Pale: 2.z - Interlude
Author: Wildbow

Interlude

Nicolette carried a serving tray of plates away.  The room behind her was smoky, heavy with the smell of cigarettes from the older guys and vape smoke from the younger guys, along with one or two joints.  The light from there was diffused by the heavy haze.

After so much Seeing, the Belanger Circle liked to unwind by situating themselves in the opposite.  Or that was the idea, anyway.  There were occasional machinations and plots, and people trying to one-up one another to climb in Alexander’s esteem, using Practice to do it, so they would See in the smoke, by learning to interpret it, or putting something in their vape juice or their joints that took them a little further from reality, so they could look at the situation from another angle.  They’d then try to act normal while interacting and maneuvering around one another.

Alexander loved it all.  He lived for it.  He’d grown up in the thick of it, he’d come out on top, and it had become his version of normal.

She couldn’t afford to indulge, and her manipulations couldn’t be in that hazy room.  Because she was too young to drink, sharing drinks was a tradition, and traditions had power.  Because she was the youngest and newest member present, and that meant she had to bring dinner and take away the dishes.  She had to return with tea and dessert, if any, and that necessitated long absences.  Any plots she tried to ravel would unravel while she wasn’t looking, and any chess game she played would see the pieces moved when she wasn’t looking.

She wasn’t the newest member of the circle, but the other two new members didn’t live at the Blue Heron Institute.  She wasn’t sure they were accepting any more.  Not until she picked her apprentice, and that was a trap.

She walked down dim stone corridors, candles lighting up as she approached and going dark as she left them behind.  Plates and silverware clicked, clattered, and shuffled on the serving tray, try as she might to move silently.

The bones of this place had once been an old stone church, picked up once and placed down again, stone by stone.  Alexander was almost always present, so he lived in the adjunct living quarters, where the priest and his family had lived.  Rooms had been rearranged, and many had a small stone room of their own, while Alexander had a proper area with multiple rooms and the office where the hazy conversation was currently taking place.  He had marked out his space as a demesnes, and once it was his in entirety, expanded it further.  Once someone was inside, it was larger than the old church itself.

She passed into what had been the church itself, now a multi-purpose area that doubled as classroom, meeting area, entryway, and, arguably, the Heron Institute itself.  Everything else was adjacent, supporting.  Pews had been removed, replaced with scattered clusters of chairs, there were no walls separating areas, and bookshelves had been set up wherever they didn’t block the light from the tall windows.  The place had been picked up and set back down stone by stone, but the windows were exempt from that, and the old stained glass work had been replaced by a dusky, blue-tinted glass, alchemically altered to make it so one could look out, but outsiders couldn’t look in.  Within the apse, the farthest point from the front door on the raised stage, a vast and complicated circle sat partially erased.  It had been there for months like that, possibly because Alexander liked the aesthetic, but she would be tasked with wiping it clean and ensuring it was both spotless and dry before the summer classes started, and if there wasn’t someone subordinate to her present, she would be painstakingly cleaning it up to ten times a day.

No using practice for that.  The line they gave her was that using practice affected the spiritual flows in the area afterward, which was bullcrap, and that the lines had a tendency to influence any practice that was used, which was… less bullcrap.

At her left middle finger, a tin ring of a snake animated, writhing and constricting lightly against her skin, scraping against the handle of the serving tray.  She braced herself, and on feeling no bite, instead stopped walking and stepped back and to the side of the way into the next part of the Institute.  She adjusted her grip on the tray to have one hand centered on the bottom, her other hand free to reach to her side and tug a black feather from her back pocket.  She held it with care, out of view, as a just-in-case, but she knew it was painted with a chalk drawing of a sword.

Chase stepped out of the doorway, and seemed a bit surprised to see her.  He held a cupcake in one hand, and a bottle of lemonade in the other.  He studied her, frowning a bit.

She ducked down in a light curtsy, her eyes dropping to the floor, before making eye contact again.

He swayed a bit, and his eyes were visibly red even by candlelight.  Alcohol and drugs lowered defenses, which was part of why she couldn’t indulge.  Chase hinted at his motives in how he looked at her, and in the faint frustration he evidenced.  His hair was a bit messy, and his shirt was unbuttoned.  He’d been a guy who had been good looking, and could be again, but for the time being, was about thirty pounds overweight, wearing pants that didn’t fit.  He thought he was being subtle, unbuttoning his pants to alleviate the pressure on his waistline, and using his belt to keep his pants up, but the ‘v’ of the zipper pulling open at the top betrayed his ploy.  His hair remained styled, an older-fashioned swoop of black hair at the brow, his chin shaven, his clothes business casual, even in ‘leisure’.

“Sir,” she said, acknowledging him, as though he’d spoken.

He continued to study her, as if he could decipher something about her that would answer his frustrations.  He was her sponsor.  The one who had brought her into the circle.  Alexander, in turn, was the one who had brought Chase in; Chase had been brought in because he was very, very good at dealing with certain kinds of Other, owing to his family ties, and because of the politics of it.  Making Chase an apprentice and teaching him all sorts of things about Seeing made for strong ties with Chase’s family.

He had expected something very different when he had found her.  Leverage against Alexander, maybe.  More power.  A grateful girl a year younger than him.  Instead, Chase had had to go to school, he’d left her here to act as eyes, ears, and hands on things here, and Alexander had started to barter with her, making her more Alexander’s apprentice than Chase’s.

The snake ring tightened, pressing against skin with teeth, but not breaking the skin.  She backed away a half step. “I should take-”

Chase stepped closer, reaching out.  He touched the bandage at her eye.

“Is it healing?” he asked.

“Yes.  I have an appointment with a healer.”

“I’d have to check my agenda to know, specifically.  Roughly a week.”

“Be more careful,” he told her.  “Both with what you send, and what may come back.”

Two nights ago she had gone to the edge of the Kennet situation, contacted a Collector, and set it to the task of gathering eyes.  As summonings went, it wasn’t especially dangerous.  The things of the Ruins were to ghosts, astrally projecting practitioners, and other immaterial things what bogeymen were to the real, and vice versa.  There had been no reason to expect a countering or other issues, but she had let her guard down.  It had come back at her, hard.  Only Nicolette’s glasses had saved her from losing an eye.  As it stood, she had claw marks around her eye and a crack in her glasses, with the arm of her glasses now a little stubborn when it came to folding up.  Thirteen stitches.

“Yes, sir.  I should take this to the kitchen and bring the tea and dessert.”

“Grab a few more of these for me, eh?” Chase asked, holding up the cupcake.

He stuffed it into his mouth with one hand, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket with the other, turning to walk away.

Nicolette dipped the feather she’d held in her hand into a half-filled glass of water, washing off the chalk, and carefully wiped it as dry as she could before laying it on the cleanest part of the serving tray.

The adjunct area of the Institute was new, and lacked some of the charm of the church.  Kitchen, some more apartments and guest rooms, washrooms, some storage rooms, some private labs, and a small library and study room containing resources that were too precious to keep in the main ‘church’ area, but not so precious that the other founders of the Institute didn’t keep them with them.

A wolf’s head mounted on the wall, a bit the worse for wear with age, was positioned so it looked at her as she entered the west end of the hallway.

The kitchen had a sign mounted on the door, with no handle: “We shall not thank them.  We shall not acknowledge them.”  A diagram was set beneath.

She adjusted her grip on the serving tray, and pressed a hand against the diagram, closing her eyes.

When she opened her eyes, the door was open, the sensation of contact with the diagram a mere trick of the mind.

The kitchen was redolent with the smell of baking, tea, and the harsh soaps. The dishes sat washed by the sink, the counters were wiped, and the floor mopped and drying.

“Three more cupcakes, tout suite,” she addressed the apparently empty room, setting down the serving tray by the sink, and picking the feather back up.  “I aim to be back in a few minutes.”

Her hands freed, she ducked out of the kitchen, back into the hallway’s east end.  The wolf’s head, mounted on the wall, was positioned so it stared at her.

I know you’re keeping an eye on me, Alexander.  Don’t worry, I’m not a danger.

She walked past the storage rooms and library to her room, just in front of the wolf’s head on the wall.  It was at the end of the corridor of guest rooms, the furthest sleeping area from Alexander’s demesnes.

The adjunct area of the Institute was partially stone, partially log, and it had taken some doing to make it livable.  She’d hung cloth on the walls, which she laundered fairly regularly, and hand-picked or hand-made her own furniture.  Anything and everything to keep her hands and head busy.

She had a headache, partially because of the smoke in Alexander’s study, and partially because she always had a bit of a headache.  She took some Naproxen for that, picking out the ‘immediate release’ bottle.

Her face hurt, where the Collector had gouged her, and it was worse since Chase had made mention of it, reminding her she was supposed to be hurting.  She took some painkillers.

She removed her hair ornament, setting it carefully aside, fixed her glasses and sorted out her hair, which she kept in a slightly modified pixie cut.  She had a crumb on her shoulder from the bread that had come with dinner, and she dusted that off.

Running her hand through her hair, her fingers found the familiar soft spots.  She adjusted her hair to cover them, even though the effect on her head was negligible.

When she was ten, Nicolette had been in the bathroom, waiting for the shower to warm up, and her older brother had stormed in.  Her parents had trusted him to watch her, willfully ignorant about his ongoing issues.  He’d accused her of stealing his drugs, which she hadn’t, and in the heated, terrifying altercation that followed, he’d shoved her.  A grown adult shoving a girl less than half his size.

