Author: Wildbow

Gone and Done It – 17.b | Pale

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Eloise was slapped hard across the face.  She fell to her knees, ear ringing.

“You lost your concentration.  Now I’m going to take everything you love away from you, child.  I take your friends and I ruin them, I make them regret their connection to you.  I take your family and separate you from them.  I take the things you enjoy, the things that bring you comfortable quiet inside, and I will leave you restless and deprived with only self blame to carry you through the remainder of your years.  You shall never have friends, love, joy again.  This I swear.”

Eloise fixed her eyes on the ground.  Those last two words rang in her ears with special meaning.

“But-”

Fingers touched the tip of Eloise’s chin, moving her head.  Eye contact.

Her head was raised and turned so she could be slapped again, sharper than before.  The sound seemed to reach her ear before the full impact of the hit was felt in her cheek.

“Did you think your fate could not get worse, child?  Focus.”

Eloise set her jaw, made the eye contact, despite the roar of fear deep inside.  Again, those fingers found the tip of her chin.  She was turned, felt the slight pressure beneath her chin, and she climbed to her feet at a pace that kept her chin level and in contact with those two fingers, until she stood, back straight, shoulders back.

“Smile, child.  I won’t tell you again.  Not with words.”

Eloise smiled, tilting her head slightly as she did, finding an angle she’d been taught when she’d been photographed for the books.  Her cheek throbbed as if the veins had been crushed and the blood had to work ten times as hard to get past, timing its efforts with her heartbeats.

“Gemma, suspend the lesson.”

Gemma was her mom’s cousin, she was pretty sure.  She was about five or ten years older than Eloise’s mom.  Her hair had turned gray, and years of being unkind had made the lines of frowns and condemnation in her expression a permanent thing.

The woman who’d called out sat at the side of the room.  Her chair was the sort people used to sit at a kitchen table, and it was lonely, positioned against a wall with no table or anything around it.  The woman herself had grown fat after her marriage and not in a pleasant-seeming way.  She got to her feet and put a clipboard with notes on it down on the chair.  “Can’t hold my bladder for more than fifteen minutes, since having my last child, bless her.”

“How unfortunate,” Gemma said, quiet.  “Take yourself to the facilities, then.”

The woman’s head snapped around, eyes widening.

“If you would, bring an ice pack as you return,” Gemma told her.  “And a washcloth.”

Eloise did not want to be left alone with this woman.

“If you disfigure her with that sort of violence, they will show you no mercy, Gemma.  You shouldn’t be such a brute.”

“I’ve delivered a thousand slaps to girls and young women over the years.  You included, Sam.  I’ve done worse.  You do remember, don’t you?  I would hope my lessons don’t go forgotten.”

“Don’t speak to me in that tone, Gemma.  You’re low, you know.  Lower than her, in your way.  If I gave the recommendation, even as someone unimportant, you would be removed.  Then you would have nothing.”

“Take yourself to the facilities, my dear.  We will be waiting.”

The woman looked like she was going to say something, then she stormed out.

Eloise remained in the large, empty room, with large windows on one side, with curtains over those windows that allowed a filtered, orange-tinted light through.  It was such a spacious area that it wouldn’t have felt especially crowded with a hundred people gathered in it.  But there were only the two of them now, dead in the center.

“You may relax,” Gemma said.  “Until she returns.”

Eloise didn’t want to relax.  This woman was one of the scariest she’d ever met.  She allowed herself to rub gingerly at one cheek, feeling the heat radiating off of it.

“Samantha over there, she lost herself to panic, facing me down, standing where you do now.  Metaphorically.  It wasn’t this room, I’m reasonably sure.  She loathes me, because that shame dogs her even twenty years later.  A scared little girl who dropped to hands and knees and heaved out her stomach’s contents between panicked breaths.  I had her go to the facilities to clean herself up, then she came right back here.”

“Metaphorically speaking, you said,” Eloise said, her voice reed thin, scared.

“Yes.  Samantha was expected to answer a question of mine, she knew she’d face my fury if she couldn’t, and worse, that the woman sitting off to one side of the room would mark her.  Pencil on paper, but a mark as indelible as if she’d dragged ragged fingernail through flesh to put a number on arm, on neck, on cheek.  Her mind went blank and she couldn’t bear it.”

Eloise looked over in the direction of the door.

Gemma nodded.  “She got marked, in the end.  Pencil on paper, making its note that she hadn’t had the fortitude.  Joining many others.  Sheets filled out, then sent to another woman in the family.  I think back then, it was Laura who handled those things.  She was second in charge of looking after family affairs, and she only held the top position for a year or so before she decided she couldn’t bear the direct responsibility.  It’s one thing to gather the notes, the grades, the footage, and pictures of all the girls in the family and compile them, as she’d done for several years.  Another to make the recommendations to the head of the family.”

Eloise listened carefully, watching Gemma pace the room.  Eloise’s eyes went to the chair where the clipboard had been left.  Her grades.  Notes on her.  Marks on her.

“I don’t know if she remembers what I told her in the haze of her panic.  If she remembers I comforted her.  Words I’m going to share with you now.”

Gemma turned to Eloise, who stiffened slightly at the sudden attention.

“You can stop smiling, child.  Relax.  Until that idiot woman relieves herself, takes her moment to compose herself before the bathroom mirror, goes looking, and realizes there are no ice packs in the freezer, there are no expectations and no rules.  I’ll forgive you anything, allow you any question.”

Eloise stopped smiling.  Without that smile to go to, her head trembled a little.

“I don’t tell every girl.  Sometimes I don’t have the chance, because we’re watched too closely.  Sometimes I don’t think it will matter.  I think you have options.  One of those- if you want out, you need only signal me.  Girls get sent to me if the family thinks they’re behind.  If they’re not taking things seriously, if they’re unable to carry themselves the way the family needs, if they defy certain rules, if they’re distracted…”

Gemma let that last word hang in the air.

Eloise had skipped tutoring one too many times, to play with friends.  So she’d been brought here, for harsh lessons.

“I was engaged to marry a boy when I was ten,” Gemma told Eloise.  “My mother and I went to his place for the Christmas holidays.  To allow us a chance to play, to bond.  He took me by the hand, around the back of the property, to where he had an animal chained to a tree.  I’ll spare you the details, except to say it was a demonstration of how little love he had in him, and how much cruelty was in store for me.”

Gemma’s steely gaze stopped being as steely as she stared at some nonspecific point behind Eloise.

“I stopped being a joyful child, then.  I fought, I rebelled, I begged.  I took every recourse available to me.  When I relieved myself on my bedroom floor and smeared it on the walls, screaming at them when they entered, I was sent to an ogre of a woman who was meant to knock sense into me.  As I’m meant to do for you, here.  As I did for Samantha.  A teacher of harsh lessons, a final recourse before they give up on you.  She asked me- I ask you:  Do you want this?”

Eloise’s mouth opened, then shut.

“Until Samantha returns, you can speak freely.  There will be no punishment, there are no consequences for anything you say or do.  This I swear.”

Eloise shook her head a little.

“Speak.”

“I want to be normal, like my friends from school.”

“Then I will be brief and I will waste no words.  That may not be possible.  They will do whatever they can to hold onto you.  You’re an investment and they won’t easily let go of that.  They will try to scare you back into their own embrace, in other ways than an ogre of a woman in a dance hall.  I was told of a husband I might be married to who would be far worse than the one to whom I was initially betrothed.  You must not insult their pride or underestimate them, or they will show you why they are proud and worthy of estimation.  Instead, you will forego your own pride and drop yourself in their estimation, as I did.  If you take this path, they will see you as a failure.  It is the only way out.  They must feel you would harm the family more if you are kept on their prescribed path.”

Eloise swallowed.

“You may keep your mother’s love, you may, but you will lose her respect.  That is a heavy burden to carry, especially when it’s one you may never put down for the rest of your mother’s life.  As far as they are concerned, I’ve not met a one who would ‘come around’ and find a newfound respect for you, whatever you managed to do, in the world of non-practitioners.  They may give you a job or duty, as I was given.  I don’t think you’re harsh enough in spirit to do what I do, so perhaps you would be a blackguard, sent to handle family affairs.  I chose to be this, you could choose that, to maintain more of a connection to your parents.”

“You chose to be this?”

“Yes.  To have the opportunity to make this offer to others, in the same way it was made to me.  And because I thought for a long time that I would go mad, in this family where there’s no iron fists in the velvet gloves.  Nothing of substance at all.  I cannot tell you how desperately I grasped for that substance.  Do you understand?”

Eloise shook her head.

“No, you wouldn’t.  Not yet.  In any event, you don’t have it in you to be an ogre that beats children so the family can keep their velvet gloves and consciences tidy.  You’d be allocated elsewhere, but you would have a semblance of a normal life.  You would likely be allowed to choose your own husband.  There may still be pressures in certain directions, to choose someone in law, or public service.  People who will indirectly serve the family or be tools for others to use.  I will not lie to you.”

Eloise couldn’t imagine.  “Did you?”

“Choose a husband?”

“No.  I never married.  I got close, then the nightmares started.  No.”

Eloise wasn’t sure how to reply to that.

“You would not be taught the practice, Eloise.  Not awakened.  Not included.  You may still be haunted by some awareness of practice and Others.  That bridge has been crossed.  It is unbearably lonely, as it happens.  It is also a terrible, awful, glorious sort of relief, even to be halfway removed from the family, as I was.  Sometimes I forget I’m free, and I feel as though a hand is closing around my windpipe, and then I pause for a moment and I remember, and it’s like I can breathe again.  It feels as though I take in all the oxygen the world has to offer.”

Eloise looked down at the ground.

“Do you want to read them?”

Eloise looked up, confused.

“The notes Samantha has been writing?  Before she comes back.”

Eloise looked.

“I told you.  There are no rules and there are no consequences.”

It still felt like a test.  Like the curtains might move and someone important could be standing there, ready to condemn her if she broke this rule.

