s exhausting, and kind of disheartening.  Because it makes me feel like I’m overdramatizing when I’m not even sure if the things I’m complaining about happened.  But then, in the big picture… there’s something going on, right?”

Verona rolled over onto her back, and used all four paws to maneuver Lucy’s hand, bringing it to her side.

“I kind of worry that I can explain for twenty two-hour sessions that are really expensive for my mom, and this guy might not ever get what I’m talking about, y’know?”

Lucy’s nails were longer, and did a good job of parting fur and reaching skin beneath.  They traced their way to Verona’s belly.

“Ah, not there,” Verona said, quiet.  Belly felt vulnerable and weird.  She added, quiet, “You know, I can’t say I get it, but I’ve been paying attention all along, so if you want to talk more, or figure out what to say next time, I can help.”

“Okay,” Lucy said, her head resting on her folded-up arm, her other arm reaching down and over to find a rhythm with the scratches and pets.  “I was thinking you’d want to talk practice.”

“I really really do, but I want to hear you out more.  Really.”

“I talked to Reagan,” Lucy said.

“I wanted to talk about the you thing.”

“I want to talk about this too.  I need to get this off my chest,” Lucy said.

What topsy-turvy world was this, when she was the one arguing with Lucy about focusing on the practice stuff?

“It took her a while to get back to her place after.  The winner, the sobbing girl, took seven parts from each of the seven contestants.  Reagan isn’t in good shape.  She’s blind, and she’s convinced she’s going to die, and the other six aren’t much better off.  The next night is tomorrow.”

Verona licked Lucy’s wrist.  Sweat was very salty.

“I was thinking,” Lucy said.  “I’d hate myself for a long time if I let that happen without fighting it.  Or at least discussing fighting it.”

“You want to interfere?” Verona asked.

“Do you think you could use that body of yours to find a prey animal for Avery’s ritual?  Virgin?  Never tasted or drawn blood?  Or…”

Lucy’s voice, so soft it was on the cusp of the words not coming out, cracked a bit.

“Or?” Verona asked, tilting her head to better see Lucy with the weird horizontal emphasis of her eyes.

“Or summon up some really good arguments why we shouldn’t?  Or maybe do both Avery and I a huge favor and be a stubborn jerk who says no and refuses to budge on the subject?”

“I’ll think about arguments, but… I worry if I do argue about it, we’ll be having this discussion again in a few days.  Then a few days after that.  For how long?  Until we’re okay with it?”

“You want to interfere?”

For you two, more than for the victims.  Maybe that makes me a sociopath.

“I want to interfere.  So let’s start thinking about how and why, and going over everything about the Forest Ribbon Trail.  We’ll need to bring Avery into this discussion.”

Lucy’s expression had changed by fractions.  Most who saw and knew Lucy tended to dismiss her as having an angry expression all the time, but it really wasn’t that.  There were signs, and Verona had known her friend for long enough to read a slight rise of the eyebrows as fear.  A press of the lips together as determination.

“I’m going to call Avery.  Her parents aren’t watching her phone, right?”

“Right,” Verona confirmed.

Probably, hopefully, Lucy felt better taking this route.  More scared but better.

The trail would be a way to get where they needed to be, if everything went right.

The Hungry Choir Ritual would very likely get messy, if they intervened again.

Lucy feeling better now was great.  That feeling having any permanence at all depended on them navigating a whole lot of craziness in a very short span of time.