She wished she didn’t remember what had followed.  Seeing him leave, she’d laid there, too hurt to move, sprawled in the tub with soaking wet clothes and the shower’s water running over her.  He’d been afraid he’d killed her and so he’d gathered up his stuff and left her there with her skull broken.  She had been told repeatedly by her mom and dad that they had come home hours after her ‘fall’ and they wouldn’t have left her home alone for a whole weekend with her ‘troubled’ brother, but she was fairly sure it had been at least a day that she’d laid there like that, desperately trying to drink the water that ran down into her mouth, feeling her body grow increasingly, painfully hot as the water ran cold over it, her thoughts slowly getting more and more confused.  More logically, trusting her gut alone, it might have been two days.

She had said as much, stating it as her Truth before the spirits, and nothing and no-one had gainsaid her.  It wouldn’t be the first, second, or hundredth time her parents had selectively edited the truth.

She’d slipped into a coma and woken up in the hospital three days later.  She’d had meningitis, leaving her with permanent deafness in one ear, fluctuating vision problems that necessitated four different glasses prescriptions, constant headaches and neck pain, and, thankfully, no other issues she could put her finger on.

Then, a month into recovering, she had completely lost her mind.  She’d heard voices with her deaf ear, and she had started seeing things.  And a lot of the time, when those voices had told her things, they’d been right.

Alexander would later compare the incident to trepanation.  An old custom of drilling holes into the skull, with skin replaced over the hole after, done as a spiritual thing.  It was still conducted as a medical practice in some areas, to alleviate building pressure within the skull.  She had a hole in her skull too, though not at the forehead, and it had and did let spirits and other immaterial things in.

At times those Others had fought, because her head made a nice hallow that was safe from the constant pressure of the Ruins and the chase of its collectors, gatherers, harvesters and devourers, because her emotions were like candy to some things.  As a consequence, there was a lot of competition for that safety and ‘candy’.  Some had stoked the fires of her rage and others had dragged her thoughts down into whirlpool spirals of stark terror.  Yet others had eaten every last bit of her joy and tore away her grasp on reality until she’d gone from wanting to die to wholeheartedly believing she’d already died and was somehow in hell.

She adjusted her glasses where the damaged arm was pressing too hard against her ear, then fixed her hair again, adjusting the hair ornament at the side of her head.  Today’s was red cedar and dove feathers.  A little clip fixed it to her glasses, while the rest nestled against the back of her ear.

She checked under the bandages, looking for signs of infection.  With the hole in her skull, it was very possible she could get meningitis again.  She was careful not to touch the grooves where the claws had dug into skin, and the stitches as she pressed her fingers into skin to check for swelling, daubed on some ointment, and replaced the bandages.

She dried the crow’s feather with a clean cloth, cleaned the nib, and set it aside.  She then picked another one out of a vase full of various feathers on her work desk, setting it down on her work mat, wiped it clean of trace dust, and carefully illustrated a sword on it in treated chalk.  A deft cut with a hobby knife sharpened the nib.

She uncorked ten jars that sat within diagrams she’d inlaid in her desk, being very careful not to move the jars from their positions, and dipped the pen into the first one.  A jar of blood that hadn’t been allowed to dry.  The diagram ensured that.  She blew on it to dry it, placed it on the mat and with two pens of white ink held in one hand, drew out a seal that ended in an ‘Aquarius’ squiggle.  The seal disappeared as soon as it was done its work.

She repeated the process nine times more.  Each jar was blood from different circumstances.  The first was blood shed during futile toils, obnoxious to acquire.  She’d ended up buying it for eight hundred dollars and had traded a favor to Alexander to verify its authenticity.  The second was blood shed in sickness, easier.  The third was blood shed in death, deceptive in its difficulty, when she didn’t want to arrange the death herself.  The fourth was blood shed in the midst of the worst of fates.  Being here made it easier to keep track of things that were happening, and she’d only needed to keep an ear out for some novice getting in too deep with the practice.  She had collaborated with another student to keep tabs on the man, waited for him to reach his lowest point, and had bartered, giving him a way out if he’d give her an ample quantity of blood first.

All in all, it had been win-win.  She’d helped him out, and she’d taken enough blood that ran thick with Moíra to sell to some others, much as she’d bought the jar of Város blood.  Eight hundred down, six hundred up.  He now remained in contact with the Blue Heron Institute, running errands in exchange for access to lesser texts.

Another jar with blood shed in pain.  Easy as pie.  Blood from discord.  Blood from fear.  Blood from ruin.  Blood from disaster.  Nuances were important.

The last was blood shed in madness.  That one had struck a chord within her, after her taste of it.  She had tried her hardest to arrange it so the young man had it easier, after.  He was one of nine individuals she tried to keep tabs on.

She had this down to an art.  There were two dangers, with these feathers.  One was real, one was an inconvenience.  The real danger was that she might prick herself or get blood on her fingers.  That would invite the fate in question.  The inconvenience was that she had to be exceedingly careful with the sealing of the blood the feather drank into its stem.  If she messed it up, then she could get some Enyo blood in the Typhon blood and both would be spoiled.

She screwed on a steel nib, focusing on not pricking herself, then slid it into the pocket-protector type case in her back pocket, alongside six similar feathers.  Some had only one type of blood sealed into them multiple times over, different colors of chalk for the swords, and variants on the illustration.

Augurs tended to focus on fields fairly far removed from combat practices and self defense.  It was often implied that if things came to that, there had been a dramatic failure on the augur’s part and they deserved whatever came.  Nicolette didn’t hold to that.  If anything, she saw it as more important that she be armed and ready.  It had saved her from her own Collector bouncing back at her, just a few nights ago.

She cleaned her workspace of drips with alcohol, replaced the lids with care, wiped her hands, and rose to her feet.

She stepped back into the hallway, beneath the wolf head’s watching eyes, let herself back into the kitchen, past the rather obnoxious reminder and the diagram that forced the interaction with the reminder, and collected the serving tray of tea and treats that was waiting for her.  As if to say ‘we made them’, the cupcakes sat to the side of the tray, still steaming, frosting melting slightly.  She collected them and found room on the tray, before picking it up.

She couldn’t express gratitude, or the brownies would turn on her.  With the one-sided arrangement, a karmic debt was accrued, but there were always rules.  The faerie-adjacent brownies might strike a deal, like never ever watching them work.  When a hapless, curious individual finally did, they would be blinded.  The more the debt, the worse the fate.

The last incident with the kitchen brownies had been six years ago.  Just over two thousand days and nights of breakfasts and dinners provided without a disruption of the arrangement.  At this point, the person who crossed the brownies would probably not be allowed to die, as the karmic debt came to roost.  Nicolette was careful to keep her expression neutral, taking it all in stride as she picked up the tray.

She wasn’t sure if a smile would qualify as ‘thanks’, but she wasn’t going to test those waters.

Walking back, down the adjunct area to the east, sideways through the church, and into the offices and apartments at the west hall, she heard a chime in her deaf ear.

The haze was thick in the air, but she couldn’t let herself cough.  It was, at least, cooler inside the room than outside.

Alexander sat at his desk, leather swivel chair turned sideways, his feet resting on the corner of his desk, one ankle crossing the other.  He was skinny, which was not the case for most of the people she knew who were forty-five-ish, he wore a blazer with a linen shirt, black slacks, and loafers, and looked exceedingly at home.  His hair was longer, most of it pulled back away from his face, grey shooting through the sides of it, the top an orange-brown that seemed to almost glow in the light of the candles around them.

He was in his demesnes here, surrounded by people currying for his favor, and it made all the sense in the world that he looked so very at home.

He met her eyes for a moment, smiling slightly.

“I could put you in contact with him,” Alexander said, to Chase.

“That would be appreciated,” Chase said.  “Oh, that draft.  She’s back.  Took you a while, Nicolette.  Did you get lost?”

He struggled to turn around in his seat to look at her.

“You requested cupcakes,” she said, reaching up to the serving tray and handing him the plate with the three extras.

“Yay,” he said, sounding very much like a child.  He clapped his hands together once.

She then set down the tray, moved the teacups off the tray and into a row, and began pouring.

“I like that dress, Nicolette,” Tanner said, from her far right.  He was of a similar frame to Chase, but was four years older.

“It’s a bit too small for your frame, Tanner,” she said, as she poured the tea.  “I could give you advice if you’d like to change up your wardrobe.”

Chase and Seth jeered, laughing.  They were the ones smoking joints.  Alexander and Wye remained cool and collected.

Tanner’s discomfort was entirely his own making, she felt, so she deemed herself clear for the ‘no infighting’ rules of the Institute.  If he really did want to wear dresses, she really didn’t care and she’d even respect him a bit more.

“I don’t know, Nico,” Seth said, drawling out the words a bit, like he was testing how they sounded.  “Maybe, uh, take it off, hand it over, so we can see the dress without you in it.”

Nicolette’s fingers brushed against the leftmost feather at her back pocket.  She smiled, “Th-”

“Seth,” Alexander cut her off.

The tone of the room had changed.  The haze of smoke between Alexander and Seth cleared up with eerie quickness as Alexander brought his feet down from the corner of the desk.

“I was joking,” Seth said.

