Author: Wildbow

Gone and Done It – 17.2 | Pale

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Three Warrens fleshmonglers were stalking their way through the trees.  It didn’t feel like a Liberty Tedd thing or even a Tedd thing in general.  This felt like someone had really dug deep into the Warrens to pull out the horrible stuff.

Avery had once read about tumors that could grow teeth, hair, even eyeballs.  These guys were like that, but all over.  Head to toe.  From a distance they looked like people made of wet garbage but once they got closer the smell would hit her and then she’d see it was all body parts.  One was long-limbed and skinny, one big and bulky, the last a quadruped who had lost a limb in an accident that had left a gnarly scar that was the least messy or gross part about the creature.

They were faster than her and they didn’t get tired.  The big one was slowest- but he was still about her speed.  He followed right behind her, on the path that cut through the forest.  The skinny one was agile, and grabbed at trees and things, changing direction or climbing in a flash.  He barely seemed to slow down even as he hit the thicker bits of vegetation.

The tripod fleshmongler dog thing was what spooked her though.  Whenever it hit a spot where there was a clearing or an area without bushes or undergrowth to slow it down, it got way faster.

The first time it had appeared, it had gotten on the wrong side of the big one, who had smacked it pretty darn hard.  It hadn’t gotten close since.  But it kept looking over, like it wanted to find an opening in the trees and lunge through.  Even if she was able to deal with it in the short-term, if it ended up on the road without the big one nearby, she’d never outrun it.

She’d used three spell cards already, just giving it reasons to back off and not charge in.

It was there.  It looked like raw red gristle wrapped around bone with matted, bloody tufts of hair, teeth, ulcers, and sores filling in the gaps.  One of its forelimbs had a bit partway down that looked only as thick as her finger, but expanded out into a paw like one of Snowdrop’s, big enough to grip Avery’s face and have the fingertips meet at the back.  It ran in an ungainly way, fingers of that hand spread out, digging into soil while the fingertips bent backwards for purchase.  Every pant it let out sounded like a short wheezing scream, which went between the wheezy, screamy growls it used to try to intimidate her.

It tried and it succeeded.

Snowdrop was on her shoulder, and sent her a signal.

The long and lanky one had hurled itself at a branch and then stopped.  It had something in its hands.  A squirrel.

The fleshmongler stopped running, digging fingers into the squirrel and tearing it apart.  It looked at her with two eyes that were overlarge, one swollen like it had too much fluid in it, no eyelids to hold the eyeballs in place- only the grip of teeth, one small, bent finger, and strands of hair.  It smiled without teeth and it looked like a fucking scary sockpuppet smile, if socks were made of hairy tumors.

She’d heard stories about what these things could do.

She threw a spell card at the dog fleshmongler as it screamed, making a sharp right turn to duck beneath a fallen tree, coming right at her.

The card erupted into blinding light, illuminating dark forest.

There was a road off to the right, and there was a truck on that road, driving under the speed limit, headlights off, someone leaning out of the window, watching for her.

The woman who had summoned the fleshmonglers was out there, in the car, potentially planning another move.  Another summon, a trick, a spell that could accelerate or empower her summons… there were too many possibilities.  Even a gunshot wasn’t out of the question if the trees thinned out enough.

The light had stalled the dog and blinded the big one.  When the big one staggered up and the dog realized it was in range of another strike, it screamed and retreated backwards, backing up to squeeze backwards under the fallen tree it had come by.

The big one started to find its stride again.

That bought her time.

But she’d used four spell cards now.  She was running out.

Snowdrop’s head flicked left.  Alarm.

Avery moved right, out of the way.

The flying object was small enough in the gloom that Avery couldn’t see it clearly until its second fly-by pass.

It was a mangled squirrel.  And a mangled bird.  Flesh mashed together with flesh, bones broken and sticking out, a tattered, strangled bit of tail streaking the back, ulcerous, tumorous.  The wings had been left mostly intact, letting it fly awkwardly, hampered by its less aerodynamic shape.

Yeah.  If she got caught, these things would do something like that to her.  They didn’t eat, really, except to store ingredients for later regurgitation and use.  They just reconfigured flesh, took flesh away, added it, mixed it, or dismantled living things and then used them as currency to make their way in the middledeep Warrens.

They liked diseased and unusual flesh, but she didn’t have any of that.  She hoped.

“Guide me, Snow.  Eyes on the path, watch my flanks.”

Snowdrop crawled up Avery’s head and perched there, eyes out front, watching, head periodically turning, passing on impulses and general steering to Avery.  Avery used that excuse to focus on the spell cards.  Sorting through- reminding herself.

“Only have the one-”

Snowdrop signaled and Avery moved to one side.  Her shoulder scraped a tree.

“-card.  Buys me a chance to black rope.”

Two more ‘birds’ were in the air now.  One was a blending of two birds, flapping three wings, one of which was broken.  The other was a squirrel that had been cracked open and spread out, ribs sticking out toward its spreadeagled paws, torn flesh extended and hardened into wing shapes.

“Maybe,” she amended.  Maybe a chance.

The fleshmongled squirrelbird swooped in.  Snowdrop noticed it, but Avery’s reaction times were still human.  It gripped her hair, and it had enough fleshmongler energy in it that when it grabbed her hair with talons and a squirrel claw and pulled, it stretched the length of the hair while also making it feel like her hair was about to be pulled out.  Avery swatted at it, stumbling.

Snowdrop scratched her head while grabbing for purchase, and violently hissed at the squirrelbird.  It served to scare it off.

“Freaking-”

Another one came lunging down.

They weren’t as powerful as the fleshmonglers that had made them, but some energy had been invested in them, as a way to keep the mangled, broken bits in their bodies working.  As a ‘benefit’, if they could get claws into Avery, her skin wouldn’t scratch.  It would stretch.  Which made them pretty freaking scary.

She pulled a stick from her charm bracelet, and let the glamour fall away from it as she swung it.  She’d specifically chosen one that resembled the heft and thickness of a lacrosse stick, which she’d been practicing with for a bit.

She missed on the first swing, then hit one little flesh-bird’s wing on the follow up.  The bird thing fluttered wildly with two broken wings and one wing and then landed about ten feet down the path.  Avery made a point of leaping and coming down on it with her full weight, killing it.

There was no cure, there was no easy fix, and it was just two animals in a great deal of pain, capable of inflicting a great deal of pain.