“Go, Eloise.  Read it.”

That instruction was the little bit of impetus she needed.  Eloise crossed the room to the chair.

Distractable, pretty, maintains posture.  Cried: mucus at the nostril, indelicately wiped away.  Clothes had crease across shoulder.  Cried again.  Clothes in disorder: tag in evidence above collar.  Distracted by antiques in dining room.  Needed reminder on lesson from day prior, on table manners.  Hair in disorder: uneven part.  Lied: asking to go to washroom, cried instead.  Distracted by overhead conversation.  Indelicate question about said conversation.

That was one block of notes, covering lunch, only an hour ago.  One paragraph among five on the page.  So far.

The other pages were held together with a paperclip.  They covered the other two days since she’d been sent here.  Five to six blocks per page, just listing her failings.

Her cheek throbbed, but the notes hurt more.

She put the clipboard down.

And Gemma loomed behind her.

I failed the test.  She felt her stomach drop.

Gemma moved the clipboard back to the position it had been in before Eloise had picked it up.

“I hold the perspective that there are really only two outcomes before you, Eloise.  I can lie, so I don’t have to worry about it being correct, technically or in spirit.  You can escape.  It’s a trade.  Respect and family traded away for a kind of freedom.  Or call it reprieve instead of freedom.”

Gemma didn’t look happy or relieved as she said it.  The woman went on, “Or you can do as they wish.  You can excel, you can thrive, you can comport yourself so that the people marking you have nothing at all to write.  If you do, they will give you choices.  At first a small one.  If they don’t gift you a familiar early, and tell you to choose one, that’s the first small choice.  A sign you’re on the right track.  They won’t tell you outright, you know as well as I do that they never do.  You’ll be expected to choose something that sets you apart from the rest.  Past that point, they’ll give you more choice.  Eventually, the choice of a husband.  If you can reach that point, and if you can make the right choice while you stand on that precipice, they will hold little back in extending the family’s resources to you.”

“What choice did Samantha make?”

“Oh, there’s a gamut of other choices and outcomes that lie between retreating as I did, and the exceptions permitted for the exceptional.  What I mean is that you have two outcomes before you that allow you to be you.  Two outcomes where you’re reasonably free to pick your own destiny.  Samantha was sublimated.  Most are.  It’s by their design that the only good outcome is the one that best serves the family, understand?”

Eloise nodded.

Gemma held up a finger.  Eloise flinched as Gemma touched her shoulder, guiding her back to the middle of the room.  Where she’d been standing when she’d been slapped.

The door opened a moment later.  Samantha returned.

“Smile,” Gemma said, quiet.

Eloise adopted the smile, tilting her head slightly.

“Smile so it reaches your eyes.”

Eloise made the necessary adjustments.

“There were no ice packs,” Samantha said.

“Improvise with ice cubes, then, and a damp washcloth to wrap them in.”

“I know that much, I have them with me.”

Samantha brought the washcloth over, folded around a clustering of ice cubes.  Gemma took it, then held it to Eloise’s cheek.

“I strike you to impart lessons.  When you stand before some of the threats you might face as a practitioner, you cannot lose focus,” Gemma told Eloise.  She shook her hand slightly, holding the washcloth and ice cubes against Eloise’s cheek, and the ice cubes settled to a different position with a faint rattle.  “Terrible fates await you if you lapse.  They await people you cherish.  The impact of any decision you make can fall back on this family.  You’ll want your nieces and daughters to be mindful of that, when you’re a part of this family.  It’s necessity, when the family does such delicate work.”

Samantha stood by them.  Gemma kneeling in front of Eloise, holding the makeshift ice pack there, Samantha looming over them, looking down.

“Go sit, Sam,” Gemma said.  “You’re in the way, and you’re distracting her.”

“You’re supposed to be fixing that,” Samantha said.

But she walked back to her seat, picking up the clipboard.

“And if you do not wish to be part of the family in that way,” Gemma told Eloise, whisper-quiet.  “Then put your hand to your chest.  Adjust your shirt, hold hand over heart.  Much of what I say makes little sense to you now, young as you are, but digest it.  The offer will hold until you’re awakened.  It doesn’t matter what you do, but put your hand on your breast, make eye contact with me, and say ‘please’.  I will destroy you in my reports to them, tell them I must keep you to correct the flaws I see, and we will devise-”

“Gemma,” Samantha said.  “Don’t say anything I can’t hear.  I must know what the instructions are if I’m meant to write this evaluation.”

“Figure out a way, Eloise,” Gemma said, at normal speaking volume, staring Eloise down.  She moved Eloise’s hand to the ice pack, then stood.  “Figure this out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eloise replied.

“Part of the reason I strike you is because they won’t,” Gemma said, indicating Samantha.  Resuming the lesson from before.  “They emphasize the subtle.  Even how you’re trained to fight is subtle.  Little is done directly.  And they will expect you to be subtle in every engagement.”

“Yes ma’am,” Eloise replied, artificially bright and snappy.

Was she supposed to do it now?  If she didn’t do it now, clutching her chest and saying please, when would she?

“We have a tendency to refer to social encounters using the same terminology we use for fights.  Engagements.  Our response to the two is the same.  If you face a bull, then be the matador.  Use grace, deflection, and make it look easy.”

Eloise nodded.

“Show me what you’re capable of, Eloise.  You know what’s expected of you.  Meet that expectation, or…”

“Or this barren, unfeeling brute will slap you again and again,” Samantha finished, pen scribbling away as she took her notes.

That wasn’t what Gemma had been implying with the trailing sentence.

“The basics.  Faced with an engagement, what is the expectation?  First of all?”

“Sight,” Eloise replied.

Sight.  Her Sight didn’t make her eyes look especially different.  It had taken effort to ensure that was the case.  There were things to be said for being intimidation, but it was better to be able to look without tipping off practitioners.

The car with the spider legs tumbled toward them- an agitated, broken spider tripping over its own legs, its every movement unpredictable, its momentum that of a speeding vehicle.  A ton of stainless steel and car parts.  It was worse than a focused, coordinated onslaught.  Harder to predict, harder to steer.

She used her sight to track the connections, mind the target.  The connections extending away from the car with its red spider legs were as agitated as the spider legs themselves.  She saw the connections tying friend to friend, enemy to enemy, enemy to target.  She saw the laughing, shuddering bystanders with barely any connections at all, wrapped up in themselves, a singular emotion, from a source that wasn’t even trying to seize them.

She focused on the one most pertinent.  The car.  Figuring out its destination.  Connections caked in blood and worse things were wrapped around the vehicle, some so stiff with other matter that they could manifest in reality as spidery limbs, tendrils, or stiff cobweb growths.  For all that ugliness, there was a lack of intent- a gentle Other that looked like that?

Step.  Eloise started moving.  One first step in a direction she was sure was safe.  Usually that was a step backwards, or toward cover.  Away from the destination.

Survey.  Get the sense of the fuller picture.  The webwork of connections.  Who was where.  Who needed to be elsewhere.  A game of chess balanced on countless strings rather than a board.

Lucy, just across the street.  Countless bystanders.  Goblins in the flanks.  Avery and an ongoing confrontation a hundred paces away.  With how things were arrayed around them, that hundred paces might as well been miles.

Then her group of four.  Five, if she counted Milo, just around the corner.  Not so many miles away, but complicated in his own way.

Angie Demarest was out of position- an easy target for the spider car.  She could see that as it might play out.  Even if the car didn’t hit, it could separate Angie from them.

Shift.  Eloise reached inside her sleeve, got a tuft of glamour, provided to her family through contacts, and twisted it.  There was a specific hand motion that tinted glamour, another that brightened it- reversed direction to do the opposite.  Fingers moved one way while the hand moved another- she liked to think of it as a card toss.

A dart of brightness.  A glint.  It speared through the wild and shaky connection between Angie and the car.

To the car Other, it was a distracting glint.

“Angie,” she said.  Saying the name manifested the connection.  She reached out to Schartzmugel.  She felt him slide between bones in the arm, between muscles, along skin.  The tattoo moved.

He ripped free of the back of her hand, with a sensation that felt much as if she’d eaten thirty feet worth of thoroughly greased rope and had it hauled out of her in one swift motion.  He wound around that connection, snaked around Angie, and pulled her toward Eloise.  Eloise caught Angie mid-stumble at the same moment the car hit the corner of the house Angie had been standing by.

“That thing was inside your body, wasn’t it?  And you let it touch me?”

“To possibly save your life, Angie,” Elizabeth said.

No, it wasn’t trying to kill, only injure, Eloise thought.  The car thing was picking itself up, and the group of them retreated through the space between house and hedge, toward the backyard.

But killing was never out of the question.  Accidents happened even in cases of people having hard falls onto concrete.  The right angle, the right amount of pressure, and the human body could cease to function.

It had been drilled into her time and time again.  The steps, the approaches to an engagement.

Eloise reached back and pushed Cyn away from the hedge and closer to the house.  Cyn’s foot missed stepping onto a goblin trap that was pushed through a space in the fence.  Something sticky, with something sharp embedded in the center.

“Thanks,” Cyn said.

The Turtle Queen’s connections were there, all around them- ribbons that moved like snakes, through the gaps the other ribbons provided.  Whenever they found points to anchor themselves, they changed the colors and textures of the ribbons, multiplying while getting faster at launching themselves and snapping out.  Only the fear of Schartzmugel stopped her.

She made herself stay calm as they retreated toward the middle of the backyard.  She kept track of movements.  Lucy had crossed the street and was on top of the roof of the house where the claim was being made.  She didn’t poke her head up.  The connection trailed to them, appearing to Eloise’s sight like a ribbon caught in the wind, snapping to a new position at every sound.

Listening.

Eloise mused aloud, knowing she was being heard, “Starting to see how those girls got Alexander’s attention, and how they arrived at school with so much power, if they were wading through this from the start.”

“This is new,” Elizabeth said.  “Relatively speaking.”