“Look me in the eyes,” Alexander said.  “I’m not.”

The lighting of the candles had changed in the smallest ways.  A few more shadows in the room.  A few more reds.

Alexander’s voice was chilly, “If I sent you to talk to another family, would you address their matriarch or daughters that way?  Their female apprentices?”

“No, sir.  I really was joking,” Seth said.

“Then why would you say such a thing in my domain, with my apprentice?”

“I was going with the flow of conversation.  I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Alexander rose to his feet.  As he did, the furniture moved, everything sliding to a new position.  The rest of the boys rose from their seats in alarm, moving to safe ground.  Nicolette held the teapot up and away from the cups, in case they moved as well.

Seth was brought before the desk, so close his knees pressed against the desk’s front.  He winced.

Nicolette resumed pouring the tea, her expression neutral.

“This,” Alexander said, reaching down, plucking the joint from Seth’s fingers, “is making you stupid.  No more, when you come to my study.  I’ll have to reconsider what errands I send you on.  Tanner?  You’ll take over until I’ve worked out where Seth may go.”

“It’s best you retire to your room, Seth.”

Even dressed nicely, Seth looked like the distillation of a sullen eighteen year old as he worked his way to his feet, the chair not moving for him and the desk right in front of him.  He uttered a single, “Sir,” and then left the room.

“One less cup of tea, then?” Nicolette asked.

People sat back down.  Alexander made a gesture to Chase, indicating the joint.  “Yes, thank you, Nicolette.”

“If it’s no trouble, I heard an alarm for a simple ward I set up.  I’d like to go investigate as soon as tea is served,” Nicolette said, parceling out the treats onto the saucer’s edge.  She handed the first cup to Wye.  The oldest of the boys, at twenty-five.  Wye was calm, collected, calculating and very, very dangerous.  He wasn’t around much, but when he was, he commanded similar respect to Alexander.  A Belanger by blood, a nephew once removed of Alexander.

“Where is this ward?” Alexander asked.

“The small town, east of Thunder Bay.  Where the collector bounced back from, the other night.”  She made a point of not naming the town outright, so the boys couldn’t beat her to the punch.

She handed the cup to Tanner.  Slightly inebriated.  Tanner had come into the circle through talent.  He’d found an auspice, an almost literal sign of things to come, writing on a wall that told of coming hardships, and through that entry point, had lost his innocence and found his way to contact with Others, then to the practitioner community.  Alexander had taken him under his wing to avoid letting other Augurs have him.  He picked things up fast and was good at politics.  Alexander sent him on a lot of ‘errands’, networking and doing business with other families.  Tanner had meant something very similar to what Seth had said, but he had the common sense that let him get away with it.

“I’m very curious about that town,” Alexander Belanger said.  “Put that teapot down.  Go, tend to the ward, tell me what you find.”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you.  May I use the sanctuary?  I’d like to draw a diagram too big for my room.”

“Taking precautions after your last incident?” Wye asked.

“More like I’m trying to get as complete a picture as I can.  I want more eyes on it.”

“Do me a favor,” Alexander said.  “In two months, three days, I’m needed to go looking for someone.  I’ll have to leave my body behind.  You’d guard it.  Do me that favor and I’ll lend you the sanctuary.  You’ll need to clean it up after.”

She’d have to anyway.  She pulled her agenda out of her pocket, a wallet-sized book, and searched through it to find the calendar day.  The slot was empty.  She penned it in.  “Deal.”

“Go, be swift.  Good luck.  Chase, see to the tea and treats for everyone else, would you?  And take the tray back?”

Chase gave her a look as she left the room.

Whatever the man might have said to Seth, Alexander was not her ally.  The agenda was a safeguard against a deeper set of plots.

Another bell’s chime sounded in her deaf ear.  Another ward tripped.

She listened to the nuance of it, her eyes briefly closing.

Three sets of feet.  Too light to be the men who went on patrol, or the hulking Faerie.  Using directional hearing, she could place the sounds at the southwestern corner of the town.  Beyond its boundaries.  That opened up doors for her.

Alexander wanted to corner her, and she had a sense of why.  If she messed up, put down the wrong date, or slipped, forgetting to purify her hair ornament and thus allow only pure and clear spirits through into the hallow in her head, then she would risk being forsworn, or she would overbook, giving him more days than she had.  Every year, the contract had to be renewed if she was to keep the appointments and be there for his bookings.  In that confused first year, she’d wondered what he was doing.  Then, especially as she’d cleared her head of the noise and jumble, she’d worked it out.

She was sixteen now.  If she booked enough days that she had a contract renewal after she turned eighteen, the terms and protections would change.  As master, he would be free to marry her off, or to marry her himself.

He knew she knew.  That the favors he asked for were a currency.  That the days before she turned eighteen were a limited supply that she traded to him for this ‘free’ education and the resources he provided. His prize, if he ‘won’ this subtle game of theirs, was her, or whatever he could get for marrying a fairly talented augur to someone else.

What he didn’t know was that she had resources.  A larger coven of competing augurs was very interested in the Belanger’s teachings and practices, and had reached out to her.  They had given her ways to hide from his Sight without him knowing, and they had sat down with her and worked through the agenda and the favors given.  Subtle cases where she could challenge him, where he hadn’t fulfilled his terms of the arrangement, and weeks of her time given didn’t count.  It weakened the contract, gave her back time, and let him think he had her after she turned eighteen, when in reality, she could walk away with everything he had taught her.

It mattered enough that she’d had to check, and she checked regularly, paying a steep price each time.  To verify that fact and reality as Truth.  That he didn’t know.  She had to stay steps ahead of a man who could see the future.

She collected the things from her room.  Tools, chalk, reference materials.

She heard another chime.  They were walking through the woods, and she had a good idea about where.  A clearing with a cabin.  She had more wards near the clearing, subtle ones drawn out in spiderweb.  She had scattered a lot of the ones in the town itself when the Faerie had threatened her.

Everything in a box, box under one arm, she returned to the ‘church’.  Her snake ring came alive, tightening, and her arm jumped as the teeth bit in piercing flesh.

Seth stood in the doorway that connected the adjunct area to the church.  His eyes glowed with Sight as he looked through her and into her.

Nicolette smiled.  She adjusted her glasses, and her fingernail clicked into a groove at the rim, then to another.  Each ‘click’ was an adjustment, and each one made her Sight change to a different mode of Seeing.  Her headache pounded in the background as she switched to seeing him as a doll with chains run through him to seeing him as a figure of light, surrounded by splashes of color, to seeing the electricity running through the walls and the blood running through his veins.  She noted the tools and weapons he had, the colors and intensities of them in various Sights and angles.

“You know you’re not welcome here,” Seth said.  “He says it’s for your privacy, but you get the guest room instead of actual apprentice quarters because you don’t really count.”

“I know,” she said.  She was aware of the ring’s teeth, making the danger clear.  “Excuse me, I have a diagram to draw.”

He grabbed her arm with enough force that her other arm slipped from its hold on the box of tools and materials.  It dropped to the ground, crashing.

The wolf was behind her, turned to look, she knew.  It was one of the more obvious ways that Alexander kept tabs on things.  She suspected there were other ways, using things like the brownies as spies, or models, or cards, or anything else.

“He’s using you,” Seth hissed into her ear.  The eye of his that she could see glowed as he looked her up and down.  Past clothes, past skin, past bone and organ.

That’s a sword that cuts both ways.

“I know.  Now please let go of me.  Your uncle Alexander is already upset with you for disrespecting him, attacking one of his apprentices.  I don’t think it’s a good idea to repeat the process.”

“Your contract is up for renewal in a month.  Don’t renew it.”

“I have obligations and appointments that require me to renew.  He and I both know that.  It’s not optional, Seth.”

His expression twisted, his grip tightening.

“Please let go of me, I’m asking you a second time.  By the rules here, we’re not allowed to harm one another unless we’re harmed first.”

“You’re hurting the whole institute, Nico.  That bandage on your face is a good mark of that.  We all get up to stuff, pursue some side jobs or bartering.  But when you fail that badly, it hurts us all.”

Technically, he wasn’t quite accurate to the letter of that particular rule.  Technically, she could have called him out on breaking the rule, left him forsworn or gainsaid him.  Bonus for her, and a ding or a crippling loss for him.  Except there was more in play.  Politics, for one thing.  He was related to Alexander.  Alexander had the institute in part because he’d bartered with family, getting the power as a kind of loan to get it started, then bartering again to get the good words, references, and contacts to bring people in.

If Alexander’s distant nephew got in any real trouble here, it disrupted that whole engine.

If it was just that, she might not have held back.  But he wasn’t wrong, she’d been marked.  The mark came with bad karma, and bad karma tended to mean that things wouldn’t go smoothly.  It may have been accidental, or something he’d done unconsciously, unwittingly absorbed by growing up in a family of practitioners, but he’d invoked that and it was in play.

There were ways around that.  To build a shorter, more contained structure within this interaction.  “I’m asking you a second time, please let go of me.”

“What would happen if you got hurt, Nico?” the teenager asked, “badly enough you couldn’t attend that appointment?  Are there any you swore to attend?”

There were.  Quite a few.  There was a power in the swearing.

“I’d have help, you know.  More than one of us aren’t keen on having you here.”