The truck that was loosely matching her speed and tracking what was happening suddenly turned on its high-beams.  The light shone through the trees and cast long shadows, and the truck steered hard left-

Onto a road that would bring it to an intersection of the woodland path and the actual road.

“Frig.”

She couldn’t stop and couldn’t double back, so she pushed herself harder-

Stumbling a little as Snowdrop got her attention and she pivoted to swing the staff at another bird thing.  Smacking it.

While doing so, she saw the lanky fleshmongler further back in the trees.

The minions it had created weren’t especially strong.  There was still the third one, the squirrel with the fake wings, but it looked like too much damage had been done.  It was flying worse by the second.

Burning through that trace of power that kept it going.

It would die in a few moments.  Before it reached her.

She could see the road now.  And Thea, standing on the far side of the road, by the trees.  The path extended to the road’s edge, then continued on the far side.  Tracks of mud on pavement suggested a lot of dirtbikes or something came this way.

“Don’tfuckmedon’tfuckmedon’tfuckme,” Avery whispered, ducking her head down.  “HelpmeoutThea, pleasedon’tsuck.”

Thea, Blackforester and generally all-around-awful person, noticed her.

“Air spirits are cool!” Avery shouted.

She’d had to change the command phrase written on her shoes after the ‘Deer takes King’ thing stopped being relevant.  She’d gone with something that might curry favor.

She reached the break in the trees and the start of the road just as the command phrase kicked in.  She leaped.

The car screeched its wheels directly beneath her, but recent rain and that caked-on mud cost it traction.  A woman slouched in the back looked up at her as Avery brought knees to chest, arms out to the side, one holding the stick.

The lanky fleshmongler had resumed running and followed out onto the road just a few paces behind Avery, a good distance to her left.  The truck’s momentum carried it forward and the truck couldn’t avoid the collision with the long-limbed fleshmongler with the sock puppet smile.  Instead of being sent flying in the direction the truck had been going, it moved in an explosive way, climbing up the truck and and hurling itself in the opposite direction- toward Avery, a look in its face that would haunt Avery’s nightmares.

Avery’s shoes hit the path on the far side of the road, a matter of feet from Thea, and she had enough time to turn, confirm what was happening, and have her mind go blank with alarm before the fleshmongler landed right next to her, grabbing for her.

Fleshmongler-to-skin contact was bad, so Avery went down, hurling herself toward bushes and piled up sticks while twisting around to face it, her kicking pre-emptively.

Her shoe met its face, and its face folded bonelessly around the treads, teeth biting and scraping at material.  A hand with long fingernails grabbed for her leg and got jeans.  It used its other hand to stay balanced as it leaned over her, with leaning being the operative word.  Its weight pressed down, and even though it was the skinny one, Avery was pressed down toward the ground, her leg straining as she tried to keep it from bending or folding, keeping the fleshmongler from collapsing onto her.  Snowdrop jumped onto Avery’s chest, hissing, and Avery grabbed her, pulling her back before he could graze Snow or do something horrible.

The hand it had on her leg pawed at her jeans, trying to pull them up enough that it could get at her calf.  She was really glad she hadn’t bought into the resurgence of baggier jeans from thirty years ago or so.

“I think we’ll have to cede this lordship,” Thea observed, dry.

“Help!” Avery shrieked.

Thea took her eyes off the truck and stepped closer, looking annoyed.  She reached into her jacket and pulled out something that resembled the octopus skull that she’d had in her vault, with its spike-like tentacles drooping down.  Her fist was gripping something inside the skull.

“Don’t touch it!” Avery shouted.

The spine-tentacles reached out, grabbed the fleshmongler, and yanked it away from Avery, slamming it against a tree.  The spine-shaped tentacles wrapped around it.

It smiled that sock-puppet smile at Thea, bloodshot eyes bulbous, with no light in them, and it strained to get closer to her.  Its flesh tore and broke away with strings as it stretched in her direction.

The practitioners from the car were hanging back, not approaching.  It took Avery a second to realize why.  The big fleshmongler was at the edge of the road.  It looked like they didn’t want to get in its way, but it was holding back for almost the same reason.

Thea glanced over her shoulder and saw it.  “There’s another?”

Snowdrop sensed the dog thing moving through the trees – going around them.

“There are two more,” Avery said.  She’d stood and now she pointed at both.

“Say that sooner,” Thea told Avery.  To the fleshmongler at the tree, she told it, “return to the one who called you here.  Do unto her what you would have done unto us, three times over.”

Then she released it.  It broke free with a stumble.  She gave it a light kick.

It screamed and went tearing toward the other end of the path, getting there just as the big one did.

They collided and started fighting, mutilating and altering one another with every blow.

Thea punched the skull-hand upward.  The spike-tentacles extended all the way from Thea to the night sky.

Darkness poured down, the near-black blue of the night sky turning an actual black.  Rain fell, and it landed with heavy drops that made small, palm-sized puddles in the dirt.  The truck headlights flickered and died- and they had been the only real source of illumination as the moon went dark.

Thea looked at Avery.  “You’re bleeding.”

Avery checked.  Her arm- she hadn’t even realized in the heat of the moment.  She was wearing a long-sleeved top with a hoodie-like cut, and there was a tear in the arm, near the shoulder, with a gouge in the skin beneath.  Blood soaked her sleeve from shoulder to elbow.

“It’s not from a fleshmongler, at least.  Pretty sure.”

“Who came up with that idiotic name?”

“There’s other names for them that are old English or something, but the stuff I read seems to go with whatever is catchiest and modern.  Uh- hmmm.  Do you have a game plan?”

“Not being attacked by one of those things in the short term.  Long term, I think we have to retreat.”

Avery looked down the path.  She could see the landscape shifting.  Trees moving.  “Is that you?”

Thea turned her head.  “No.”

“Because that seems bad if we want to retreat.”

“I’m aware that seems bad.”

“Just FYI, fleshmonglers-”

“What’s the old name for them?”

“I don’t really remember.  They’re fleshmonglers, deal with it.  Um.  They’re super territorial, out of some dim sense of Self-preservation, capital S-”

“I can hear the capital S.  Get to the point.”

“-they stay away from each other because a lot of the time a fleshmongler that fights another fleshmongler just sort of… blends together into a stronger, new fleshmongler.”

Thea was making a barely audible, low, throaty, groaning sound and Avery wasn’t sure if that was because she kept saying fleshmongler or if it was because of the situation.