Eloise laughed lightly.  “It’s amusing.”

“Really fucking funny,” Angie said.  “What the fuck?  What are we doing?”

“Plan?” Cyn asked.

Eloise nudged Cyn, and tapped her ear, before pointing.  Cyn and Elizabeth nodded.

“What, they’re listening?” Angie asked.

“Yes, Angie,” Eloise said, with amusement in her voice.  “They’re listening and I wanted to be subtle about that.”

“Surrender!” Lucy called out.  “This all goes better if you do!”

“I don’t suppose we’d get the same treatment as Marlen Roy, would we?” Liz called back.

“Do you transport and trade in weapons, drugs, and humans, Elizabeth?”

“Mr. Moss brought that up,” Liz murmured.

“I can only start helping if I know what we’re doing,” Cyn said.  “Escape and report back?”

Lucy had moved.  Eloise’s ability to track her got worse when there was little intent.  She wasn’t doing anything direct.

“Smoke,” Cyn reported.

Eloise turned off her Sight.

Yeah.  Lowering visibility.

“It would be good to get Marlen,” Eloise said.  “But I don’t mind if you want to run.”

She could see the faint connections extending out.  Giving her a starting point.  Marlen was to the-

She paused to get her orientation.

South.  She gestured in that direction.

“If we wanted to escape, the fastest way would be that way,” Liz said.

It was nice that Liz tended to know where she was going.

Step.  It was better to get moving now, in a direction she knew she was reasonably sure she wanted to move, than to wait and find a perfect move.

Southeast it is.  We can adjust as we go.

Eloise pushed the group lightly, motioning.

Over the fence, toward the neighbor’s yard.

“There’s smoke!” a bystander shouted.  It was a woman, a neighbor of ‘Mr. Moss’, pulling clothes off the clothesline.  She clutched a sheet to her chest.  “I heard a crash, has something happened!?”

And there were Others in the smoke.  The spider-legged thing was one.

“Get inside!” Elizabeth shouted.

Angie hurdled the fence, and Eloise saw the intent- a firm connection snapping out.

“Watch out!”

Angie had pulled too far ahead for Schartzmugel to reach out in time, and there was too much risk of bystanders seeing.

The woman threw the sheet over Angie as Angie landed on the grass.  Then she tackled her against the fence while the sheet was still over her, making stabbing motions- but with rapid clicking sounds instead of anything else.

Cyn hopped up onto the fence, balancing on it, and leaped past the woman, getting behind the woman.  She pulled the woman away and threw her to the ground.

Staples.  Twelve to twenty staples with bloodstains spreading around the places where they’d been set in- at head, face, chest, stomach, arm and hand.  Pinning sheet to flesh.

The woman laughed as she got to her feet.  Cyn started to move toward her, and people stepped out of hiding places.

The off-kilter laugh, the sheer lack of reservations…

They’re from the undercity, Eloise thought.

Angie pulled the sheet away from her face, pulling staples free from skin.  Eloise reached for her and pulled her away from the fence.  Goblin.

“Fuck this,” Angie said.  She still had staples sticking the sheet around her upper body, even though she’d removed enough she could see.  “Fuck it, I’m going where it’s safe.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Liz asked.

“Where it’s safe!  And they can’t stop me!”

Angie pulled away from Liz.  Liz got a grip on the sheet, then released it at the last second.  Because Liz couldn’t stop her either.

Technically, none of them could interfere with Angie going to answer the claim.  The goblins let her go.

Angie reversed direction, crossing the backyard, through the growing cloud of smoke.  She became a dull silhouette- a dark gray shape in light gray smoke, and disappeared into Mr. Moss’s house through the back door.

“We leave her?” Liz asked.  “Please?”

“We have other priorities,” Cyn said.

“Okay.  If you’re saying it, Musser will probably accept it as an answer, then,” Liz said.  She turned her focus toward the three people from the undercity.  The woman with the stapler, the two guys with yard tools.

Goblins in the hedges.

Avery Kelly in her deer mask, off to one side, tracking and observing without getting directly involved.  There was intent in how she was positioning herself.  Same with Lucy, who lingered in the smoke.  As if she needed to stand right there.

It only added to the tension of the moment.

“Question,” Eloise said.  She looked around.  “I haven’t really answered Demesne stuff before.  What happens for someone like Marlen, who is being held captive?”

“There’s no obligation to free someone from possession, captivity, or other circumstances if they were unable to answer the claim before it started,” Cyn said.

“But if she’s freed, she has the right to go there?”

“Yes,” Cyn replied.  “She has the right to challenge the claim.”

From everything Eloise knew about Marlen, there was a good chance Marlen would be able to get from the Demesne challenge, out of the city, and to Musser.  Even if the building was surrounded.

“Sounds like a plan, then,” Eloise said.

Cyn nodded.  “We could also say that technically, making it clear they’ll mob anyone who tries to answer the claim kinda acts as its own impedance to the claim itself.”

“We could,” Eloise said.  “Let’s not.”

“Because?” Cyn asked.

“Because there’s no Lord here,” Liz answered.  “There’s a chance that higher powers would get called on to answer that point of fact.”

“The Carmine?” Cyn asked.

Liz shook her head.  “I wouldn’t want to risk it, honestly.  The game’s rigged, it’s all messed up.  According to Mr. Moss, they’d rather have goblins, cannibal ghouls, and amoral undercity people with all this chaos rather than stability under Musser.”

Lucy was reporting what they were saying to Avery Kelly.

“Our goblins are pretty cool!” Avery shouted.  “Our ghouls are sweet-natured!”

“If you’re talking amoral, I really wouldn’t use Musser’s name in the same sentence!” Lucy added.  “Surrender?  Third time I’m asking, basically.”

“No,” Liz replied.  “I won’t, anyway.  I can’t speak for these guys.”

“Sorry, then,” Lucy said.

She threw a card into the smoke.

Eloise used her Sight, and she could see the practice unfolding.  It was- if there was anything to it, it was really, really basic.  Turning smoke into smoke rings.  And attempts, somewhat feeble, contradicted by other parts, to turn smoke into shapes that resembled the diagram that would turn smoke into smoke rings.  Recursive.  But only a little.  It extended the effect, like a handful of fireworks going off in the wake of the initial big blast.

There was nothing more to it.  It was the kind of practice that would extend out until it had taken hold of the entire cloud of smoke.  Used on something bigger, like the earth, or the wind, it was the sort of thing that might get pushback from the spirits.

A distraction?

Eloise turned her focus the other way.

Lucy was talking, using her earring to guide the practice, as she controlled sound, getting her words to the ears of the undercity goons.

Two charged.  A shovel and a garden rake that was more shallow, like a hoe, but wide, with metal spikes.  Cyn stepped forward, preparing to meet them barehanded.

Matador against the bulls.

She stepped forward and reached out for connections.  Schartzmugel provided the power and helped her to reach out and interfere.

The rake-holder swung twice, trying to drive them back.  She moved her hands, to tangle connections-

The shovel, on the overhead swing, met the rake.  The weapons latched together, metal spikes of the rake on the edge of the shovel- a momentary delay.

Cyn slammed the heel of her hand into the chin of the one.

“El,” Liz breathed.

A bad feeling seized Eloise.  She looked, followed Liz’s gaze, and saw the smoke wasn’t a distraction.

The Other that had made spider legs jut out from the car was slithering through the active, recursive practice.  Seizing it.

Smoke rings became loops of what looked like clotted blood.  More complex diagram work became manifest in reality as web-like growths.  Two had the spider legs growing through them.

One loop of clotted blood uncoiled.  Three limbs snapped out, reaching.  Eloise deflected and redirected two, but with the shuddering, inconsistent way they moved, she missed the third.  Liz was dead in her tracks as the multi-jointed limb with cobwebs of clotted blood at the joints reached past her, bent, and hooked her in close, pulling her toward the living diagram that was partially clouded within dissolving smoke rings.  Pulling her over the fence.

There was no way to really avoid it.  If she’d moved faster she might have ducked.  The limb was too long, too agile, and too strong for even that to have worked.  Even if she’d had a weapon or a shield, there was no fending off an attack with this kind of reach.  Only deflection.  Only something better from Eloise.

Eloise reached out, grabbing Liz’s ankle.  Stretched over the fence, Liz fought to get free.

The grip of two hands on her leg was more secure than the vague hook shape the bent spider leg formed.  Liz fought her way free, her head dropped toward the ground, her center of gravity on the wrong side of the fence.  Arms that curled around her head kept her from being bludgeoned against grass.

Eloise hauled, hard, awkwardly, pulling Liz’s butt over the edge of the fence.  With a sit-up motion, Liz folded herself in the right direction, caught Eloise’s shoulders, and made it onto the right side of the fence.

The spider thing was dissolving.  It wasn’t a long-lived diagram.  It slithered off to other places, weaker, seeking a vessel to inhabit, or another angle to attack from.

Cyn had bludgeoned the two guys, and was facing the woman with the stapler.  But Lucy was in the background, directing others.  It seemed like it was more people from the Undercity.

And there were still goblins.  Maintaining the flanks, ready to trip them up the moment they got any momentum.

They were using the laughing trick, smoke, connection blocks, and careful attention to their surroundings to organize what they were doing.

“I’m not wrong, right?  They asked me to surrender, I said no.”

“We would probably get imprisoned until this whole thing is over, if I had to guess,” Eloise said.  “I think they’d try to be fair.  They’re holding back.”

As if to rebut that statement, the woman Cyn was trying to deal with stapled the arm that was wrapped around her neck.  Cyn knocked the stapler to the ground and tightened the chokehold.  The woman laughed with her limited breath.

“Maniacs,” Liz whispered.  “Cyn, we need to get out of here.”

There were a good ten or fifteen people in the vicinity.  Most were out of sight.

“Might be hard,” Eloise murmured.  She extended her hand, fingers splayed, with rough counts, to indicate where the people were.  She extended her Sight further out.