Chase, she guessed.  He was the closest to Seth.  He’d have very conflicted feelings about his apprentice.  He probably couldn’t remove her from the appointment without risking someone else getting her.  Either Alexander, or he’d be afraid that someone from a rival group, like the coven she’d met with, would do it and Alexander would be incensed.

She kept her expression blank.

“You’d be forsworn, and you’d be entirely at the mercy of any of us, if we were gracious enough to give you sanctuary, after.  It wouldn’t even be a first for this family.  How do you think Alexander got to be as influential as he did?  It’s not because the Belangers were a big family.  I’d be following in his footsteps, bringing rivals low and taking everything from them.”

Again, he looked into and through her.

He went on, saying, “If we didn’t, that thing that happened to you, after you cracked your head open? That was just your head, that spirits and echoes and riders slithered into.  If you were forsworn, they’d have all the rest of you.”

“I suppose we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it,” Nicolette said.  “Now let go, you’re violating the rules of this house, threatening me and bruising my arm like this.”

She really didn’t want him to let go, so she smiled, small and personal, just for him.  Smug.

“I don’t think you’ll tell,” he whispered.  “I See it.”

“Neither will you,” she told him, and she scratched him, shallow, wrist to elbow.

“Christ!  Fuck!” he let go of her, and the snake ring bit her, deep, as he swung.  She didn’t have her balance, and she wasn’t much of a fighter.

Besides, this played out better in the long run.

He caught her in the side of the head, and she let herself fall.  Her ornament fell from the side of her head, and she caught it before it could be dirtied by the ground, using her right hand to catch it, even though her left hand was closer.  Her glasses slipped down her nose.

“You hurt me first, I told you three times, and you’re violating the rules of this place.  You-”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, cutting her off with a wave.  He made a face and looked at the cut on the side of his arm.

She wiped her fingernails off on the sleeve of her dress.

“You’re just making life harder for yourself,” Seth said.  “Watch out.”

“Isn’t that what we do?” she asked.  “Watching out?”

He smirked, and walked away.

By the time he was halfway down the hall, she could feel stirrings.  The way a hallow was used by practitioners, it was often framed or treated in such a way that it invited only certain things in.  Doing so limited the infighting and disruption within the hallow.  She used her hair ornaments to frame the hallow, that hole in her skull, and ensure that the things that came in were peaceful, learned, and cooperative.

Right now, as she picked herself up, she didn’t put the ornament back.  Instead, pain framed the hallow, throbbing where she’d been struck at a sensitive point, probably because he’d used that Sight to identify that point.  Pain invited painful things in, which was already starting to make her see things, even without her Sight.

She could hear bitter, angry whisperings in her deaf ear, reminding her of past things.  Of being attacked last night.  Of her family, and her time on the streets and in the hospitals.

She didn’t put the ornament back, because she didn’t want him to see that she needed it, when he looked back.

Instead, she touched her glasses, fingernail finding the groove that made the hallway bright, and the spirits of agency dark.

Prickly and black pónos spirits lurked on her shoulder, touching the side of her head.  She didn’t fight them or push them away.  Doing so would only make it hurt more, when they were like briar patches, hooked into her with barbs.  She’d cringe or wince if she tried, the pain surging as they parted ways with her, and she didn’t want to show Seth anything but confidence.

More importantly, there were spirits trailing after him.  Her Sight was clear enough that they were more than vague shadows.  A type of omen, they were dark and small, like little girls, excited and pushing at one another in their haste to follow.  Some carried small golden spheres.

Omens of eris, of discord.  Depending on how long he took to catch on, they would potentially do a lot of harm to his friendships with that boys club, in that hazy room.  To his relationship with Alexander.  With Chase.  They would swell in size over time, until it became obvious, but she’d have countermeasures before it became so obvious it was a problem.

She hadn’t used her fingernails to scratch him, but a feather.  The drawing of the dagger with the apple for a pommel had faded, the blood she’d put into it was spent.  She snapped it in half, carefully dropping the metal nib in the slot she’d had for the feather, then putting the feather part in the box of stuff Seth had made her drop.

She made her way to the church, and quickly cleaned enough of the floor for her diagram.

They couldn’t be far from the clearing now.

She used a compass with one pointed end and a chalk end to draw her circle, reinforcing it, quickly measured the distance from center to edge, then worked out the calculation to draw out a star using a meterstick.  Eight points, with a half-circle at each point.  A sign for Cancer in each half circle, quickly penned out.  She put down a template, like a rectangular cookie cutter, found it broken from when the box had fallen, and used the case for her reference cards as a template instead.

She put down a rectangle on the inside of each circle, the laid out cards.  Beside each card, she placed eyes.

Eight pets she had crafted, each bearing one eye from a pair.  She kept the other eye of each pair with her, and placed them within the diagram now, drawing circles to help preserve them while they were outside of their boxes.  Having them inside the box inside the diagram reduced her peripheral vision when looking through.

“Going all out, huh?” Tanner asked from the doorway.  Eight bookshelves, two clusters of fifteen chairs each, and a table sat between where he was and where she was drawing her diagram.

“This isn’t me going all out,” she said.

She could hear more chimes.

She opened her agenda, and placed it on her knee as she sat cross-legged in the center of the diagram.  She penned out another Cancer sign in front of her.

Each one, now that she was inside the diagram, was sucking life from her.  Making her more tired, less her.  Her headache ramped up, as did the pain in her neck.

She reached over to the box, and set down three of the more full jars of blood.  Each laced with a different ill fate.  She had a lot of pain, fear was easy to come by in this era, and she rarely had occasion to straight-up draw on sickness.

Putting the ornament on hadn’t evicted the spirits and other forces that carried pain or madness.  It had only made the space more inhospitable.  As she quickly put down the diagram, it was hard to shake the sentiments that were settling around her.

She was an outsider here.  She had access to resources as long as she was useful.

Alexander was in charge.  Wye, the oldest, was in because he was family.  Tanner had talent.  Chase was from another family, apprenticed in as a favor.

Seth was another Belanger, but unlike Wye, he hadn’t taken the opportunity he’d been given and leveraged it to bigger and better things.  He took it for granted, he failed, he was rescued because that was what family was supposed to do, he failed again, he was rescued, and he found his way to success.  Dark brown hair, slight stubble, skinny, eyes glowing.

Nicolette was another kind of talent, of a very different sort to Tanner.  She’d had her eyes, ear, and sanity wrested from her by spirits that flowed into and through her head like water flowed into a drain.  Then, by steps and small measures, she’d found her way back to functioning.  Rituals, routines, grasping onto anything and everything and anyone that was nearby when she found some measure of herself again.  Through dumb luck, tenacity, desperation, and attentiveness, she had gotten to the point where she could get through the days, identify people who she could trust, and lean on them.  For two years, she had dipped into homelessness and hospitals.  She had made trinkets and charms and conspiracy theories about aliens and some of it had kept the worst spirits out.  She’d even turned some of the whisperings to her advantage, which let her find food and shelter.

Some Others had noticed, had tipped off Chase, and he’d approached her.  She hadn’t said yes.

Then her brother had come back, sober.  Her parents had been more mad at her for not forgiving her brother than they’d been at him for what he’d done.

So she’d gone with Chase.  She’d worked out Alexander’s plan for her.  She knew it to be Truth.

Right now, she was at a pivotal point.  She had enemies who would bring her low, and she had great opportunity.  If she could achieve a victory of sorts now, it would pay off triple.  To unravel this mystery or find out something that could be sold would disarm her enemies, like Seth.  It would give her more cachet with Alexander, which would translate to him being willing to teach her more, introduce her to more people, and empower her.

The more he gave her, the more she could bring to the table when going to the coven.  It would be more status there, more freedom, a better starting position that she could then climb from.  They already liked her.  She knew that to be Truth.  It would make them like her more.  Giving them what she knew didn’t mean she would lose it, either.

Tanner watched her work, arms folded.

Her agenda had notes on the individual creations, and the names she’d given them.  Spiderbones, Treecrawler, Blackhollow… names she was pretty sure weren’t being used elsewhere.

She touched the center Cancer sign.  Manual control.  She could feel the diagram slowly drinking the blood she’d so painstakingly acquired.  Her power source.  White chalk lines glowed pink.  Her eyes rolled up into her head and the top of her head opened up to the distant Seeing.

The center sign of the diagram gave her control over all of the things.  They were nonphysical enough that they didn’t really have difficulty moving to where she needed them.  Spiderbones laid some more tripwires behind the grouping as she moved them, so she could keep track of whether they were being tracked or followed.  Even abstract things could provoke it.  The crow took to the air, the squirrel to the trees, a serpent to the ground.

There was another chime, and she touched hand to ear, to sign.  Moving the cluster of her pets to the destination.

She saw with eight eyes, each taking a different course, but all moving in concert, staying near one another.

She found them.  The clearing.  The hut.  Three girls.  Her creations peered through the trees and the leaves, watching them do a circuit, looking for something.  The image was a bit blotchy, because of the sickness.  A bit jittery, because of the fear.  Overly sharp, because of the pain.  The cost of using such things as a power source.

Who are you and what are you looking for?

She tried to peer closer at the girls, but their faces were gone, replaced with animal visages.

Using pain to fuel the Seeing was making the wound around her eye hurt more.  It nettled at her.

The fox-faced girl stopped, peering into the woods.  Making eye contact with Nicolette, who sat in the diagram.