“And I guess they don’t want to do that any more than I’d want to blend into you, even if it’d mean getting way stronger.  But if we couldn’t help fighting if it came down to it… best to stay away from each other, right?”

“No need to spell it out.  I understood already.”

It felt like everything she said or did was an imposition on Thea.  Which, sure, fine, good.  Child kidnapper, soul thief.  Avery wasn’t forgetting that.

Would be nice to have teamwork and an unhappy Thea, though.

“What do you need?” Avery asked.  She turned her head to frown at Snowdrop, who was hanging off her shoulder, head pointing down, licking at the wound.

“I think I can win against even a stronger creature.  I don’t think I can win a sustained fight against three practitioners immediately after.  One’s the summoner?”

“Something Warrens related.  Haven’t seen any goblins yet.”

“She may be a purist, as ironic as that seems when talking about the Warrens.  Alright.  And one is the one who is manipulating the landscape?”

Avery touched the City Pin that Ken had given her.  It was blurry, showing forest.  And the edges were sharp, like it had come right out of the machine that had made it, without any wear, tear, or machining to round off the edges.

“Something like city magic.  Our intel was they had a historian.  The Driscolls.  Could be them or someone related to them.  I’m not sure who the driver is.”

“I don’t like the wider politics of all of this,” Thea said.  “When I get involved in politics, heads roll.”

“That’s, hmmm, a good line, I guess.”

“Can you secure our exit?”

“Looks like we’ve got altered landscape.  Probably some obstacles.  And one of those monglers is out there-”

Thea sighed.

“It’s three-legged, fast when it gets up to speed.”

The trees around them were retreating.  That was Thea’s side of things.  They were standing in water that was lapping up around the tops of Avery’s shoes and climbing, and where it lapped and was disturbed, bioluminescent motes glowed.  Mist hung heavy around them, and it was dark now.

She could only barely see the outlines of the brawling fleshmonglers, who were fighting so intensely that the raw, torn-up parts of each other were pressing together.

“I think so.  Just have to be ready for the dog-”

“I can handle that.”

“-and I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve.  If you get pissy because you don’t want to hold my hand when I say so, you might die or get caught.  And if you don’t do what I say, I might die or get caught.  Or you will.”

“I’ll listen, you do the same.  Be ready.  When we’ve dealt with that.”

“The fleshmongler-”

“The creature.”

“The fleshmongler has a drawback.  The longer they’re, well, themselves, the better they are at using their bodies, getting stuff in order.  So this one will be big, strong, but clumsy.  Not always slow, but clumsy.”

“Noted.  But make up a better name for them, at least.”

“A name?  We could call it Ducky.”

“Be serious.”

“I’ll point out I’m the one who actually read up on them.  But why is it such a big deal?”

“What we say and what we do matters and has a wide impact on how the spirits treat us.  Those we surround ourselves with and how we present ourselves affect those who come to us and where we end up.”

“You’re apprentice to a guy who manages a bus line.”

“An extensive magical trap that entraps some of the worst elements of society.”

The fleshmongler lurched to something of a standing position.  The skinny fleshmongler was now most of its shoulder, head, and one arm.

It screeched.  Too high pitched a sound for something that brawny and ugly.

Then it charged.

Thea moved to Avery’s left, and when Avery looked, her vision wobbled.

Thea was a child.  She wore what looked like a makeshift dress of ragged bat wings, fish fins, pinned together with long, thin bones and with tendons.  An unidentifiable creature’s skull was perched atop her head.

Thea raised a hand, wrist limp, fingers dangling.

The water lit up as things moved beneath it.  It was a second of warning that the fleshmongler completely ignored.

Things that looked like deep sea fish, tentacles, and insects with see-through flesh instead of chitin attacked from the shallow water, striking from seven different angles.

“I’m guessing you can’t do that while we’re running away?” Avery asked.

Something crashed in a distant place, and everything around them shook; water rippled, the creatures fell aside, bringing chunks of the fleshmongler with them, and trees appeared at the periphery.  Visible now that the darkness wasn’t as deep.

The water level had dropped a few inches.  The creatures were less there, now.  Less like they were full bodied, and more like the occasional gnashing mouth or reaching tentacle.

They had at least destroyed Ducky.

Another bang brought it down to ankle height.  Avery felt a surge of vertigo as trees seemed to rush at her from all direction, approaching their original positions.

“Ready?” Thea asked.

Avery nodded.  She picked through her spell cards and readied one.

“At the next impact.  They’re attacking my realm.  I should warn you, I can’t run very fast.  The same people who raided my realm sliced my leg.”

As Thea said that, she looked up at Avery, locking her gaze to Avery’s.

“Okay.  I’ll help you where I can.  I don’t suppose you can stay small?  In case I need to carry you?”

“No,” Thea replied.  Avery was unsure if Thea meant she couldn’t stay small or she wouldn’t allow the carrying.  She guessed the former.

The bang came, the realm fell away, and the dog fleshmongler was only a few feet away, ready to lunge.  Avery pulled awkwardly at adult Thea’s arm, and tossed the card.

The card landed semi-bent in a cavity toward the dog fleshmongler’s head.  It exploded out into ice crystals.  Which didn’t stop the dog from crashing into them.  They stumbled back, and the dog thing lurched forward and dug a foot-long trench with its ice-encrusted head and shoulder.  It pawed at them blindly with one leg, but scratching at clothing alone, until they were out of its reach.

The practitioners shouted.

Avery and Thea ran.  For someone with a leg injury, Thea wasn’t all that slow.

“What’s your power source?” Thea asked, with an accusatory note in her voice.

“Huh?  What?”

“For the spell slips.  What material did you use to pen them?”

“Marker.”

“No power from an outside source?”

“I have patrons.  They promised me power and assistance when I awakened.”

“I see.”

Does she think I used the stuff from the battery we stole from her to make the spell cards?

Why doesn’t she just ask outright?

The path was winding, and around one bend, there was a padlocked gate, chest high, wide enough it could let a car through if it was open, that wasn’t open.  Barbed wire lined the top.

She could hear the shouts behind them.

Spell card.  An earth one, aimed at the base of one of the big posts on either side of the broad gate.  It went astray, and landed off to one side.

She’d hoped to obliterate the post, but instead it just leaned.  Avery pulled forward, jumped, and landed on the length of it, pushing it down closer to the ground.  Thea stepped onto the gate that was now more horizontal than vertical, and jumped over the barbed wire part.  Avery followed, and without her weight on the post, it lifted up a foot or so.