They had help coming.

She whistled, loud, and pushed power into it.

Lucy Ellingson drew closer, with the hidden crowd of undercity residents closing in at roughly the same speed.

“Can you tell the undercity residents from the regular ones?” Liz asked.

“Given a moment.”

“And traps?  Like the one that Cyn almost stepped on?”

“Yeah.  Don’t worry.  We’re-”

“Eloise!” Lucy called out.

Eloise turned, and seized on that connection.  Her hands went out, and Schartzmugel helped.  Locking Lucy’s attention to her, making it hard to focus elsewhere.

The reinforcements came.

It was Asher Hennigar, and the two practitioners he’d been with.  They came over the top of a shed that bordered two backyards.  One of them had Milo thrown over one shoulder.  One jumped on top of some man from the undercity.

Avery came out of nowhere to tackle-grab Lucy, pulling her away and breaking the connection hold.

“We’re getting help,” Eloise finished.

Asher edged closer to them.  He drove his fist up and into the solar plexus of the woman that Cyn was choking from behind.  Cyn released her to collapse to the ground.

“One member of our group went to answer the claim,” Liz said.  “We need someone to stay and watch out for her when she comes out.”

“Which one?” he looked over the group.  “Ang?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck, okay.  Where are the rest of you going?”

“Rescue mission,” Liz said.  “I navigate, Eloise watches for ambushes and traps, Cyn is a heavy hitter, but we need people who don’t need the time to prep that Cyn does.”

“They don’t want to kill… but I wouldn’t be reckless either, they were willing to hit you with a car,” Eloise told him.

“They’re aiming to capture?”

“Capture, confound, delay, drain of power.  They want to negotiate surrender,” Eloise said.

The group of undercity residents was closing in.  They just needed an order.

“I’ll stay for Angie,” Asher said.  “Take that asshole.  Do what you need to do.”

He indicated Milo.

“You sure?” Liz asked.

“Yeah.  I can hold my own for the next thirty minutes.  You get going.”

“Can you fight, Milo?” Liz asked.

Milo wheezed.  He had a bad wound with swelling around his eye, a split lip, and heavy bruising.  It looked like his ear had been bisected and it would need stitches to be put back in order.

But the wounds moved.  They slithered down away from his eye and mouth.  The cut at his ear traveled along skin like a projected image.  His chest rippled as what might’ve been shattered lower ribs shifted locations, becoming shattered upper ribs, a shattered clavicle, a shattered shoulder.

All of it moving to his bare forearm, where his sleeve had been rolled up.  All the damage concentrated into a rough, scratchy rune shape on the back of his wrist, flecks of bone sticking out of gouges deep enough to show the rest of the wrist bones.  It inflamed, puckered, looked increasingly infected by the second.

More wounds were still gathering, for a second rune shape now.

He breathed a little easier.  “Give me a minute.

“Our best bet is to head on over,” Eloise murmured.  “Coin flip across, then make a break for it.”

“I can only take one person,” Liz whispered.

“That’s true.  But you and I together can take everyone,” Eloise said.  She gestured, stroking connections.  “Guys!  You two!”

She pulled on connections.

The two guys who’d come with Asher Hennigar hurried over.

“Okay.  When?”

“Eloise!” Lucy called out.

“Now.”

The coin went into the air.

“Shit!” Lucy swore.  “Verona, Verona-!”

Avery chanted the name too.

Forming a connection.

Eloise was too busy to do anything about it.  Tying everyone together, Schartzmugel was at the ready for the slap of coin against the back of hand.  But the Turtle Queen was holding herself back and out of the way.

They were dropped straight into the dark side of this town, which already felt dark enough.

The shockwave rippled out.  It had a way of forcing their eyes closed, which helped the transition happen.  Connections split and broke away in that sharp wind, visible even with her eyes closed.  New ones appeared in their place.

A lot of new ones.

“Hello again.”

The idea had been to switch locations, then to charge forward, and break the enemy lines before they could adapt.  But there was no charge.  No element of surprise.  They were dropped into a place that didn’t feel like it had enough oxygen.  Straight into a crowd.  No less than twenty people.  People with ropes, bandages, chains, a plastic bag to pull over Cyn’s head.

The positioning.  Lucy and Avery had been super careful about where they’d stood.

A pre-coordinated effort.  Verona could apparently sense where the other two were in the overcity, through some practice or quiet repetitions of one another’s names.  So while they’d been in the overcity, they’d been helping Verona to get people into the right general spot.  So when they crossed over… they did so right into waiting enemy forces.

Rough hands grabbed Eloise, wrestling her away from the others.  Schartzmugel slithered out and broke their grasp, snapping mandibles as best as he could with the fungus around his head.

“Cyn,” Liz said.  “Do your thing.”

Eloise sat on Ulysse’s lap, upper arm across his shoulder, hand in his hair.  “Both of us?”

“You alone, Eloise,” Musser said.

“Our last headmaster was much more gracious about letting us spend time together.”

“I wouldn’t consider myself a headmaster at the moment.  The school is gone.  I had to forfeit it, to avoid certain prophecies, and because it required time I couldn’t give.  For now, at least.”

“Boo,” Eloise replied.

“I trust you to get my scouting forces where they need to be.  You’re the most deft hand I have.  I don’t say that lightly.  Ulysse would be part of the second phase.  Whatever you can do to pave the way, get them to play their hand, work out their strategies, it would be ideal.”

“Who would I be working with?” she asked.

“You know Elizabeth Driscoll.”

“Wears corduroy, shades of brown, a bit uptight, but gentle.  Middle-tier family.”

“Yes.  I like her father.  If Elizabeth herself holds up under pressure, I’d like to invest more in their family.”

“Cool.  Liz is alright, sure.”

“Are you familiar with Milo Songetay?”

“No.  But I recognize that last name.”

“Milo was hired to kill the Songetays.  He ambushed them in their bedroom, fought them and their summoned Other to a standstill.  They found the opportunity to outbid the person who hired him.  A non-practitioner.  Milo turned around and killed the man for the Songetays.”

“So he’s mercenary.”

“Milo is a contract killer.  On the side, he’s a practitioner who has folded his knowledge and talents into the Songetay war magic fairly readily.  He’s a ritual killer, with an emphasis on the ritual.  Much like a collector such as Mr. Bristow might seek to have a pattern in the people he’s gathered under his roof, Milo collects kills and creates patterns in the various killings.  He finds the people to kill, mark, and-or take trophies from as he goes about his work, or in his free time.  He was somewhat awkwardly adopted into the family two years ago, given access to all resources, a cut of inheritance, and standing equal to the flesh and blood sons.”

“Hmm.  What’s he like in terms of personality?” Ulysse asked.

“I don’t mind his company.  Personable, professional.  You wouldn’t know he’s an unrepentant murderer if you weren’t paying careful attention.  The only reason I don’t spend more time with him is how minor he is in standing.  This would be his chance to prove himself, earn his way into higher graces.”

“Milo Songetay,” Eloise said.  She ran fingers through the hair at the back of Ulysses’s head.  “Okay.”

“He’s collected many protections, wards against innocence, heightened senses, and skills.  He collected the talents of a medical professional after killing a full set of doctors and nurses.  After killing the thirteenth, he got the talents of the least of them.  He did the same for detectives, to better know what to avoid and what tools might be used to track him down.  I know he’s started on others, like Aware, and programmers, but he’s only partway through those sets.  And he’s killed others he hasn’t shared with me, for other talents or skills.”

“Prolific,” Eloise said.  “That’s, ah, worrying.”

“If you’re his enemy, yes.  He’s something of a scrapper, with a lot of talent under his belt.  Next, Cynthia Gaspard.  Cyn to most.”

“I’ve heard the name, but don’t know much,” she said.  She shifted her position a bit to check with Ulysse, who shrugged.

“A kind of Host.  Highly respected.  She’s at her most effective when she has time.  Where most Hosts will hollow out a part of themselves, Cyn created a ritual space that allowed her to hollow out a specific space outside the bounds of her body, which was then reinforced and linked to her with ritual and practice.”

“What does that mean?” Eloise asked.

“That there is a hollow directly above her head, that gathers ambient spirits into it, concentrating their power.  You could think of it as a head-sized pocket realm.  There is another over her left shoulder and one over her right.  There are fledgling spaces at the back of either of her hands, with less power to them.  You won’t see them easily, even with Sight, unless you’re especially good at handling spirits.  For your purposes, all you need to know is that when she finally opens one ‘eye’, she’s a force to be reckoned with.”

“Hmm,” Eloise murmured.

Ulysse nodded.  “I’ve seen shrines that were built like that.  To hold a spirit or greater power in a certain position, a place that creates a hallow.”

“The principle applies.  She’s a walking shrine.  What she’s a shrine to varies depending on her needs in the moment and the most active spirits in the area.  She’s quite knowledgeable about spirits and higher powers,” Musser replied.  “She’s also expensive to hire, five figures for an hour of her time.  I want her on our side.  I’m hopeful that one of two things will happen.  That Kennet will be ill prepared, and she’ll be strong enough to break their ranks in the initial attack, or that they’ll be prepared, but that she’ll be led to our side out of a concern of how dangerous an element that town and its unmanaged Others are.”

“Alright.  No worries the other way?” Eloise asked.  “If she’s strong she’s not someone you want as an enemy.”

“She’s not the type to be led astray.  Not like that.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“I want her on our side.  She knows enough and has cachet enough she’d be a massive asset, and given five to ten years of preparation and resources, she could be the defensive equivalent of Durocher.  If she became a Lord she’d be one Lordship seat that’s next to impossible to budge, with the power I was just talking about, but the Lord’s ability to manage and funnel spirits where she wants them.  The ‘eyes’ of her shrine would never need to close.  So if there’s anything you can do, to massage things in that direction.”

Eloise nodded.  “No guarantees, but I can nudge.  I can’t really force people to act contrary to their will or interests.  We’re enchantresses, not spellbinders.”