“-omens?” the fox-faced girl asked, raising her voice.  Nicolette hadn’t heard the first part.

Who was she talking to?  The other girls weren’t close and she wasn’t facing them.

“-looking with any – Sight or Seeing-?”

The words were indistinct, distorted.  She hadn’t made these pets of hers to listen in.  Only to See.

Alexander’s voice cut in, “What do you see, Nicolette?”

“I hear.  They know we’re an Augur.”

“No.  I can’t remember the particulars of the other night.  Only the Faerie, but they came away from it with more knowledge of us.”

“You didn’t talk, you said.

“I didn’t do much more than agree to not stick my nose into things,” Nicolette said.  She could hear.  “They’re talking about it now, I think.  It’s indistinct.  More or less what I told you.  Essentially that we can’t go into Kennet or there’ll be problems.  I can’t see you.  Who else is here?”

“Wye and Tanner.  Tanner’s going to bed if this takes much longer.”

She nodded.  She focused, trying to draw up a mental map.  Early in her career, she’d done a ritual, while helping an acquaintance of Alexander.  A cartographer’s ritual.  It helped her keep a sense of where she was, which was very useful at times.

“They’re not in the town, technically,” she noted.  “I can’t see their faces.  It’s animal faces.”

“Interesting.  I can think of a few reasons why that might be the case,” Alexander said.  “Wye?  Tanner?  This is a teaching moment.”

“Obfuscation,” Wye said.

“They’re hosting spirits to enough of a degree it’s visible even with a shallow Sight?” she heard Tanner.

“Not that shallow,” Nicolette said.

“It’s possible,” Alexander said.  He said it like he knew what the answer might be and it wasn’t either of those two things.

The deer-faced girl prodded at the remains of the last ward.  Nicolette heard the dull chime, which became the faintest of trills as she picked it up off the ground, holding it.

Conversation continued for a few more seconds.  She couldn’t hear it.

“Is anything happening?” Tanner asked.

“Talking.  I caught them off guard, and they’re discussing me.”

“You need to get better at surveillance.  Can’t interfere with the subject, or you won’t get what you came for,” Wye said.

“I don’t mind disrupting them.  Seeing what they do when put off their game could be telling.”

“Hello!” the fox-faced girl called out.  To Nicolette.

At the loud sound, Nicolette reached out for the part of the diagram that connected directly to the crow.  It reacted, ready to fly off, while not letting go of the branch.

“Can you hear me?” the fox-faced girl asked.

She adjusted her hand’s position on that part of the diagram.  Puppeteering the crow, making it nod.

There was a dim chance that there was an opportunity here like there had been with the coven.  She kept her mouth shut.

“I know being friends might be too much to ask, but are you willing to cooperate with us? Mutual benefit. We’d be open to trade, to exchange favors, or just talk.”

She felt a disruption of her diagram.  Weight.  Like she sat on a piece of land that was only six feet across, and it had just tilted fifteen degrees.

Alexander.  She could feel his presence.  He apparently had so much cachet with the spirits that even without drawing a diagram, he could exert his will through something she’d created.  Her being a subordinate of his would be a factor, but that was not a usual thing.

Sometimes she forgot how capable he was.

“Aha.  We have a mutual acquaintance,” Alexander said.

“What?” Nicolette asked.

“The trio and I.  An old friend of mine.”

“They’re friendly, then?” she asked.

The fox kept talking, “-in the process of being sorted out here. Let us finish sorting this out, and equilibrium should be restored. We have little interest in being your competition.”

“No,” Alexander said.  “I don’t think he’s able, but if he had a chance, he might destroy me and everything I’ve built.”

Nicolette reached to her pocket, then set down the feathers.  Her eyes being used up with the eight individual viewpoints of her pets, she had to draw the circle around the feathers blind.

She made her gaze a bridge, by which the omens could travel.  There were people who could do this naturally, with varying types of evil eye, but she wasn’t one of them.

“Good,” Alexander said, behind her.  He wasn’t tapping into her diagram anymore.

The fox-faced girl retreated.

As the omens gathered on the other side of the connection, the girl continued to back away from them.  The others reacted too.  With the added distance, Nicolette couldn’t hear them so well.

Until the fox-faced girl raised her voice.  “Sending omens like this led to innocents getting hurt!”

“This area is under our protection, and the intrusion the other night caused several problems, while upsetting the local systems and balances. This marks a second offense, in our area.  Stand down, disable your surveillance, and we can establish a loose working relationship where both sides benefit!”

Who was that second ‘our’?  It felt like it wasn’t the three girls.

One of the others replied to her.  Adding commentary, calm and collected.  The masks made it hard to see who was talking.

“What should I do?” Nicolette asked Alexander.

“Handle it.  Use your discretion.”

“We want to help people!  Help us or leave us alone!” the fox-faced girl asked.

She made the crow shake its head.

The cat-faced girl pulled the fox-faced girl away from the clearing’s edge, as the omens continued to gather.

“They said something about equilibrium, earlier.  We’ve already noticed that the town is becoming a well of negative forces,” she observed.  “It’s what drew me there in the first place.”

“I’d rather not fuss too much about equilibrium when I and we benefit from things being rather unequal,” Alexander said.

“Not disagreeing,” Nicolette said.  She’d been on the bottom for too long, she’d scrambled her way up to the bottom of that top ten percent.  To level the playing field now felt more than a bit unfair.

A minute passed.  She heard one of the boys yawning.  Was it just Wye now?

“Keep me updated,” Alexander said.  “Keep an eye out for a man, he may be roughly my age.”

“Only three girls of an age between twelve and eighteen,” Nicolette informed him.

“That’s a wide range,” Wye noted.

The cat-faced girl began drawing with a stick in the dirt.

“Cat girl is drawing unstructured runes.  Crude blindness, nothing to anchor them.”

“They’re novices, then,” Wye said.

She reached for the crow, since it was right in front of her.  She flew it in with one hand, and with the other, drew an aquarius squiggle to start a radiating line, from power source to bird.  Empowering it.  Drawing more blood.

She could see the circle around her turn a deeper red, even though she couldn’t see anything else here.  The runes were disrupted.  It would have been easy even if they were structured.

“Countered,” she stated, for the benefit of her audience.

“Good,” Alexander said.

She pulled her hand back from the crow, her fingers tracing the edge of the central control sign.  The animals moved and reacted.

The three girls retreated.  “They’ve backed off.  I’m not sure of the next move.”

“What’s their goal?”

“Wye?” Alexander asked.  “Do you have your bones?”

Nicolette watched, moving her animals through the trees, keeping an eye on things.

She could hear Wye’s roll.

It felt good, being the center of this, with good practitioners working alongside her.  If this was a regular thing, she could stand to be part of the Blue Heron Institute for the long term.

But it wasn’t.  She doubted there would ever be a point where she was sitting in that room, smoking cigarettes and talking shop, casually being given connections.  Practitioner ways and Other ways tended to the traditional.  She could prove herself a hundred times over, and Seth Belanger could maintain the shitty track record he’d held for this long, and he would still have more cachet and influence than she did.

Within the coven, she wouldn’t feel as vulnerable as she did right now, sitting blind in a circle, knowing people like Seth could be a matter of steps away.  Knowing that Alexander had intentions for her.

She just had to get there.  Two more years of this, increasing her value by gathering every bit of knowledge and practice they would teach her.

“They have a design,” Wye said.  “Something big.  They’re holding back because they don’t want witnesses.”

“Interesting,” Alexander said.

They remained huddled, talking with themselves.

“Please leave!” the deer-faced girl called out.  “We’d like some privacy!  We’re taking measures!”

“They’re asking me to go.  I’m getting that novice feeling again.  A practitioner would structure the ask.  She said they’re taking measures.”

The conversation between the three continued.  They straightened, and Nicolette had to move her pets as they paced a bit.

“Two of them are holding something.”

“I don’t know.  I don’t get that feeling.  A handful of chalk or dirt or something.  Could be a fuel of sorts?”

“Hit them first,” Alexander said.

The fox began to draw runes.  Again, unstructured, basic.

Nicolette moved the animals closer, ready to disrupt.  She used three, so that if one was blocked or interrupted, she could clear away the designs with the others.

She drew a line from the omen feathers to the crow.

“Don’t.  Back off,” the fox-faced girl said.

The snake ring tightened, suddenly.  The teeth set in, hard enough they scraped bone.

Feeling a surge of panic, Nicolette pushed the feather itself toward the crow at the same time she reached to the crow, pushing directly to the fox, so the feather would reach that part of the diagram just as the crow reached-

The diagram she was Seeing shattered, the image driving into her eyes, around her eyes.  Pain erupted at the same time that she ceased seeing or Seeing anything at all.

She reached up to her face, to move her glasses and check her eyes, and there was no glass in the frames.

Alexander touched her shoulders, and she flinched.

“It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen anything like that,” Wye said.

“Not the time, Wye,” Alexander said.  “Can you stand?”

Speaking was beyond her.  Her mouth worked open and closed in silence as she fumbled, her hair ornament hitting her shoulder as it fell.  Maybe in two pieces.  Her fingers tenderly touched her eyes, and fluid immediately ran down from finger to palm to arm to elbow.