A victorious screaming, screeching sound suggested the dog was free.

Maybe the gate would be a good thing, if it got tangled up.

The trees on either side of them were dense.  It reminded Avery of the Forest Ribbon Trail.  Even the atmosphere.

“Something’s up, I think.”

“You’re right.”

Avery looked up at Thea.  Thea’s eyes were doing that thing where they became like little metal globes with etched landscapes.  Using her Sight.

“How much power do you have left?” Thea asked.

“I’m fine.  It’s more about how many spell cards I have left, and I only have, like, twelve.”

“And you could use all twelve?  Like you did with the ice and the earth?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Most practitioners don’t have that kind of power reserve.”

“I’d like to think and hope we’re doing things in a better way.”

“You might be right.  We might need that power.”

A crash behind them suggested the dog fleshmongler had crashed into the barbed wire.  It rattled and banged.  It would tear free.

They rounded a bend in the path, and Avery felt like she was walking into the Wolf’s den.  The path opened up wider, creating a clear space like the one the Wolf had dwelt in.  But a high road passed overhead, and a concrete tunnel ran beneath it, with a locked gate in the way, chains wrapped around it, with yellow signs hung and padlocked at the corners, warning not to enter.

Two Others were perched above it, the man crouched on the steep, almost wall-like slope that led up to the barrier at the road’s edge, the woman hanging by one hand from the same barrier, directly above the gate.  Both the man and the woman had chiseled, stone-like features and round, disc-like eyes that glowed like halogen headlights.  He wore a kilt, and she wore a toga, but they looked like they were the same hard material as their skin and hair.  Both flesh and ‘clothing’ were spray painted with vivid graffiti.

“Any idea what they are?” Avery asked, quiet.

“Got any tricks?”

“Some wards that won’t work well against focused attention like theirs.  Other things that take time to ready.”

“Okay.  Hm.”

The stone woman dropped from the spot she was hanging, and landed in a crouch in front of the locked gate.

There was a screech from behind them.  Snowdrop’s hair stood on end.

It was probably only a second that the impulse gripped her, but it felt like longer.  That she could maybe escape on her own.  Leave Thea.

How many more people would Thea hurt?

She’d talked with Rook the other night.  She’d talked with the others in the dream after.  About the lines they had to draw.  What they deemed acceptable.

Fleshmongler behind them.  Two eerie statue people ahead of them, guarding a locked door.  On either side, the trees like the trees at the Forest Ribbon Trail.

It was that last idea that pushed her to reach for Thea’s hand.

She’d picked the deer for her mask.  Not the wolf.

The wolf was reserved for special situations.

Hold on, she willed Snowdrop.

“Eyes closed!”

She tossed a spell card straight down.

The packed soil of the pathway exploded into sand and grit.

She pulled back, but could see the glow of those bright eyes cutting past the smoke.

She hoped their senses weren’t too good.  She glanced back-

The way was clear.

She black roped herself, Thea, and Snowdrop to the far end of the clearing.  They stepped out from behind a tree, right next to the gate, while the statues charged into the dust and the tripod dog fleshmongler appeared at the bend in the path.

She grabbed the jounce, and bounced it hard against the gate.

She’d reloaded it at the Bound to the Party where she’d left Florin.  The ball hit the gate, and exchanged the gate for a storefront.  The ball bounced off and smacked into her waiting hand.

Avery pulled the door open, dragged Thea behind her, and slammed it closed, locking it behind her.

“Eyes open.”

Thea opened her eyes.  Then she used her Sight.

A bang on the door echoed through the tunnel.

“That’s no trifle.  Keeping your tricks secret from me?”

“No, uh, little teleportation move I do doesn’t work if it’s observed.”

Avery’s arm was hurting.  The shirt was sticking to the skin.

Something banged on the door again.

“There are more barriers ahead.  More traps.”

“I can get one or two of the ones in the lead,” Thea said  She pulled a little rectangle of wood out of her jacket.  “It would be good if we could take a prisoner.  But we need to-”

Another bang on the door knocked splinters out.

“-deal with the remainder, after.”

“How does that work?” Avery asked.

Thea turned penetrating eyes Avery’s way.  There was a pause.

“How?” Avery pressed.

“It’s a picture frame.  A doorway to one of my realms.”

“Can you put it on the floor?”

“No.  Because it’s a picture frame, not a rug.”

“Uh huh.  Okay.  Use your ward.  The attention-dampening, whatever.”

“It’s less effective against practitioners.”

Because you hunt and capture innocents.

“Use it anyway.  Anything we’ve got.  Put your thing on the wall.”

Avery dug in her bag for the stuff she used less often.  Bigger sheets of paper, and spell cards for connection blocking.  Her arm throbbed as she held books out of the way to reach to the bottom.

The bangs on the door were a repeating effect- most hits were ineffectual.

She quickly slapped down three of the connection blockers she reserved for getting out of the house, then started on the paper.

Some of the lights in the tunnel died.  It was already dark, but now the darkness hid them, if they hugged the one wall.

Another trick the Garricks had passed her.  This one had a lot of variants and many families had their own versions.  Not just Finders.  A lot of those who worked with realms, like technomancy, Abyss walkers, even Ruins delvers like Jessica, they had stuff like this.

There was another good bang on the door.  The metal of the lock screeched as it bent in the door.

She put the diagram onto paper, before putting paper to the wall.  It glowed.

She touched the paper, putting fingers to specific locations, and the tunnel that cut beneath the road above shuddered all around them.

She motioned, and drew Thea closer to her, within the half-ring of connection blocks.

They waited.  It took another five or six good hits before the door came open.

The two statue people came through.  Thea made a quick head motion, shaking her head.

She’d drawn a knife, like she hoped it would do anything against a statue.  Or a fleshmongler- which was right behind the two statues.

Again, Thea shook her head.

“Are they gone?” one of the practitioners asked, past the door.  Scratchy, raw voice.

“We’ll see, won’t we?”

Paper tore as one of the connection blockers expired.  The second followed immediately after.

“If we can get even one of them, it makes things easier.”

The fleshmongler turned its head, sniffing, and Avery could see the connection blocker fade out to a corresponding degree.

“Now,” Thea said, the end of the word timed to the ripping of the paper.