“Good,” Musser said.  “That’s fine.  A nudge would be welcome.  She likes professionalism, so she should like you, Elizabeth, and Milo.”

“That it, then?  Strike squad of Liz for the information, Milo for the talent, Cyn for the heavy duty stuff, me for the gentler touch?”

“And Angelina Demarest.  Angie,” Musser said.  “Grayson has interacted with her more than I have.  He vouches for her.  Her father used her and her siblings as vehicles to try practices on.  She managed to keep a firmer hold on her Self than many of the others did, she was arranged to marry Chase Whitt.  Before Alexander knew him.”

“Poor her,” Eloise murmured.  Ulysse huffed out a one-note laugh.

“Poor Chase.  She’s apparently hard to deal with.  She remains an ally and known acquaintance of the Whitts and the Hennigars.  See how she is.  Ask Grayson for the full story about Angie’s practice and peculiarities.  He knows better than I.  Then report back.  I trust your word and your evaluation of her character.  She may be worth keeping on as someone for contract work,” Musser said.

“I’m noticing a trend in the people you’ve brought on.  If Elizabeth does well you elevate her family.  You don’t know Milo as well but if he does alright, you elevate him.  Similar deal for Angie.  You want Cyn onboard.”

“I’m already thinking of the next steps.  After I’ve finished taking territories, I need to work out who I’ll be giving power to, who I’ll be working with, and what our focuses will be.”

“This is a test.  Evaluation.”

“It is.”

“For me too?  I know you have ulterior motives for contacting me.”

“Your family.  Their connections.  You, and through you, Ulysse.  As for you yourself, I don’t believe I need to test you much at all.  Eloise, I intend to reach out to your family and make an offer that would enamor them with you.”

“A prominent husband for every daughter?” she asked.

“To start with.  Better than the current plans and arrangements I’m aware of.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“But that’s secondary.”

“I see,” she said, maintaining her poker face.  That’s secondary?

“I’m thinking seriously about ceding Toronto to them.  A Lordship of a major city, perhaps?”

Eloise got off Ulysse’s lap.  Something like this deserved her giving Musser her full attention, square-on, instead of sitting askance.  She started to say something, then shook her head.  “No offense, Abraham, but that makes little sense to me.”

“More than you’d think.  Your family is widespread, they’re subtle, hard to pin down.  They have their hooks in most families of note.  When I’m done, Eloise, I want my grip to be tight over this area.  Secure.  I could have Toronto for myself, but if I were on the wrong side of your family, I could be waging a frustrating twenty-year war over it, undercut in a thousand small ways in the meantime.”

“True,” Eloise said.  “So you’re surrendering?  Giving up the power?”

“Not quite.  It wouldn’t be without precedent, to have a smaller location be the true political power.  Let your family have their clout, with a Lordship over the biggest city in Canada, so long as they work with me.  Turn those hooks against my enemies, instead.”

“Where would you go?”

“I have ideas.  In the coming weeks I’ll look into certain arrangements.  There are some minor gods tucked away, and I wouldn’t overly mind taking their realm from them, as a crown jewel to my various demesne claims.  The judges, perhaps.  Or I could found a new city and use the spirits to nourish it.  But should none of that prove suitable, my intention would be to move on to Ottawa, and take the province of Ontario in entirety.”

“So you’d give us Toronto.  No tricks?”

“I want to do this, Eloise.  I don’t need you to prove yourself.  You’ve already done that, as far as I’m aware.  All you must do is avoid changing my mind.  I’ll make the meeting, I’ll tell them what I intend to do, and ask them for their loyalty.”

“Loyalty, but not servitude?  I’m looking for the catch.”

“Loyalty, no more or less than I expect from anyone else I’ve made Lord in this greater plan of mine.  I’d give your family Toronto.  No tricks, no nefarious plan to retake.  I want to pay proper heed to the old stock families of this region.  Your family is one.  I would have your sisters and cousins marry into prominent Lordships.  Into my family.  It would help cement what we’re doing as an edifice.”

“I’m sorry, I hate to belabor the point, but I can’t help but feel like there’s an angle,” Eloise told him.  “Something you’re not saying, or some greater plan that will make us regret this.  I could bring this to my family and they’d be pleased.”

Ulysse sniffed a small laugh.  “They might make you head of the family.”

Eloise smiled.  “I don’t think so.  Not for another couple decades.  They’d be pleased.  But if it turned out to be a trap, I’d be the focus of their displeasure.”

“Broker the meeting.  I’ll let them know how much I’ve appreciated what I’ve seen in you and how I wouldn’t have made this offer if it weren’t for you.  If a meeting with a group of your canniest minds can’t uncover a sinister plot, I should hope you’re all left confident I intend you no ill.”

Eloise nodded.  “I’ll talk to them.”

“And Kennet?”

“I’ll go.  Liz, Cyn, Milo, and Angie, then?  To scout?”

He checked his phone.  “And search for someone.  Grayson knows the details.  He’ll tell you the rest of what you need to know.  If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a call.”

“Of course,” Eloise said.  She stepped away from the wall as Musser extended a hand, and shook it.  Ulysse stood up to do the same.

“We can talk when you’re back, at the earliest mutual convenience.”

Eloise nodded.

Musser left the room, putting phone to ear.  Ulysse sat back down.

They were left alone in the room.  Eloise felt Ulysse’s hand on her rear end.  She quirked an eyebrow at him.  “Antsy?”

“You know I am.”

“Musser’s the type to have hidden cameras running at all times.”

Ulysse dropped his hand to his knee, smiling.

“I’ll miss you,” he said.

“Don’t go getting caught up in the machismo.  You don’t need to be Abraham Musser lite, or prove you’re the next Anthem Tedd when it comes to badassery.”

“Kinda have to keep in the good graces of my war god from early human history, to prove I’m not wasting the gifts he imparts on me, y’know?  Minor thing?”

“Your god chose you.  So don’t become not-you,” she said, touching his cheek.  “Please.”

He nodded.

She touched his other cheek, holding his face in her hands.  He was so beautiful it was stupid.  “I love you so much it makes me nauseous sometimes.  I can’t handle it.”

“Ominous way to leave things when you’re about to leave on a risky mission where two of your allies are a serial murderer and a girl Abraham Musser describes as hard to deal with.  The spirits pay attention to these things, so don’t go sounding like you’re putting things in order.”

“I mean it.  Like he said, I’m from one of the old families.  I know how these things go.  The pressures.  The systems, how it all works to brainwash you.  I only barely escaped.  You didn’t grow up in a big old practitioner family.  You’re around them all the time now.  Don’t let it change you.”

He put fingers through her belt loops and pulled her closer, until her knees bumped up against the front of the seat he was sitting in.  “No plans to.”

“I know how you were with the girls at the Blue Heron, before we crossed paths,” she said, touching his nose.

“No plans for anything like that either.  I’m happy.  I love you.  And I love you too, Schartzmugel,” Ulysse said.  “You keep on protecting that girl I’m so fond of, okay?”

The tattoo slithered across her skin, making an appearance on her neck.

“I know you’re not inclined to talk, but can you make a heart shape, Schartzmugel?” Eloise asked.

Schartzmugel receded, hiding beneath clothes.

“Spoilsport.”

“Shall we get you started on your way?” Ulysse asked.  “Or perhaps a quick stop in the washroom?”

“Incorrigible.”

“For recommending a stop at the facilities before a car trip?” he asked, smiling.

“Ha ha.  Let’s not dally.  We’ll talk to Grayson, and find out the specifics of what I’m doing.”

Cyn opened the eye above her head, pronouncing, “Violence.”

The ‘eye’ turned a red with a wisp of yellow swirling in it, at the same time the glow emanating from her actual eyes did.  Spirits concentrated into a singular spherical space, swirling, pushing out the ones who weren’t needed or wanted, or devouring them for sustenance.

It unfolded like a flower.  The air shuddered.

She could see it making connections, one by one, roughly one a second.

Touching one of the undercity thugs who was grabbing Liz, holding her jacket collar- the sleeves were narrow enough she couldn’t easily extricate herself.  The thug’s arm snapped backward.

Touching a woman with a chain who’d thrown it loose- almost like a jump rope, over Milo’s head, and who was midway through trying to swing one end and loop it around his head.  The woman stumbled back like she had been punched, blood gushing from her nose.

Cyn turned her head.  Looking at Verona, on her perch on a rooftop.

Verona was slapped down, sweater torn, cuts appearing on her forearms.

“Fuck you!  I liked this sweater!”

Cyn didn’t relent.  Verona was halfway to her feet when the next point of contact delivered more raw violence from Cyn’s ‘eye’.  It hit Verona directly on the mask, with an audible, sharp impact, hard enough to knock her over.  She immediately tried to get to her feet, and looked disoriented, stumbling and landing across the peak of the roof instead.  With chalk, she drew a line across the shingles.

Cyn’s violence struck the barrier with an audible bang, like a car driving into a garage door.

Eloise had dropped to a crouch in the middle of the mob and she couldn’t actually find the opportunity to stand up.  People grabbed for her- she broke connections, she pushed, but others stepped in.

There was no room for grace in this.  It was a tar pit of people.  Any time it seemed there was an opportunity to stand up, she was bowled over, or everything shifted.

Liz was being dragged away.  Cyn held one wooden plank that was being used as a bludgeon, while the attacker held the end, and held another guy by the hair.  She was fairly stocky as a woman and fairly strong, and she did okay at manhandling the people she could get her hands on.

Meanwhile, that eye struck the barrier a third time, and destroyed it.  Verona immediately drew another.  She immediately turned her focus to the crowd.  Surgical, brutal strikes delivered automatically, with no warning.  She bludgeoned one of the men dragging Liz off, knocking him into another, and Milo reached down to help Liz, pulling her back and up to her feet, closer to the safety at the center of the group.

Eloise couldn’t find the chance to get up and it was feeding into a growing panicky feeling.