Her eye sockets were empty.  There were no eyes left inside.  Only points of shards that pricked and cut her shaking fingers as she tried to gauge the damage.  Her eyes kept twitching, her eyelids struggling to close, and provoking a bone-deep ache instead.

“Nicolette, can you stand?”

“I-” she managed.  Her voice came out as a squeak.

She tried.  He steadied her.

She didn’t like asking for or accepting help.  But she didn’t have eyes.  Another two holes in her head, after something had broken.  Could bad things get in?  What did she do now?  Was this her life now?

Panic surged.  She didn’t have her ornament, to frame her hallow.  Even without the trepanation-like hole in her head, she was going to lose her mind like this.

“Walk.  Forward.  I’ll guide you.”

She walked.  He guided her, hands firm at her shoulders.

“Keep walking.  We’re going to the washroom.  Wye, I want you to go to my study.  Second drawer down.  There’s a tin with a magnifying glass set into it.”

“You have my permission to enter, and to take that one thing only.  Go.”

“They didn’t have a power source,” Nicolette said, her voice shaky.

“My dear, with an explosion like that, there was some power there.  They may be novices but they have a great deal of power at their immediate disposal.  That might be what they’re protecting.”

“I’m blind,” she said.  “What do I do?”

“Shhh.  Stay calm.  Base fear is of the unknown.  Be above that.  True fear is for when you know what you’re dealing with, so let’s wait.  I will take care of you in this.  I guided you to these ends, you are my responsibility.”

As much as she didn’t like Alexander, she was glad for that reassuring voice.

“They were carrying something, you said it was like sand, dust, dirt?”

“Something like that.”

“And this looks almost like glass, but it’s too fine.  It breaks at a touch.  It’s not cold.”

“Good.  We will find our way to answers.  Many things can be undone.”

She wasn’t sure how this could be undone.  She could feel the fluids continuing to run down her face.  Eyeball fluids.  Blood.

Wye got to them before they got to the washroom in the adjunct area.  She could hear the handing over of the rattling case.

“Paper towel, Wye.  Lay it on the counter.  Nicolette, I’m going to pull the largest shard I can free.  It may hurt.  Try not to flinch.  I want it intact.”

She had to resist the urge to nod.  “Okay.”

She could feel him trying to use tweezers to pull a larger piece free.  It made her face feel like it had a toothache.

“That’s set in there.  Let’s try others.”

They did, and one finally came free.  She winced.

“I may need more.  We’ll see what turns up.”

“What’s this case or kit?” she asked.  “Talk to me?  Distract me, please.”

Someone, maybe Wye, pressed more paper towels to her face, below her eyes, to soak up fluids.  Some of the glass-like points at her nose and cheekbones jabbed through and caught on the paper.

“This kit is for diagnosing and identifying things.  I’ve got a little mortar and pestle, I’m grinding it up.  More of it is disappearing than is being left as dust.  That tells us things.”

“That there are starting points.  To begin with, my first thought was elemental with the sand and glass, but conservation of energy and matter tend to be more important there.  We can narrow this down, remember that you dealt with a Faerie the other evening, yes?”

“Summer court.  I can swab some of this, see how it reacts to different materials in my kit.  Silver, yes.  Gold, yes.  Iron, yes.  Rusty iron…”

She felt hands at her cheeks, holding her head.

“Bear with me,” Alexander said.

She remained silent as he placed his hands against her eyes.  She felt the glassy points press in deeper around her brown and cheekbones, and grit her teeth.

“Shhh,” Alexander soothed.  “My dear, I’m going to tell you a Truth.  Tell me you hear me.”

“This is not nearly so bad as it seemed.  It’s a trick.  A very nasty, violent one, suiting a Faerie of the summer court.  This I swear to you.  You can still see.  You have eyes.  Tell me that you believe me.”

“I-” she didn’t want to lie.  She didn’t want to fall into a trap where she got caught in a lie, even through entrapment.  She’d heard the stories about what Alexander had done in prior years and decades.

But she didn’t believe he’d lie, or he’d be forsworn in turn.  Maybe even in a way that left her intact.

“I believe you,” she said, and she did.

He pulled his hands away.  The light was bright.  Some shards remained around her eyes and eyelids, and her vision wasn’t entirely clear.  She tried to blink her vision clear and couldn’t.  She felt a sharp pain at her eyelids.

“If you’d been quicker to believe me, you’d be even better now.  Those ones will take a little more doing, it seems.  Bear with me.  Wye, would you get eyedrops from the medical cupboard?”

“Alright.  Anything outside of that?”

“Did you have plans?”

“I was going to video call my girlfriend before it’s too late.”

“Then just the eye drops, Wye.  Thank you.”

It was Nicolette’s personal opinion that the lower one’s place in things, the more important it was to appear strong, unflappable.  She’d held onto that and it had given her strength or the appearance of strength.  Courage or the appearance of courage.

And in the midst of thinking she’d lost her eyes, she’d been weak and she’d acted weak.

She felt like she’d betrayed herself.

“How do you feel?” he asked, as he tried to extract one of the spikes of glass-like stuff, at one of her eyelids. It broke in half.

An involuntary tear, provoked by the pain and the status of her eyelids, rolled down her cheek.

Her hands were shaking.  Her very Self was shaken.  She was seeing things, hearing violent whispers in her deaf ear.

She searched for a word, and when she looked him in the eyes, her eyes stung, the scar beneath the bandage making itself known.

“Furious,” she decided.

“And I’m very curious,” he said, leaning in closer, like he was telling her a secret.  “And those are dangerous things for the enemies of Augurs, hm?  Especially when one of those Augurs has decades of experience, and the other is a scrapper.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, finding the equilibrium to remember the deference.  A scrapper.  Was that how he thought of her?

“If you wanted to retire for the night, I would not hold it against you.  But if you didn’t…”

“…Then I’d like to show you something.  As soon as we’ve taken care of those eyelids.  Whatever they’re doing will take some time, I think.”

The dollhouse was heavy, the box it came in heavier.  As much as he was very invested in her right now, Alexander made her carry it.  To her room.  Her vision was a bit blurry, because she wasn’t wearing the prescription that fit her current eyesight.

To the best of her knowledge, it was the first time he’d stepped foot in her space.  She was very conscious of the little things.  Bits of mess.  Scraps from projects.  Bits of dead animal from the last puppet she’d made.

Those puppets of hers had been two months of work.  A ton of investment.

“Dollhouse in the box, if you please?” Alexander asked, sitting in her chair, leaving her to stand.

She lifted up the dense, metal dollhouse, setting it in a metal box with about 20 segments.  There were a horrendous number of figures, pieces of furniture, accessories, animals, and little colored blocks inside, sliding around, rolling down stairs, and falling out.  The box itself had zipper-like creases at the edges of each segment, knitting them together.  She centered the dollhouse and then collected the fallen bits, pushing them in through windows.

“This was a find of mine.  A cursed object I cleansed.  It remains an interesting tool for observation.  A little cumbersome, but I have to admit, I like having an excuse to dust it off.”

“Most of the time, I prefer specialized tools for specialized jobs, but this is versatile, and has enough power left over from its past victims that it can power through some common defenses, like those runes you described.”

“How does it work?” she asked.  She blinked and her eyelid was messed up enough it made things worse.  She removed the cap from the eye drops.

“Seal it up, then hmm… let’s try flipping the box so the current top faces your right, then do that two more times.  Whisper what you want to see.”

She finished applying the eyedrops, angry she was slow and struggling.  She closed up the box around the dollhouse, and lifted it up.  It wasn’t easy, when it weighed about twenty pounds and was awkwardly sized, with the segments buckling and bowing with the movement.  She was worried it would pop open.

“Show me the trio that made me think I lost my eyes,” she whispered.

She opened the box.  It unfolded around the dollhouse within.  The dollhouse was a diner, with cars around it, and various figures jumbled up in a pile around it.

“I’m out of practice.  Close it up, turn it so the current top points away from you.”

She did.  She whispered, “Show me the three girls with animal faces,” and opened it up.

Three simple figurines with rectangular blocks for bodies were topped with the heads of a fox, cat, and deer.  They were within a cabin with an open top.  Ribbons filled the space, tying to a center mass.  A circular bit of wood, shallow, sat in the center.

There was no sign of the other figurines that had been within, or the diner, or the old house.

“Excuse me,” Alexander said, as he leaned in to study.  He drew some cards from his pocket and laid them down.

The Chariot at the left, the Fool at the right.  Strength at the back, the Empress at the front.

Alexander tapped his finger on the Chariot.  “Hmm.  You can close it up and open it again, if you want to see how the scene changes.  Don’t open it up in exactly the same way twice, or it may start getting nasty.”

She did.  Folding up the box around the cabin.  Whispering.  Opening it again.  The figurines had moved, the ribbons multiplied.

Alexander picked up her hobby knife, and poked at some of the ribbons with the blunt end.  Already suspended in the middle was a small mouse model, tail hooked over one ribbon.  Easy to miss.

Alexander picked up his phone, dialing, and held it to his ear.

She closed it up again, whispered, then opened it.

Now the cabin was set off-center, so the door was right at the edge.  There was a figure crouching just inside the door, now.  Black from top to bottom.

She wanted to ask, but Alexander was on the phone.

“Yes, hello, Ed, sorry to call so late.  It’s Alex Belanger.”

He conducted in a few moments of small talk, shoulder pressing his phone to his ear, while he shuffled the cards.  He placed down a card by the figure in black.