Avery adjusted her fingers, and as she did, she saw the Warrens practitioner had just stepped inside.  The woman looked like she’d gone through the garbage disposal, hair in tufts, skin gouged and raw in places.  Or- not the garbage disposal.  It looked like she’d been taken to pieces and then put together by one of the fleshmonglers.  Like she was a product of them more than they were a summoning of hers.

An adjustment of Avery’s fingers, and the tunnel turned at a right angle.  She and Thea were up against the wall, so they went from standing by the wall to lying on the ‘floor’.  The statues stumbled a few steps to the right and crashed there, the fleshmongler dog stumbled toward Avery- and she brought feet up to brace against it and keep it from landing on her, and the Warrens practitioner stumbled a few steps like the statues had, before going through the open picture frame to the Ornithologist’s realm that Thea had set down, that was now technically on the wall, but was a bit of a pit or trapdoor in the floor at the same time.

A bit of miscoordination- Avery drew knees to chest, then kicked out at an angle before the fleshmongler could get its bearings, launching it in a loose way past Thea and toward the door.

Great, good- except Thea had lunged toward the door herself.

“Watch out!”

Thea turned, and, to her credit, reacted quickly.  She moved past the picture frame that was on the ‘floor’, hugging the door’s frame to make room for the creature to fall through.  Getting a grip on the frame, Thea then hauled herself over and past it, dropping to normal orientation on the far side.

“Come back!” the practitioner outside shouted.

The statues turned a hundred and eighty degrees around, and one locked eyes with Avery, while the other did to the door.  The way their eyes cast light, it was very obvious.

They charged.

Yeah, this had all been neater in Avery’s head.  She’d pictured them all going zoop and falling through, but the practitioners weren’t so dumb as to walk into a potential trap themselves.  Or the other ones weren’t.  The fleshmongler was gripping the edge of the frame, and was climbing up, and the statues closed the distance.

Avery kicked at its fingers, dislodging them one by one while the statues charged.  Maybe the shoes?  A kick?

She was pretty sure air didn’t beat rock, but maybe if she launched herself toward the door?

“Air spirits are-!”

Thea stepped back into the doorway, gesturing.

The statues toppled, crumbling into dust.  The paint flecks from the graffiti that painted them transferred to the inside walls of the tunnel in a sudden movement.

She motioned to Avery, a circular hand motion, and Avery put the room right-side up again.  The fleshmongler had to adjust its grip.  Thea stepped through, and stabbed its individual fingers as it did.

“Not intending to make that mistake again,” Thea said.

“Huh?”

Thea shook her head.  She picked up the frame and shrunk it to something she could hold in one hand, tucking it into her jacket.

“How did you break the statues?” Avery asked.  “Where’s the-?”

Thea only made a moment of eye contact before stepping back outside.

Avery looked past her and saw the practitioner, lying in the dirt in a growing puddle of blood.  Her throat had been slit twice, by the looks of it.  Her one hand had been pressed to the wound, but couldn’t cover all of the damage.

Thea walked over to the body, bent down, and found the woman’s phone.  “The driver was male?”

“Male-presenting.”

Thea used the woman’s thumb to unlock the phone.  “How are you for seeing connections?”

“I’m decent, I think, I’m-”

The woman’s fingers moved as Thea let go of her hand.

“She’s alive.”

“Hm?  Not for long.”

“Can we save her?  There’s no need to kill her.”

Thea gave Avery a look that Avery would have interpreted as a ‘are you serious’ look, except Thea’s normal look-

Didn’t matter.

“Can we save her!?”

“There’s a third practitioner we need to worry about.  You can save her.”

Avery hurried over, dropping down, and applied pressure to the wound.

How was she supposed to apply pressure to this kind of wound without suffocating the woman?

“Connections.  Tell me what you see as I go over the phone.”

Avery looked at her, bewildered.

“You’re useless like this.  You don’t know healing practices?”

“No, not really.”

“There are others out there.  More than just these three.  We’re under attack, we need to maintain a fighting retreat, and you want to drag her with?”

“I don’t want to contribute to a murder.”

Thea’s look as she studied Avery was- it was almost a thousand yard stare, but the opposite at the same time.

“Move your hands.”

Avery paused a second, then did, pulling them away like she’d touched a hot stove.

There was a lot of blood on her palms and fingers, she realized.

“Altais,” Thea murmured.  She was holding the horn.

A third world’s power she was tapping into tonight.

The wound became like sand, and the sand blew away.

The woman gasped, then started panting for breath.

“Is Rodrick your driver?”

The woman paused.  “Rodrick?”

Avery used her sight.  She traced the connection with her eyes-

“Is he the driver?” Thea asked.

“I can’t say.  I said I would keep to certain truces and alliances and avoid giving comfort to the enemy.  If that means you must slash my throat again, so be it.”

“The connection points that way,” Avery said.

Thea nodded.  “I didn’t save you for the information you can provide, Raine.  I saved you because the girl here wanted to.  Thank miss Kelly.”

“Thank you,” the woman said.  She paused.  “I’m obliged to fight you and avoid giving you any advice.  So I’ll fight you as soon as my strength comes back.  Within the bounds of ability, reason, and sanity.”

Avery got her bag and searched inside.  She got some ropes.

The woman didn’t fight, but nodded slightly as Avery bound her wrists.

“Are you a Driscoll?”

“McKintosh.  We’re technically rival families.  But it’s academic rivalry.  We go through cycles.  Marriage alliances, then a few generations of separation, alienation, deaths… rivalry.  Then after a while, the marriages and alliances.”

“Uh huh.”

Avery cinched the bonds tight.  Her upper arm throbbed, reminding her of the injury, as she exerted it.

Man, if this screwed up Lacrosse practice…

“My words too.”

Avery got out a spare set of socks.  Which she’d really hoped to change into, after being calf-deep in Thea’s scary water domain, but…

“Io?” the woman asked.

“The woman I was with.”

“Captured.”

“She’s a dear.  Be kind to her, the poor woman.”

“She sent a trio of fleshmonglers after a kid like me.  She’s a dear?”

“Nonetheless.  I got to like her on the drive.”

“I’m going to gag you now.”

The woman opened her mouth.  Avery balled the socks and placed them within, then used tape to keep it there.  She kept a hand on the rope binding the woman’s wrists, behind her back.

“Rodrick?” Thea asked.  She had the phone to her ear.  “Raine and Io are in our custody.  Are you a practitioner?”