“The kid’s strong.  Holding up like that.”

“Told you,” Liz said.

One of Asher’s friends was using fire, and that helped keep the group at bay, but the way their defensive line had formed, it felt more and more like Eloise was expected to keep one quadrant of it secure, and all she had was Schartzmugel.  He wasn’t immune to being hit with a swing of a baseball bat, and while the undercity mob wasn’t turning to stuff like knives or anything with the humans, they weren’t holding back with Schartzmugel or the Other that the other one of Asher’s friends had called up.

A net was thrown over Eloise.  She immediately pushed it off and away, glad her clothes didn’t have much it could catch on, but it caught at her ear, and when she turned her head to try to get away or free it, moving with the direction of the net, it caught her under the chin.

She was pulled, choking, away, one hand at the net, to try to relieve the choking pressure, the other on the ground.  Schartzmugel lunged, snapping out toward the man with the net, and got soundly struck with a bat for his trouble.  Hands grabbed her around the armpit and chest, limiting her ability to fight back even more.

“Cyn,” she croaked, hand gesturing, working with that thin connection that resulted.

Cyn’s head turned.

The hands that held the net were smashed, as if the person holding the net had broken a two story fall with fingers pointed straight down at sidewalk.  A moment later, an ‘x’ of cuts crossed his face.  He screamed, forearms pressed to the wound.

She hit the next one- and the crowd began to break.  Eloise pulled the net away from her head, pausing to remove her earring instead of bothering to try to free it from the weave.

“Fall back!” Verona shouted.  She still looked unwilling to stand up straight, after that hit to the face, and crouched with hand and feet on the roof, hiding behind a barrier.  “It’s fine!”

“This is our town,” a man growled.  He was older, sixty or so, and burly.

Cyn’s practice hit him, hard in the chest, and he dropped to his knees, wheezing.

Milo drew a knife, walking over to the man.  Eloise, still getting her breath, reached into her sleeve and flicked out.  A dart of glamour, to get attention where it needed to be.

To Liz, who was taking advantage of the fact the mob was clearing away to check herself over.  She was distracted, attention drawn over to Milo and the older man.  Liz reached out, catching Milo’s wrist before he could put the knife to the man’s throat.  Or through the man’s throat.

“I was told I could do what I needed to do,” Milo said.  He sounded very calm.  His Sight was on.  “He’ll do, for a set of kills I’m trying to finish.”

“That wasn’t run by me,” Liz said.  “No.”

“It was run by Musser.  And Musser’s running this.”

“They’re holding back,” Eloise said.  She brought Schartzmugel back and let him reside in her skin while he healed.  “They’re trying to batter, capture, slow us down.  If that mob had been armed with knives, we wouldn’t have made it.”

“You wouldn’t have made it,” Milo said.  “I can handle being cut.”

“Okay,” Eloise said.  “I think the point stands.”

“Plus it’s wrong?” Liz said.  “They’re still mostly human.”

Milo sighed heavily, his posture stiff, knife held an inch from the older man’s throat.  Liz held his arm firm, grip white-knuckled.  “Deal was I’d make the contract cheap, generous for time I’d dedicate.  I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think I could make some headway on my projects.”

“Your killings?” Liz asked.

“Yeah.  Made that clear to Musser.  Your boss.”

Eloise studied his connections.  The connections tying things to the scene.  He was a coil of multiple threads, essentially, wound tight, and different threads extended in various directions, tying to people, things, and interests.  She could see the one between him and Liz…

“Barter?” Eloise asked.  “You don’t think it would be worth being in Liz’s good graces?”

He moved eyes but not head, fixating on Liz.

“No?” Eloise asked, injecting herself into the conversation, willing the connection to be stronger.

“I save his life, you let me buy you a drink and pub food another time, how’s that?” he asked.

Liz looked at Eloise, who shrugged by way of a fraction that only someone already looking at her would see.

“Okay.  Just hold off, okay?  Go easy?”

“If I do hold off the rest of the time I’m here, I can’t see any way to make peace with my personal principles, in any way that doesn’t make me the biggest dick on the planet, you know?” he asked.

“No, I don’t,” Liz said.

“Say I tell you sure, I’ll hold off on taking lives, I’ll play nice, even though I gave a considerable discount to Musser for permission to not play nice… I feel like I’d have to keep count, and ask you to let me buy you drinks for each one I count.  That feels like a whole different kind of scummy,” Milo said.  “Twisting a girl’s arm a bit to get her to accept a date, that’s one thing.  Twisting her arm to keep it going, force her to keep your company?  Get drunk?  Nah.”

“Or just don’t kill?” Liz asked.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be strong enough to distract and then survive Asher Hennigar, and help you here.  You’d be in a pinch, you might even lose what you’re gunning for, being here.”

“We should move on,” Cyn said.

“Play it by ear?” Milo asked.

“I don’t- fine.  Maybe.  This will slow us down.”

“Face down in the grass until we’re long gone, understand?” Milo asked.  “Don’t test me.  I really want to kill you.  You’d be my six of crooks.”

“Let it go,” Cyn said.

They hurried on.  The mob moved back, letting them through.  Where one or two got brave, Cyn’s eye hit one with brutal, disabling violence.

“Kid’s drawing in some healing spirits,” Cyn said.

Eloise looked.  Verona was off to the side, chugging from a thermos-type bottle.

“Looks like healing alchemy,” Eloise reported.

“How injured are we?  Because I could get us something from that.”

“Throat’s sore,” Eloise reported.  “Got stepped on.”

“Nothing major?  Milo?”

“I regenerate some, from an incomplete set.  I’m fine.”

Cyn raised a hand.  “Restoration.”

Another eye opened at the back of her hand.  It was warm, purple, and red, like a flashlight shining through translucent skin.  It wasn’t as clearly a sphere as the one above her, and a lot of the energies inside it bled away into the air around it, leaving a trail where Cyn’s hand moved.

Verona coughed, sputtering mid-drink.  She looked over-

The power of Cyn’s eye of violence slammed into the barrier Verona had drawn onto the ground.  Verona backed away a few steps.  Two more hits struck at the pavement the line had been drawn onto.

“Are they inexhaustible?” Cyn asked.  “I don’t often see that.  No obvious power source.”

“Not inexhaustible.  But it’s a deep well,” Liz said, glancing back as they lightly jogged down toward the southeastern corner of town.  “If it doesn’t cost you too much, keep at it.  It could help to drain their reserves before Musser’s big attack.”

Verona had run off.

“They know ways between the two sides of this town.  She’ll probably go to the others, then come at us with a coordinated attack,” Eloise said.

The crowd of undercity denizens was still following at a distance.  When one was caught across the cheek with a slash by the eye of violence, a block and a half away, they fell back even more, before scattering.

“That cost,” Cyn said, quiet.

“What?”

“Reaching that far.”

“It’s good.  We’re doing alright.  Marlen’s this way,” Eloise said.

“Those would be the abandoned factories,” Liz added.  “The kind of place goblins and other things hang out.”

“Are you a demon?” Eloise asked.

He was tall- maybe fifteen feet, and narrow.  The dimensions of his head made her think of the eraser-end of a pencil, and his smile, which was about as tall as it was wide, reached halfway around it, with big yellowing teeth.  He wore a suit, but the tailored aspect of the suit made his overly skinny, drawn-out proportions all the more extreme.

She’d had to ask.

In the background, at the far end of the church, the priest and-

She used her Sight to check.  Sight.

-three women from a local volunteer group, and one of their adult sons were all engaged in rough, animalistic coitus, on the church grounds.  Communion wine had been spilled- poured out onto flesh, was being lapped up.  They were so lost in it they had barely scratched the connection block she’d put up before sneaking in.

They hadn’t noticed the Other, either.

“Did you do this?”

“Do you ever speak in more than one word at a time?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Would you name yourself, Other?” she asked.

“Schartzmugel.”  He turned his head and the creaking sound of that motion filled the church.  “They initiated this.  I…”

He let the trailing sentence hang, smile stretching out until the sides of his smile almost touched at the back of his head.

“Eat?  Exaggerate?”

She looked around the situation.  Step.

She paced, kept moving, but put obstacles between herself and the Other.

“…wait,” Schartmugel finished.

“For?”

“More,” he said, smiling.

“A friend of mine was asked to deal with you.  We talked, I offered to handle it instead.  I’ve been following your trail.  You sure do find a lot of stuff like this.”

“Yes.”

“It’s hard to believe you don’t cause it.”

“People are…”

He turned back to look at her.

She met his gaze as she’d been taught to do.

“…interesting.”

“Can’t deny that,” she replied.  “What do you get out of this, then?”

“Amusement,” Schartzmugel replied.  “Food.”

“So you do feed off of this?”

“Others come.  To exploit, to eat, to ruin.  I eat the ones who don’t run from the sight of me.”

“Hmm.”

A phone rang.  The activities were put on pause.  People looked around.

She put herself out of sight, behind a pillar.  She could still sense that her connection block had suffered a fair bit.

She wondered if they’d stop, but they found their groove, so to speak, with the one husband chuckling before diving in.

“I should wrap this up.  Want to come with me, Schartzmugel?”

“Yes.”

“For a bit of a walk, talk?  So I can quiz you?”

“I said yes.”

“And, putting it all upfront… possibly a familiar relationship?” she asked.  “I’m keeping an eye out.  I don’t want to waste time.”

“I said yes, Eloise,” Schartmugel spoke.

“I’d need to know more about you.”

“Ask.”

“What are you?”

“A High Perversion.”

“I don’t know what that is?  What type of Other?”

“A High Perversion.”

“Describe yourself in other words?  More expansive?”

“A gentleman.”

“That’s- not helping.  I mean- what broader category?  What field of practice?  Explain in more depth?”

“There are spirits, shapeless, dull.  There are animus, solid spirits, concepts given drive.  To fight.  To collect.  To watch.  To answer.  They relate.”

“Are you an animus?” she tried to tune out the sounds in the background.