Nicolette knew Ed.  He was the one she’d done the errand for, where she had been taught the map ritual.  It was the kind of ritual she liked, where she did it once and got a benefit thereafter.  It did close some doors, though.  To always know where she was, but to have a harder time navigating places that needed a little confusion.

Ed was a specialist in shamanism, specific to locations.  Talking to the spirits of cities, getting some spirits to bring him or cargo from one place to another.  It helped at times to know where he was going, which was why he stayed in close contact with Alex.

“I wanted to pick your brain about something.  I’m looking at a cabin, there’s a ton of ribbons tied within.  An excess number of ribbons to tie up one… I don’t think it’s a rodent, not when it’s upside-down.  Rodent-like.  Tarot cards are west facing chariot, east facing fool, north facing strength… you know it?”

Nicolette closed up the box, then opened it again.  The models and everything were stuck, as if magnetized, to one edge, and the entire setup tipped from the table, crashing to the floor beside her desk.  She backed away, alarmed, her eyes widening, and then watering because of the damage to her eyelids.

She mouthed a word of apology, terrified she’d broken something Alexander considered valuable.  This could cost her months of her time before she turned eighteen, if she was in his debt.

He stopped her before she could bend down to grab it.

“Thank you, Ed.  Very interesting.”

Alexander chuckled as he hung up the phone, rose from the chair, and then moved around her to crouch down.

On the mostly unzipped box exterior were a few scattered, fallen figurines.  The girl with the deer head was set on top, framed by trees.  The mouse sat next to her.

“It means something?” Nicolette asked, feeling very out of her element.

“She’s traveling.  Through emptiness, a beast waits at the end.  Ed called it the Forest Ribbon Trail.  It’s a major ritual.  Who taught them this one?  Because I don’t think it was my old friend Charles.”

“What was that black thing?”

“A mare.  Bringer of nightmares.  Not related to this place.”

“The Faerie either, I’m assuming?”

“No.  He wouldn’t be.  Fold it up again.  Be careful to leave it anchored, hm, there.  At the corners.”

She did, putting some of the stray fallen pieces back in the box as she ‘zipped’ it up again, the interlocking pieces interlocking, the setup forming a rough cube shape.

Then she tore it down once more.

A different arrangement of the same trees and figures.

“If she’s going to be at this for a while, it may be hard to catch her at a moment that matters or sheds clarity.  Ed says this particular ritual is one that will empower her, giving her more freedom of movement, in an esoteric sense.”

“She wants to be more powerful?” Nicolette asked.

“She likely will be, if left to her own devices.  Hm.  How badly would you want to interfere?”

Nicolette squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the pain.  The scratches at her brow.

“If you weren’t going to do it now, I think you should leave them be.  I’d have one of my other apprentices handle it.  Wye, possibly.”

“I found this.  Why would he get to wrap it up?”

“Because, Nicolette, the third confrontation is going to matter.  You should stay away from them and keep your head down, or you should decide things while you have the chance.”

She stared down at the figurine.  Stupid little painted wooden thing.  Her face hurt.  She hadn’t replaced her hair ornament, and she had the worst headache.

It galled her, that this girl would pick up power, just like that.  Especially when Nicolette didn’t even understand the power they were already tapping into.

“Why animal faces?” she asked.

“If it’s this omnipresent, it may be the Sight equivalent of labeling something at the root level.  I could see changing or obfuscating your name, taking on a title as part of the implement or demesnes rituals, but faces… I don’t know.  If it was one individual, I could say it’s a Host with an exceptionally strong rider, or a practitioner with a familiar strong enough it was leaking through, but I’d expect to see that leak somewhere else.”

“If the Carmine Beast disappeared, could it be that they took on that power?  Or tapped into it?”

“No,” Alexander said.  He rubbed his chin.  “Because then they’d be red.  Charles- my old friend, he used to make Others.  The eye glyph I taught you was something he did early on.  I’d halfways wonder if he taught someone else how to make these three, or… no.  I wonder if they did the awakening ritual in a funny way.”

“What family would they have come from?”

“Doesn’t have to be a family.  Could be… hm.  The same patron that’s been throwing wrenches in our works every time we get too close, maybe?  Powerful and subtle, and weirdly versatile?”

“Tell me, do you want revenge?” Alexander asked.  “Do you want to secure your third win?  Or should I take Wye away from his call with his lady friend?”

She tensed, looking down.

She touched her damaged eyes.  It wasn’t even the hurt or the pain, in particular.  It was that they’d scared her.  Angry voices whispered in her ear, encouraging her.

She picked up one of her hairpieces intended for use the next week, washed two nights ago, and used it to brush at the side of her head, quieting the voices.  The nervous fanning of the side of her head was a tic she’d had when in the throes of Other-induced madness.  It didn’t feel good to do it now.

She considered, now that the voices had quieted.

“I’ll need four weeks worth of extended service,” he said.  “I’m giving up some power and I won’t be able to use this box of places for a while.”

She tensed.  She reached for and got her agenda, and crossed out four weeks worth of days.

“And you’ll need power as well,” he said.

“Tell me that before I mark down the days.”

“You can provide it yourself, or I can provide it for another, hm, six weeks of favors.  It’ll need to be a lot.”

She looked over at the bottles of blood.  Painstakingly acquired, often expensive, both in money and time.

“These?” she asked.  She touched them without moving them from the circle that kept the blood from drying out.

“That’ll do.  Lie down.  Bring your head as close as you can, now.”

She scooted closer, lying with her chest pressed against the side of her desk.

“Lift your head a scootch.”

She did, and Alexander slid one panel of the box under her head.  He began placing the figurines on the flat surface beneath her ear.  She realized what he was doing and tensed.

The box closed up around her head, a tiny gap left over for the light to shine in from above, and a hole just big enough for her neck, the zippered metal edge biting into skin.

“Show her the girl on the Forest Ribbon Trail,” he whispered, above her.

Then he poured in the blood.  She held her breath, feeling her skin prickle and burn.

With damaged eyelids and damaged eyes, she stared out over a model universe, trees without end or ground beneath them, and a narrow path between them.  She couldn’t breathe and was aware her body was dying, moving at a different speed than things here.

She watched as the girl with the deer’s head and her possum interacted with Others.  It all looked so small and far away.

The box came apart.  Gasping for air, Nicolette raised her head, face turned down so the blood wouldn’t run into her nose or mouth.  She really hoped the people she’d picked from didn’t have hepatitis or anything.  Not when she had open wounds on her face.

There was so much blood on her floor right now.

Alexander didn’t comment or remark, while she gathered her strength.  He folded up the bloody box, whispered to it, and opened it again.

“The rodent girl is guiding her.”

“The rodent girl thinks she’s supposed to die, as part of the ritual.”

“Lines up with what Ed said.  He told me he would have shared more, but he’d have to look it up, and that would be tomorrow.  For right now, we only know the basics.  She travels the path, faces the beast at the end, brings one item.  The companion dies to secure her escape.”

“That was the intention.  Are you recovered?”

She managed a nod.  Her neck was stiff from her posture while lying down, the box around her head, and from the old meningitis symptoms.

“How much did that use?”

“Again,” she told him.

“I did a reading while you were in there,” he told her.  “She has another means of finishing the ritual.  Two o’clock position.  Whatever that means.”

She nodded, her neck stiff, then laid her head down.

He constructed the box around her, being careful to set the corners so the box was suspended, situated ‘off the table’, so to speak.

Having seen it, she thought it made sense.

She drew in a deep breath as she felt the blood meet the side of her head, and held it as the blood filled up the void between her head and the box’s walls, thick against her nostrils, as she struggled not to breathe in, against lips that were pressed tight together.

She watched the altercation.  A desperate, crude struggle.  The use of glamour- dust like what had been used to make her think she’d lost her eyes, it was as crude as it got.  Should a Faerie have seen that, it would have been offended.

She didn’t participate.  She searched the path, looking for anything she could damage or disrupt.

Peering through trees as her animals had before the explosion, she saw an old woman that cast a vast shadow that didn’t match her body.  Her dress was so red that it made everything white nearby a bloody red by extension, her eyes were the same color, and her teeth didn’t match.  She smelled bad, even though the face that Nicolette wore had no nostrils.

“Do you want to negotiate?” the old woman asked.

“No,” Nicolette answered.  She knew better than to deal with strange others.  “I want revenge.  She can escape your reach by sacrificing her animal friend.  Does this seal her fate?”

“No.  I knew this.  I accept this.  I’ll have my fun,” the old woman said.  She laughed, off-kilter, like she was unsure if she should laugh at first, then unable to stop right at the end, so it was strained.

“She may have a means of escaping your ‘fun’,” Nicolette said.  “I don’t know what I can do about that, but I was told it was at two o’clock.”

The Wolf turned, looking at one specific part of her clearing.

“Does this get me my revenge?”

“I knew this, because others have escaped this way, but now that I’ve been told, I can do something about it when the time comes.  I’ll need your assistance.”

The Wolf laughed, more unhinged than before.

“On the desk again,” Nicolette said, breathing hard.  She coughed, and some of the blood that had made it into her mouth spattered her desk.

She didn’t care anymore.

She was getting a sense of the scale some of these things happened at, and she would not lose at this scale.