“Go back, Rodrick.  If we’re all still standing tomorrow, we can negotiate.”

Thea hung up, then bent down, grabbing the woman’s arm and lifting until she was standing.  Avery kept a hand on the bindings.

Thea put the phone away, then got her own.  “Odis?”

Avery, Sight still on, saw the connection.  Even before Thea did anything, she knew the direction they were going.

“Two captives.  We’re fine.  Avery Kelly is lightly injured.”

Avery looked down at her arm.  Snowdrop touched a cold nose to her cheek.

“We’ll be there shortly,” Thea said.

The walk was a relatively quiet one.  Thea didn’t seem to want to talk, but Avery had the pressing feeling that Thea really wanted to ask something about the vault and the robbery.

She’d been asked to come out here to help try and hold onto territory against Musser’s faction, and it was supposed to be a scouting role.  Except the moment she’d started scouting, even with a connection blocker, they’d sent a gargoyle after her.  Followed by the fleshmonglers.

Then this.

It took maybe ten minutes to reach the end of the path, where it reached a grass clearing and rest stop  down a short slope from a road, with a single lonely picnic table.

Odis, his bus, a practitioner, and a half-dozen Others were standing by the road.

They walked over.  Odis smiled a thin smile at them as they climbed up the steps to the roadside.  Little hairs up and down Avery’s arm stood on end.

The old man “We came to a consensus.  There are too many from Musser’s group coming.  They’re sending stronger practitioners.  Not their best, but strong.”

“Agreed,” Thea replied.

“We have to cede the territory.  We suspected we would.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for your assistance,” Odis told the practitioner.  The guy looked like one of the dregs from Kennet’s downtown.  Uneven stubble on his chin, clothes that didn’t fit him, with a bit of that weathered look that the homeless got, like he’d gone in that direction but wasn’t quite there.

The man nodded.  “Guess I’m moving.”

“I owe you a small favor.  If you’re ever in Thunder Bay?”

The man nodded.

“Others,” Odis said.  He turned to Thea.  “Shall we head back?  Avery-”

“Good luck with everything if you stay.  Good luck moving to new pastures if you don’t,” Avery told the Others.  “I’m sorry that things are mucked up, with the Lordship thing.”

The Others were two wraiths, a willowy Fae-adjacent genderless Other with a lot of rough edges, a woman who stood hunched over in a way that meant hair and hood obscured her face, a large plastic cross lashed to her back, and two animals who didn’t act like animals.  Like the Ephemeral animals.  Ondvarg and the ephing bird.

She got one or two nods of acknowledgement with her words.

“Do any of you need sanctuary?  Because there’s some I could direct you to. If you’d obey certain rules,” Avery told the Others.  “Not harming people, there’s a voting system with a council.”

No takers.

“Well, I’m in Thunder Bay.  Avery Kelly.  If you come into Thunder Bay to meet with me, you’d have to obey certain rules there too, respecting the Lord.  But I’m there if you change your mind, come find me.”

That offer didn’t even get a small nod that suggested one was considering it.  Okay.

“Done?” Odis asked.

Man, he creeped her out.

“Going to Path home, I think.  I could take the prisoner, if I have to.  Put her there like we did Florin.”

“I’ll take her.”

“Will you take care of her?  No torture or anything?  No draining her for power?”

“She’ll be treated fairly.”

Avery looked at the woman, who nodded, then raised her eyebrows, looking around.

“And Io?”

“My prisoner, my call,” Thea said.

“Ours.  I helped.”

“Io will be treated fairly, I won’t drain her or do any harm,” Odis said, eyeing Thea.  “On the condition you ride with me for a bit.  Let’s have a conversation.”

Avery took a step back.

“It will be worthwhile for you.  Thea can heal.”

“I’ve used my healing on her prisoner.”

“Did you?  Nonetheless, you know first aid and that’s a healing unto itself.  Let’s get that bandaged.”

“I’ve got to get back.  Video call.  I’m late as is.  Besides, my opossum licked it.”

Snowdrop, perched on Avery’s shoulder, sneezed.

“That won’t do.  Please, I insist.”

Avery shook her head.

It wasn’t just the fact that Odis was spooky, the bus spookier.  She was spooked from the close call with the fleshmonglers and what she really wanted to do was get away, moving under her own power.

“Io can give us information and give me a small amount of progress in getting back to where I was,” Thea said.

Raine leaned into Avery’s good arm.  Avery looked up, and Raine communicated with her eyes.

“Swear,” Avery said.

“You, Raine, and Io will be safe as long as you’re in my charge.  If any harm befalls any of you, I will owe you threefold recompense to restore things to how they were.  I will give you something to make this trip worthwhile, and Thea will give you first aid.  I will not delay you unnecessarily from your destination or your video appointment.  The conversation can be kept short.”

“And Snowdrop?” Avery asked.

“Of course.  An extension of you.”

“Io isn’t in your charge.  She’s in Thea’s.  And she’s kind of my prisoner too because I did a lot of the work to catch her.”

“And Thea is my apprentice.  Much as Snowdrop is an extension of you, my apprentice is an extension of me.  I consider that my charge.”

“But do the spirits?”

“Thea,” Odis said.  “I’ll take possession of your prisoner.  In spirit.”

Thea didn’t look happy.

“Yes?” Odis asked.

“Yes,” Thea replied.

“I have no interest in harming or exploiting the prisoners, except to negotiate, when we negotiate their release.  I’ll ensure they are reasonably safe.  Take whatever steps necessary, Thea.”

“I’ll need a moment.”

Odis gestured to the battered old bus, which cracked the doors open with a hydraulic hiss.

Avery hesitated, then climbed aboard with Raine.  The tint of the lights was green, and it felt like everything was really bolted down, like this could even be a prison bus.  The way the lights hit the windows made the outside world hard to distinguish, turning them into foggy mirrors, instead.

There was no driver she could see.  A reinforced box enclosed the driver’s position.  Maybe this was a bus from a high-crime area?

Odis was slow to ascend the stairs, followed immediately by Thea, who came up the stairs just behind him, standing where she could hold onto the railings and catch him if he tipped backward.  He leaned in close to the driver’s box.  “No fare for our guests tonight.”

He turned toward Avery, “Put Raine near the front.  We’ll sit at the back so we aren’t overheard.”