“There are greater spirits.  Still shapeless, less dull.  And there are greater animus.  Concepts given more drive.”

“Like you?”

“Like me.”

“What do you do, then?  That’s so much greater?”

“I will spend myself to create a new height of perversion.  But that comes later.”

“Will you postpone that?  Keep me company for a year or so, then maybe we can look into the familiar thing if we have the right wavelength?  Save what you’re doing for after the familiar bond breaks?”

“I said yes.”

“You won’t hurt me?”

“Only when you need me to.”

She ran down the usual list of questions.  Was this a trap?  Would he harm her?

He was surprisingly gracious.  Weirdly easy.

“Let’s go for that walk and talk, then,” she said.

He fell into step beside her.  They left the church, and she secured the doors behind her, wiping away the chalk mark she’d put to keep herself and the Other she was tracking from being interrupted.

“I should check in.  This was the sort of thing where we weren’t sure how bad you’d be.”

“I’m very bad.”

“As far as risk to me goes, anyway.”

“Not so bad.”

“Right.  Yeah, good to know.  I told them if I didn’t report back in ten minutes, they should send rescue, and anticipate danger.”

“You have a message from Gemma.”

“I do.”

“Reply.”

“It’s awkward.  She was… kind to me, in a way.  Even if I didn’t end up taking her help.  But she’s also a monster.  Her entire career, she hurt kids.  Child abuse is her job description.  I don’t know how- how do you approach that?”

“The choice you make will define you.”

She looked up at him.  It was a long way to look.

They walked by a store, and in the display, she could see him as others did.  A more normal height.  More normal in proportions.  Still creepy.

“Define me?”

“The choice now is the same choice you’ll make later.  Do not make that choice ignorance of the issue.”

“Is it?  So I condemn her, and… what?  That’s my life path?”

“Yes.”

“And I accept her, that’s, what is it?  Defining?  I don’t have free will?”

“You do.  But your will is not to waver.  You love with all your heart.  You rarely change courses.  So the path you choose now matters.”

“Have you studied me?  Do you have special senses?”

“I people watch.”

“Huh,” she breathed the word.  This was all very disorienting.  “You’re saying this is my life course?  That’s a lot.”

He reached down, and put a finger under the phone, lifting it up to her eye level.  “See.”

“Right.  I see it.  Email from Gemma.”

“Step.”

Step.  It was the approach to engagements.

“You’re a creepy man, Schartzmugel.  Knowing all this.”

“Yes.”

To take that first, initial step, in a direction she was reasonably sure was safe.  “I don’t know what a step looks like here.”

“Start with hello.”

She typed the first word of the reply.

And then decide.  How do I approach Gemma?  And all the forces like Gemma I’ll meet in the future?

“Eloise,” Lucy called out.

“Fuck,” Eloise swore.

“What?” Milo asked.

The connection blockers weren’t doing so hot in enemy territory.

They weren’t far from the factory.

“Talk?” Lucy asked.

“Can you hear that?” Eloise asked.

“No.  Hear what?”

Lucy was a distance away.  Using practice to communicate, like she had with the undercity goons earlier.

Eloise held up a finger.  “Sure.  I hear you, Lucy.  Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.  I hope there’s no hard feelings.”

“There’s some.  But I wanted to give you a chance, like I did Elizabeth Driscoll.”

“Did you?  Why?”

“Because you helped my mom.”

“Don’t remember that.”

“End of summer?  Zed said he’d reach out to you.”

“Oh, was that what that was?  Good to know.  Huh.”

“I checked, he said you helped.”

“Didn’t know it was your mom, exactly.  But cool.”

“I’d like to offer surrender.  I’ve told others to back off, to go easy.  We’ve got a small army coming, you’re walking into a small army.  You’re throwing it all away for Musser?”

“I’m not supposed to be, when I’m an enchantress, but I’m kind of stubborn,” Eloise said.  “I picked this path a while ago.  It’s doing okay for me.”

“Seems like a crummy way to be.”

“Pluses and minuses.”

“Not changing course?  Decisions already made for me?”

“My decision, at least.”

“Just one?  Because I always made rules for myself-”

“Lucy,” Eloise said.  “This isn’t the sort of thing that you’re going to fix or change with a five minute pep talk or pouring out of your heart, sweetie.  We’re going to get the prisoner.  Believe it or not, we have some pretty strong practitioners in our group.  If you capture us, others will come.  Tonight or tomorrow, Musser’s going to come down on this town with practitioners from the wider region, practitioners south of the border, practitioners from neighboring provinces.  Even ones from elsewhere.  Let us take Marlen.  I’ll tell them to go easy.”

Lucy stared at her, from a distance away.

Avery and Verona joined her a moment later.  Lucy said something Eloise couldn’t hear.  Reporting in, from the looks of the connections.

“How do you deal with it?” Lucy asked, quiet.  “The stuff in your periphery.  Marlen was willing to traffic in humans to buy her own safety.  We rely on Others who’ve killed a lot of people.  Avery’s- Avery’s saying you deal with Musser.  And he’s enslaving Others.  He’s becoming a tyrant.”

“You don’t want to get in this debate with me, Lucy.  I thought a lot about it.  You won’t like my conclusions.”

“Try me,” Lucy said.

“The clothes you wear?  They were the first thing I noticed about you.  Where do you think they come from?  That brand name comes at a price,” Eloise said.

“You’re really getting into that?” Milo asked, hearing only one side of the conversation.

“The things you have shipped to you all come at their price,” Eloise said.  “They come on pallets, wrapped in plastic.  Food, clothing, conveniences.  That plastic becomes waste.  Does it not matter, if it doesn’t happen right in front of you?  If you can pretend?”

“So what, we’re not supposed to care?  Or if I do care, you call me a hypocrite?”

There was an emotional edge to Lucy’s voice.  Frustration.

She could have toyed with it, used it.  She could have signaled Milo and held onto that handhold, seized the attention of the three witches, and left them vulnerable.

“Musser will do some harm.  He’ll do some good.  I’ve made my peace with that.  What you do, it does harm, it does some good, you ignore it or you make your peace with it.”

“They’re not the same.  He’s-”

“He’s a person with power, money, status.  A prime example, I know, but yeah,” Eloise said.  “I made my peace with the monsters in my life, back around the time I met Schartzmugel.  And I’ll step into the arena with Musser, as part of what he’s doing.  I’ll be the matador to his bull when and where I must.  I’ll do my part there.”

“It’s not sustainable.  He’ll keep taking over.  You’re already stretched thin.  You don’t think someone else is going to come swooping in?  That it stops at Toronto?  Or it stops at targets you deem acceptable?”

“I’ll deal with that when it happens.”

“You helped my mom, so I hope you do.  I’d wish you luck, but I’m going to fight this and we’re on opposite sides.  The fact we’re not perfect doesn’t mean we can’t try to fight for better.”

Eloise turned away.

“I wish we could have been allies again,” Lucy said.

Bothered, Eloise swiped a hand through the air, breaking the connection.

“Done?” Milo asked.

Eloise nodded.  Without having even lowered the hand she’d just put through the air, she pointed at the factory.

There were some people already gathered.  More from the undercity.  Goblins laid down an initial barrage of traps and tricks.  Peppering the ground with things that were sticky, spiky, suspicious, or rude.

Schartzmugel, wounded as he was, slapped something away.  Cyn’s eye wounded two in one strike.

A warning gunshot made the group of them stop in their tracks.

A man behind some derelict equipment outside.  A soldier.  Like the one the kids had had, back at the Blue Heron, but different.

She drew glamour out of her pocket and gave it shape.  She sent it along the connection between herself and him.  It arced through the air, curving- homing.

Striking his hand.

He shifted posture, to a one-handed grip on the rifle, and Cyn’s power got him, breaking his forearm.  He dropped the gun.

He kicked it over to someone else, and Cyn got that someone else.

The enemy ranks started to break.  They fell back to another position.

“I was hoping this would be a heist,” Eloise said.

“They probably saw us coming from the moment we entered the town,” Liz said.  She was pulling the map out of her inside jacket pocket.  “Can’t have a good heist without secrecy.”

“Mmm.  But different skillsets, though.”

“We’ve got some,” Milo said.

Liz’s map shuffled itself, then opened up as a blueprint.  She showed them the layout inside.

A goblin fired a rocket with another, tiny goblin riding atop it, aimed right for them.  Eloise manipulated the connection, making the random orientation of the rocket go off course.  She directed it into trees.

“More groups have come in,” Elizabeth said.  “More of ours.  We’ve got ten or so additional people.  They come in, they either go to the house, or they stop partway.  They can’t even defend a singular point.  All they’ve got are rough numbers.”

“And ours are mostly practitioners,” Milo said.  “Do we want to wait?  Before we go in?”

“We don’t need to,” Cyn said.  “Avoidance.”

Another eye opened over her shoulder.

“Together.  Watch for ambush and traps,” Cyn said.

One of the three practitioners was on the roof.  Eloise redirected the spell card that was thrown down, and caught it.  A chunk of rubble was thrown, and the orb over Cyn’s shoulder flared.  It veered away, hitting the ground between them.  The eye of violence retaliated, striking at the roof’s edge.

Raw spiritual manipulation- avoiding harm, and delivering it.  With a sphere of lesser healing at one hand if she needed to grant that.

She was only a bit past her halfway point, too.  She still had her left hand and one shoulder that she could concentrate spirits into.  Gathered up over time, from active spiritual energies, then crystallized into a personal, mobile shrine effect.

Liz directed them, not to the front door, but the side.  Eloise motioned as they approached the side of the building, where there was a hole.  Milo nodded.

They stepped in, and they were immediately attacked.  The gunman from before, hand still injured, used a combat knife.  Milo caught his arm.  The scrap was brief, furious- and Schartzmugel ducked under, to snag the man’s leg.  Milo looked more offended than grateful for the slight trip-up that bought him the upper hand.

He stabbed the soldier in each shoulder.