Alexander helped her assemble the box and place the pieces within.  The congealing blood drooled over the lip of the desk and onto the floor.

Cleanup was going to be the worst.

“We wait thirteen minutes,” she said.  “Then she’ll be at the Wolf.”

“Good,” Alexander said.  “Then?”

Nicolette only focused on the box.

The thirteen minutes passed slowly.

There were six minutes remaining when Alexander commented, “We used half.”

She frowned.  “There’s half remaining?”

“No, Nicolette.  We used a third of the total bottle’s contents, and then we used half.  There is… a little over a sixth of the blood remaining.”

She tensed, checking the bottles.  He wasn’t lying.

She shouldn’t have trusted him.  If there was any trickery here, if there was anything-

Five minutes remained before the girl was supposed to be at the Wolf.

He’d planned this.  He’d seen enough of the future that he could figure out that it would come to this.

“How much?” she asked him.

“Nothing,” he told her.

Blood still dripping down her face, she gave him a suspicious look.

“This is fun,” he said.  “Dealing with her.”

“I wonder sometimes if you’re a sociopath.  If you enjoy putting the screws to people.  I heard stories about you when you were a bit younger.”

“I was a different person then, but some of my enemies won’t acknowledge that.  I contribute to society, now, teaching.”

She snorted, blood flying from her nostril’s edge to her lap.

“I don’t like unanswered questions, and I may lose reputation as an augur if this gets out, but I would much rather slice the Gordian Knot than fumble at it.  These three are a knot.”

He pulled some coins out of his pocket, old and possibly gold.  He tossed them into the box with the figurines.

“Wait,” she gasped.  “I just realized.  Pull the desk away.  Fast.”

She rose to her feet, grabbing one end.

Alexander grabbed the other.

They pulled the table away.  Her computer monitor and speaker tumbled.

She circled around.  Until she was at the two o’clock position, and checked the time again.  So she could break the detour path for the Wolf.

“Swiftly.  I didn’t pay too exorbitant an amount, and the box may bite off your arm, if it decides it needs more payment.”

She turned the box around, and pressed down on the top until the sides buckled and she could see through the gaps.  The deer-headed girl before the wolf.  Through another gap, she saw the other two in the ribbon-filled cabin, sitting.

She peered through, then put her hand through one gap, while looking through the other.

Reaching in, through the cabin’s window, into the cabin itself.  Snagging the little rodent.

She smiled as she successfully pulled it and some of the ribbons out through the hole.

The ‘rodent’ screamed, struggling.  Small hands grabbed at her wrist.

Wide eyed, with dark circles under those same eyes, the rodent looked at her, at Alexander, and at the box.  At the blood.  It looked like a kid, wearing a t-shirt printed with ‘Trash Face’, and oversized cargo shorts that extended down to the tops of her mid-calf socks.  Her shoes were untied.

“Well, this is neat,” the kid said, breathing hard.

“We’ll need you to answer some questions, if you can,” Alexander said.

“Questions.  About her, about the trail, anything she’s shared.”

“Why not?  You don’t know who you were traveling with?  She didn’t say anything?”

“No, not at all.  And no, not really.”

“Her name?  Why she’s walking the trail?” Nicolette asked.

“Blocked at every turn,” Nicolette said, feeling very tired.

“Show me the girls,” Alexander whispered to the box, as he folded it up, then tore it back down.

The cabin had the fox and cat in it, lying back like they’d fallen over and hadn’t gotten back up, since she’d reached through.  The deer was still bound in ribbon.

The little girl breathed a little harder.

“Don’t be scared,” Nicolette said.  “We have no intentions of harming you.  Only inconveniencing her.”

“Small inconvenience, this,” the kid said.

“Is it?  She has other ways out?  Because I entered through this position, which should scatter her detour.  She doesn’t have you…”

“It’s perfect,” the kid said.

“Happy you’re not getting sacrificed?”

“Cool,” Nicolette said.  “I don’t suppose you’d stick around, help?”

“Can do, if it screws with her.”

The kid stood on her toes to get a good vantage point to peer around the box and look at the diorama.

“Can you tell us more about the Forest Ribbon Trail?” Nicolette asked.

“Can you tell us anything?”

The kid shrugged.  “Nah.”

“Well, the Wolf said she’d handle the escape route if I put the branch where she could get at it. She can’t negotiate without you there-”

“I guess you can sit with me and wait and see if anything happens, next few times we check in.”

“There are only two possible permutations left with the box’s configuration and opening,” Alexander said.  “You can get others, but you won’t be able to look at the same locations after that.  You’ll need to move elsewhere.  You’ll clean it and return it to me tomorrow?”

Nicolette nodded.  She withdrew her agenda from her pocket and checked.  No other obligations.  “Yes.”

“I’ll leave you to it then.  Good handling, Nicolette.”

“What happens to her?”

“I think she’ll be fine,” the little girl said, investigating the diorama.

“Why?” Nicolette asked.

The kid gave her a funny look.

“You can’t answer, because of compulsions or whatever?”

“Okay,” Nicolette said.  “Alright.”

“I can’t imagine she’ll be okay, but we don’t know what resources they have,” Alexander said.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.  Get plenty of rest, let those eyes heal.”

Alexander took his leave.  Nicolette sat back for a bit while she caught her breath and digested.  Then, after she had to get up twice to keep the kid from poking around too much, set to doing what she could to clean up the blood.

She needed more than handkerchiefs and blood.  Bleach and towels.

She glanced back at the kid, who was staring at the scene, then drew a diagram around the model, warding it off so the kid couldn’t mess with it.  To be safe.  The kid poked a few times at the barrier.

“I’m going to get some things to clean up.  Do you need anything?” she asked the Other.

“Nah.  Pretty happy right now.”

“You’ll stay put if I leave you here for a minute?”

“You won’t touch anything?”

“And you’ll be good?”

She headed into the bathroom, and while she was there, decided to quickly rinse off.  So much blood, and it was drying on her face, tight against her skin, and just… gross.  So gross.

Her ring stirred, then bit her.  At the time that she could never shake feeling vulnerable during, while she was in or near the showers.

Still wet, she jumped out of the shower, pulling on her bathrobe, and tracking wet behind her.  She grabbed the towels and bleach she’d already set aside, and hurried back.  Something had happened.  Someone had come for her, or done something, or-

The little girl was gone, and Nicolette’s room was on fire.  Fire spread across her sheets, across the workbench, her feathers.  The box.  Her ring bit her, over and over again.

“Alexander!” she called out, top of her lungs.  She reached into fire to rescue the treasure.  Because she could not afford to be in Alexander’s debt.  Not like this, not a room full of practice, and borrowed books, and-

She backed into the hallway, embracing the box.  Tanner and Seth were approaching.

They weren’t looking at her or her room.

The library.  Smoke was leaking out.

No.  No.  The cost- if she was deemed responsible for this-

They ran past her, pulling out some trinkets that might help with fire.

She set the box down, and reached for her agenda.  Always in arm’s reach.  She’d put it in the pocket of her bathrobe.

It was gone.  That first bite in the shower, it had been when the snatching was imminent.

Her backup was scanned on her computer, but it was out of date.  It was also in the cloud, but to access that she needed things.  She’d protected it as best she could to block out interference and anyone who might try to sneak in and get access to it to mess with her.  People like Seth.  Maybe even Alexander.

This was the cost of having her life limited to one stone and log room.  To one school and one teacher, to a limited number of friends she only saw when classes were in session, and a questionable future alliance with a coven.

It was so easy to lose everything.

Ruin and Disaster roared in her deaf ear, and images danced at the edges of her vision, encroaching in.  She could see spirits without her Sight, and it took effort to block them out.

She gathered what she could.  Spare clothes.  Trinkets.

The little blighter’s legs weren’t that long.  She knew which direction it would be headed.  Kennet.

She’d have to leave the library to the others.

She reached the front door, and Alexander was standing there.  Seemingly unconcerned with the two blazing fires.  He didn’t tell her to stop, nor did he get in her way.

She had no idea what to think about that.  If this was planned…

If she couldn’t get on top of this, if she couldn’t get the kid-

Especially if she couldn’t get her agenda back, when it told her where she currently stood in the delicate interplay between herself and her teacher, and the various appointments she’d pledged to keep?  She lost everything.

She had to get to it before it got to Kennet.  She’d pledged she wouldn’t step foot inside without permission.  She hopped in her car and started it up.  Bought with weeks added to her apprenticeship, that she could no longer keep track of.  She used her Sight to search for the little asshole.

From the outside, driving toward the small town felt more and more like she was driving towards a depression.  Like it was sinking beneath the weight of the Carmine Beast’s absence.  Even when the nose of the car pointed up, her back pressed against the seat, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was driving steeply downhill.

Toils whispered in her ear, promising futility tonight.  She may well have Destroyed that girl who was facing that terrifying wolf.  It was not the only voice that had haunted her tonight.  Pain had.  And fear, and ruin, and madness and disaster.  She’d brushed shoulders with death, sticking her head into that box.  She definitely felt sick, scanning the road and using Sight to look through and past trees for a furtive little Other, and not seeing it.

There was nothing she could do to shake them or sanctify that hallow.  If she stopped long enough to try, there was a chance that kid would slip past her.

Moíra, Doom, was the loudest of them all, shouting after her, rather than whispering, to tell her that this could so easily end badly for everyone involved.  Herself in particular.