Avery nodded.  She moved to the back, but sat one row ahead of the very back seat, setting her bag down next to her.  She didn’t want Odis sitting right by her.  Snowdrop turned human and sat next to her, pulling the bag into her lap.

Odis sat on the far end of the aisle, on the padded back seat.  It took him a few seconds to find a comfortable position.

She missed her Grumble.

Thea, now wearing the form of a child, with a black coat and a flat, black bus driver’s cap with a brim, carrying a box with that same sickly mint color as the ‘white’ of the bus.  She sat behind Avery, then set the box on the bench next to her, opening it.  First aid things.

The bus jerked as gears shifted, then started moving.

“This feels like I’m holding my hand inside a bear trap, a few inches away from the trigger.”

“Astute,” Odis replied.  “But don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.  I have nerves of steel,” Snowdrop commented.

“I thought we should clear the air,” Odis said.

“Over?”

“Many things.  In general… our council is smaller than it was.  You’re still here.  You’re here and helping and that accelerates your standing on the council under our elemental Lord, and if you’ll be here for two or so years before you return to your town, I thought I should make sure we can cooperate and get along.”

It was really hard to shake the Wolf vibe when she was in his territory like this, and he had that voice that old people did, a bit rougher.  She knew he sounded reasonable, but that knowledge wasn’t quite getting to her heart and gut areas.

She admitted, “I’m not sure I respect what you do.  Or Thea.  Maybe a better way to do this is to just have it so we act in defense of Thunder Bay, act against Musser, and if we end up in the same place while we’re doing that, we cooperate some.”

“Maybe,” Odis replied.  He looked at Thea.  “Patch her up.”

“Arm,” Thea said.

Avery adjusted her seat, and put her arm over the bar that went over the back of the seat.  Snowdrop turned around and stared Thea down with narrowed eyes.

“Just so you know, murdering and being evil won’t help the cooperation stuff.”

“I’m not evil,” Odis told her.  “I was evil, in my prior life.  But that was before a magic bus, before Thea, before other things.  The most I have in the way of ties to my old life is the occasional meal at a restaurant with those friends of mine who haven’t gotten around to dying or living their lives in the hospital.  I can and do call in the occasional favor for the council, when we need something mundane, but it’s been years since I did that.”

“I’m going to have to remove the scab that’s forming here,” Thea said.

Avery nodded.

“Can I tear this shirt?”

“I don’t think it’s salvageable.  Sure.”

Thea turned the cut in the sleeve into a gaping hole.

“My point stands,” Avery said.  “I get the impression Thea is a dangerous person.  Gilkey asked questions during that one council meeting and it sounded like Thea was dancing around something bad.”

Thea removed the barely-formed scab, and fresh blood oozed, a trickle running down Avery’s arm.  Thea lifted Avery’s elbow, then rinsed the wound.

It felt weird to be shit-talking Thea right in this moment, but the point stood.  Maybe Odis was counting on that weirdness.

“And Thea is my apprentice, and you feel that counts against me?”

“Yeah.  Not just feel.  It does count against you.”

“I serve a dark kind of justice.  Thea is finding her way.  She lost it for so many years.  I think her recent issue with the raid of her vault was a lesson, that there needs to be justice, or justice will be done against her.  One I hope she takes to heart.”

Thea’s face was unreadable.  She pulled a triangular sliver of wood from the deepest part of the wound with tweezers.

“You raided Thea’s vault.  With your visiting friend.”

Thea’s eyes went up, slightly surprised, then angry.  Not even at Avery, but at Odis.

Avery didn’t reply.

“Theodora Knight,” Odis said.  “As your master, I’ll exert the power I have over you.  You awakened under me and when you did, you swore to learn under me and serve as needed, in exchange for my tutelage, responsibility and protection.  The scales aren’t balanced.  I’ve given the latter three.  You’ve learned, but you haven’t served.  You’ll serve now, and do as I ask.”

“What are you asking?” Thea asked him, her voice overly enunciated, emotions restrained.

“That you let it be.  Forgive or forget, if you can, but take no revenge, seek no restitution.  You are to cooperate with Avery Kelly as if, at the very least, you stand at neutral with scales even between you two.”

“That is a high price to ask, considering the value of what I lost.”  Thea managed to fit about three kinds of venom and two kinds of ‘I could kill someone right now’ tones into the word ‘high’.

“I’m a fair master, all considered.  Others would ask more.  I speak of balanced scales, but there really is no need to keep them balanced.  When a master takes an apprentice, they take on responsibility for their apprentice’s failures, and there is a vast range of possibilities for what those failures might look like.  Keep seeing to that wound.”

“Why?” Thea asked, as she resumed tending to the wound.

Avery wondered if having an openly bleeding wound while her heart was pounding like it currently was would make her bleed out faster.  Or pass out.

“I’m an old man, I can’t brook squabbling under me.  Especially if it impacts greater needs.  I’ve been down that road many times before, of trying to keep a business afloat while others are angry, holding vendettas, undercutting one another.  No.  We’re in a war, Ann Wint is a destroyer but she isn’t a leader.  Nor is Deb the storm chaser.  Nor is our elemental Lord.  The group combined with Florin could sometimes approximate leadership, at least for the little things, but Florin is imprisoned, with verdict pending.  If we’re to have any organization at all, it will be me, and I will need you on task if and when I need something done, Thea.”

“And me?” Avery asked.  “Where do I fit into this?”

“I want to at least know you can have a conversation with me, and that I’ll at least have a chance to make a strong suggestion about what to do and how to handle things.”

“Is this you trying to take leadership?”

“No.  I don’t want it, I don’t like the idea of it.”

“Do you want to pursue it?  Like Florin?”

“No.  Even the idea reminds me of bitter times.  I currently have a means of extending my life some, through the bus lines.  It’s a broader project that earns me some money and lets me secure the things I want.  I would like to keep going for another fifteen or twenty years,” the old man said.  “Leave something to people I care about.  I’ll protect my area and my work, I’ll face down the likes of Musser if I must, but I want calm, and I want peace.”

“That’s what I want,” Avery said.

Odis smiled that thin smile that gave Avery goosebumps.

“Tend to the wound, Thea.  I promised Avery safety and a timely arrival.  If she passes out, that won’t do.”

“I have to clean it.  It will probably sting.”

Avery nodded.

Thea poured something over the wound.  It fizzed, and it stung.

“Thea?  I expect a confirmation.”