“Here!” Marlen shouted, from the corner.  Out of sight.

“Get her free, she can do the rest,” Eloise said.

Which was harder than stated.  They’d come directly here, wasting little time, and she had the sense they’d caught the Kennet group off guard by that.  The people who were here were mostly the ones who had been here already, and the ones who could move especially fast.  Or be carried.

That included the spider legs Other, who was in the walls.

Avery slipped inside by way of an open window near the roof, spray-painted over to keep light from getting in.

Cyn’s eye blasted out the window, shattering it.

It wouldn’t be vampires.  Vampires were nothing.  What else might it be?  Ghouls?

“You mentioned ghouls?” she asked Liz.  “Before.”

“Yeah.  Mr. Moss did.”

“Watch out.”

“Yeah.”

The goblins were harassing more than they were fighting.  A cage of toothpicks and string hit the ground and brightly painted bugs flew around.  Like distilled annoyance.  Something else broke, and cast a ridiculous number of glass shards across half the factory floor.

Every step they made it inside was a labor.

Milo finished with the soldier.  “He won’t die.  I’m getting tired of fighting things that won’t die or stop.  The Hennigar, now this guy…”

“It’s better than the alternative.  They’re still playing nice.  I think the kids don’t want to hurt us,” Eloise said.  “And they told the rest not to.”

“Which is dumb,” Milo murmured.

“I’ll take it over the alternative,” Eloise said.

“We’ve got help coming by car,” Liz told them.  She was hanging further back.  Eloise and Cyn deflected everything airborne they could.  Milo stood ready for anything else.  Here and there, Cyn’s orb struck out, taking easy targets, anyone who wasn’t behind cover, or chipping away at cover.

Eloise tracked the car by what Liz was watching, following the connection.  The car raced down the road, possibly swerving as it found the entry point in the fence.

Eloise caught some connections.

They might drain our defenses if those reinforcements aren’t on top of things.

“Watch him,” Milo told them, before he made a break for it, hopping up onto furniture, then scaling the wall with a surprising speed and agility.

Two goblin fireworks exploded in his vicinity.  Both seemed modified.  One left a cloud of gas.  The other left trails of burning oil that streaked the wall with persistent licks of fire.  When the gas of the first firework was touched by flame, it whooshed.  Milo was nearly cast off of the wall.

He was in the rafters now, or the beams that ran along the top of the factory.

Another firework exploded near him.  Instead of sparks, it looked like flaming mice.  He knocked one out of the air before it could land on his face.

The rest hit the ground.  One landed on Cyn- and it persisted by way of goblin magic, while the others disintegrated.  Cyn used one of the blasts from her eye of violence to destroy it, rather than bothering with her hands.

“There’s a solid group in the residential area and downtown.  We’ve got this,” Liz reported, going by the map.

Eloise stepped on the reaching hand of the soldier that was slowly pulling himself together, stab wounds or no.  Keeping him from getting a hold on Liz’s ankle.

It was a siege.  Goblins running along the criss-crossing beams overhead, where Milo was.  Cyn advancing slowly, indomitable, still delivering acts of violence every second, to any visible target.  Tyson and Ral backed Cyn up with loose artillery- basic elemental blasts.

The lights went out.

“Ghouls,” Eloise warned.

They moved fast in the dark.  There was a brief glimpse of eyes that reflected the scant light.  They avoided the big shaft of late afternoon light that came through the one shattered window, spearing through the middle of the space.  At least two of them.

It was hard to get the connections working in the dark.

It was hard for Cyn to use the eye of avoidance to deflect incoming projectiles.  Something goblin grazed Eloise, and she felt the slime run down her arm, somethign caught in it, twitching wildly.

Cyn began shattering windows one by one.  It steadily illuminated the space, but it wasn’t quite enough.  Another goblin trick hit Cyn, and only the fact that Eloise had caught her kept her from falling over.

The healing orb glowed brighter, and Cyn healed whatever it had done to her.

“Found her!” Milo shouted.  “She’s in your-”

All sound died.

Purple cat eyes glowed in the dark.

Eloise couldn’t see the source, so she couldn’t do anything about it.

Cyn might have realized that, because she made an orb.  One over her shoulder, bright.

Except the moment she did, the three practitioners bombarded them.  Eloise deflected a few.  But one of those bombards was darkness.

And it was followed soon after by a furious attack by the ghouls.  Driving them back.  Ral and Tyson, Asher’s buddies, were taking the brunt of it.  They were careful to duck around the light that shone in through the crack in the wall they’d crawled through.

Fingers like knives.

“Just go!” Avery called out.

Eloise tried her voice, and found it still mute.

The ghouls were frankly terrifying.  There was a high likelihood of becoming a ghoul if mortally wounded by one, and she did not trust ghouls to hold back if they had cause.

One screeched as it was wounded.

It was Liz who spared them.  More light- from simple spell runes, drawn on the ground.  It gave the ghouls no ground to stand on.  And with that, Cyn was able to rebound.  Her eye of light illuminated the area, pushing ghouls back, she could see, so she and Eloise could fight things away.  Could see the silence card on the floor near them.  Eloise reached for it and pulled it to herself, before tearing it.

“In the corner, to your right!” Milo shouted.

Lucy met him with a melee weapon in hand- her rapier, his knife.

The ghouls were the biggest threat.  One of them, female, wearing a pink sweater, was retreating as the area brightened up, the other lurked close, snarling, snapping, and slashing with claws, moving quickly to avoid being hit directly by anything too bad-

He kept taking brutal hits from Cyn’s orb.  But he was keeping them at bay.

Until the doors banged open.

Those reinforcements arrived, a group of six at the front door- the two in the very front showered in water that turned to ice, forced to retreat.

But Angie waded through it.  Her hair was frozen by the time she emerged from the other side, skin damaged, one eye forced closed.  But she had a gun in hand and she could see with her other eye.  She opened fire with zero hesitation.

Eloise warned, “Watch out for the-”

The ghoul in the pink sweater tackled Angie, gouging the backs of her arms, scraping face.

And that would do it.

Angie went down, crumpled, then convulsed.

And both ghouls, several goblins, Elizabeth, and the soldier on the ground were afflicted, struck by a retaliatory practice.  Everyone Angie could see who Angie wanted to hurt.  Gouges opened in their arms, scrapes in the face, ice crystals on bodies.

Eloise hurried to help Elizabeth, who was bleeding openly from inch-deep gouges.

Her father had used practice on her when she was little, wrapped her in it, treated her as more object than not.  Primarily a doll, of the sort pins were pushed into, to afflict others.

Hurt her, and she could broadcast it.  It wasn’t technically her practice, so much as a powerful practice that had been laid over her.

The fact she could mend herself, arms convulsing and twitching as the wounds went away, while the wounded on the other side -and Elizabeth- didn’t, it made this one-sided.

Eloise did what she could to staunch Elizabeth’s bleeding, while Angie picked up her gun.

“We’re done,” Cyn said.

“What?  I just showed up.”

“That was all we needed,” Cyn reported, stepping forward.  She spotted the cable that was binding Marlen, and her orb of violence cut through it.

Marlen wrestled, fought, and hurdled her way past the worst of the enemy numbers.  Angie fired twice- they might have been warning shots, or just bad aim.  Lucy threw a practice at her, and she evaded.  Verona poked her head out, spell card in hand, and Cyn’s orb of violence clipped the railing and Verona’s shoulder with a sharp, thrusting sort of violence.

A petite and bedraggled Marlen paused in her tracks, looked between the two groups, then went to theirs, rather than Angie’s.  She squeezed between them, heading straight outside, the long cable trailing behind her.

“Out.  We’re done.  No need to push this!” Cyn shouted.

“Bullshit!  I want to push this!”

“Fucking go!” Liz shouted, one hand at her face.  Eloise’s hands gripped her arms, trying to staunch other bleeding with pressure.

Eloise turned to go, and the soldier on the ground grabbed her calf.

“It’s over, soldier,” she said.  “We got the woman we came for.  Look after your own.”

The words helped break the connection between hand and leg.

Elizabeth dropped to the ground the moment they were out of immediate danger.  Eloise hurried to wrap the wounds.

Fucking Angie isn’t getting a recommendation.  Hurting someone nice like Liz.  That was intentional, I can tell Musser that I saw.

The others were making a fighting retreat, with Cyn at the center of it.  Angie fired her gun several more times.

The three girls had reached the roof somehow- through a hatch, maybe.  They crouched at the edge.

“Looking after the wounded!” Eloise shouted.  “If you owe anything to me, let me look after Liz!”

Frantic, hectic.  There was no grace in a long engagement like this.

The girls didn’t respond.

They were looking skyward.

Avery said something that Eloise wasn’t privy to hear.  The others nodded, and then she ran off.

Eloise had to twist around to see.

There was a wheel in the sky, turning slowly.  Like a wagon wheel, maybe, or an old fashioned bike wheel.  It was hard to pin down, with the clouds beneath it.  It was high enough to be above those clouds, but so wide that the one edge of it grazed the one ski hill to the east, and the other end of it was above the other, smaller hill.

The kids didn’t look especially surprised.

“I thought something was off,” Liz said, quiet.  “They had a plan.”

“What?”

“Look.”

Eloise looked.  And she saw connections reaching.

Tenuous, unsure.  On the bounds of registering something profound.  Three thousand or so connections extending skyward across this little town, looking up at the shadow in the clouds, trying to puzzle out what it was.

Bringing things to the very edge of Awareness.  Threatening it.

“Marlen,” Eloise said.  “Get to Musser.  Tell him not to make a move just yet.  Watch out for anything green, gold, or black, while you’re at it.  Or reptile related.  Limit the practice you use.”

Liz nodded, like she was in full agreement.  She’d come to the same conclusion.

“Not to make a move?” Marlen asked.

“We can’t afford it.  One wrong move and the illusion shatters, and we’d be the ones owning the consequences.”

Next Chapter