“As you wish,” Thea said.  Her expression had changed, her eyes were half lidded, her focus was overwhelmingly on the wound as she wiped away the fluid with a sterile bandage.

Odis sighed.  “I’ll give you power, and I’ll give you things to help you get back to where you were.  An acquaintance of an acquaintance had a bead on another object with a realm inside.  We can look into that.”

“I would appreciate that,” Thea said, her expression not changing in the slightest.

“You’ll have to change things.  I gave you your opportunity to build things as your instincts suggested you should.  I gave you advice on how to do that best.  Building a secure vault.  I gave you the power you needed to start out.”

“Yes.”

“But it was a failed venture.  We should look at being more selective with targets, going forward.  Rules and standards.  There should be a justice to it, one that gives witch hunters and ideological rivals as few reasons to come after you as possible.  Mind, there will always be some.  But let’s reduce that chance.  It will be slower, but stronger.”

“As you wish.”

Odis nodded.  Then he groaned, sighing, and adjusted his position, relaxing a bit.  “That about covers it.  Worthwhile, Ms. Kelly?”

“You’re assuming I was involved.”

He smiled.  “You know, it was an average lifespan ago, give or take, that I was about your ages.  Or the age Thea appears to be now, and is at heart.  My friends and I, riding a mostly empty bus, we traveled across Chicago to a theater, arranged around the seats much like this.  It’s nostalgic.  Faded memories, with colors and faces I no longer recognize.”

Avery waited as the wound was bandaged.  If it wasn’t in progress, she would have asked for the bus to stop so she could use a Path to shortcut home.

“Are your friends well?” Odis asked Avery.

“I don’t think that’s relevant.”  Was she being too guarded?

“The, ah, Basil Winters house.  With the captives.  That’s relevant enough for me to ask for details, isn’t it?”

“Still ours.  They’re moving carefully around that,” Avery said.

“In many things.  Musser is still in Toronto.  They may be waiting for him to come and start making decisive moves.”

“Yeah.”

“You realize that the Lordships that are established now won’t ever be removed?  Not as long as the Seal remains.”

“I’m aware, and I think that really sucks,” Avery admitted.  “That so many have been displaced, or that they have to live in this sketchy medieval-style government, on top of everything.”

“You’re not capable of breaking the Seal.  Your friends aren’t.  All the practitioners in North America, power redoubled, could not break this convention.  This is how it is and it’s how it will remain.”

“But maybe we can change it some.”

“Raising the question of how,” Odis said.

“Or who,” Avery replied.  “It’s tough.  Practitioners aren’t super great and Others- they have needs and instincts.  Or histories.”

“We’re not so different from them in that.”

“Well, you’re one of the more Other-y practitioners I’ve met, and I’ve met a few,” Avery told Odis.

“History and hard-won instincts.  As for the other- what was it?”

“Needs,” Thea supplied.

“Of course.  We all have those.  We need money, we need food, we need affection.  The thing about that, is the right environment can shape and change our perspective on those needs.  Had you asked me when I was a gangster, wearing a brimmed hat and carrying a machine pistol, I would have said girls were a need of mine.  Now?  A much different perspective.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“About the need for girls or the broader-”

“The whole thing about needs.”

“Where we stand dictates our needs.  Now, with all these Lordships, we have a difficult question ahead of us.  The Lord placed in each of these regions will affect the region, which affects the people within, which affects their needs, which goes back to your question of who.  Who are we?  What do we need?  What will we do?  Can we do better?”

“We need the right Lords.”

“I’ll tell you this.  Leadership is hard.  We don’t have enough people with the power and ability to lead, with all these scattered Lordships, now.  Not us, not Thunder Bay.  Not even Thunder Bay and its allies, or the entirety of the faction that is opposing Musser and losing ground as we speak.”

Avery frowned.  “You don’t know that for sure, do you?”

“I have reach through my practice, which has taken me to several corners of this region, and I have an eye for these things when it comes to people.  I’ll be clear: we have seats set out for Lordships, irrevocable.  To fill them with bad people would make those within those regions suffer or go wanting.  To fill them with good people… we’d have to fill them with people from Musser’s group.”

Avery tensed.  “Did he reach out to you?”

“He did, through a subordinate of his I know.  But that was before he reached out to Thea.  I said no, but that I wouldn’t interfere with Thea, whatever her decision, nor would I use the fact she’s my apprentice to twist her arm or hobble her.  No.  I’m telling you of what I see as the practical realities.”

“You want to surrender?”

“Or negotiate.  Or compromise.  Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t fight.  Bullets and blood do a lot to encourage compromise and makes our half of a fifty-fifty split much bigger,” Odis said, smiling again.  “We’ll get there.  I don’t know what the answer is, what we’ll do, or who we’ll talk to, but I wanted to put the thought in your head for later consideration.”

“Right.”

“I asked how, and you seem to have some idea of what the how is.  It’s good you’ve moved on to the next question.  Maybe the most important.  Who?”

Avery looked down the length of the bus, to where Raine McKintosh sat, hands tied behind her back, gagged, oddly relaxed, considering.

“You’re done,” Thea said.

Avery pulled her arm back, bandage wrapped around her arm to secure a cotton pad, set neatly in place with three metal clips.  Resting her arm against the bar had made it go asleep, somewhat, and now she had pins and needles.

Snowdrop extended some sensation, and cut the worst of that feeling in half.  Avery smiled, and Snowdrop rested a head on her shoulder.  Avery leaned her head against Snowdrop’s.

Avery still had a mission.  Her part of things in dealing with Charles was meant to be that she’d find allies and make connections.  She wasn’t sure she was doing that all that well, aside from releasing a few Lost.  None of that was the sort of thing that would fix the Charles situation.

Hell, the others were struggling to pull together the pieces to keep it so there was even a Kennet.  Avery was leaving every night to fight a losing war.  They’d scored a win against the lowest-rung-of-the-ladder family members, with a handful of exceptions, but now the pushback was coming, and the pair they’d captured tonight weren’t even all that major, as far as she could tell.

This whole dynamic and decision point really- she wasn’t sure if it complicated her job, or if it was the kind of thing she needed in order to do it, on top of being the sort of thing she dreaded.

“We’re here.  I believe this is your neighborhood,” Odis told her.  “I hope that’s food for thought, and that the truce with Theodora is enough to make it worthwhile.”

“I nominate Louise Bayer for the council seat,” Avery announced to the very large group.

Next Chapter