Author: Wildbow

Gone and Done It – 17.11 | Pale

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“You going to have a pissed off extended family waiting for you, Jude?”

“With Luca?  And me not watching out better for Finn, to bring him along?”

“Yeah.”

“Screw ’em.  This was your thing.  You had the game plan, I was along for the assist.  They wanted to jam things up with changes and stuff at the last second?  Nah.”

They ascended a fire-escape-like stairwell around a building that jutted up from the center portion of the Path.  Here and there they passed more of those windows that were like stained glass, but without color.

She was struck by the reality that Jude would be left with Miss, here.

Miss killed-

She opened her mouth, searching for a better way to put it, then closed her mouth.

They ascended a few more stairs.

“Sorry you missed your thing with your friend and his sister,” Avery told him.

“The movie?  Don’t worry about it.”

“Is that a thing?  You and the sister?”

“Nah.”

“Or you and the friend?  Just asking.”

“Very boringly straight.”

“Would you want it to be a thing with the sister?  Trying to figure out how much I owe you.”

“The Garricks get some intel here.  A few side routes.  Falling Oak Avenue is kind of a last ditch sort of thing.  Sometimes the rope tug doesn’t get you yanked out of a path, or things will break the connection to home.”

“If you used it here, you would end up further in the Stuck-in-Place, not out,” Miss noted.  She, Snowdrop, and the Ballerina in Blue followed about ten stairs behind and below Jude and Avery.

“Good to know.  Yeah, so Falling Oak Avenue is kind of a thing, there’s a process for entering it, and as you saw, it’s super dangerous.  But if there’s a way to go, you know, oh shit, rope’s not working.  Hurl myself out a window, say the words, Falling Oak Avenue?  Then not having to run the entire Falling Oak Avenue?  That’s pretty major on its own.”

“Cool,” Avery said.  “I’m really glad.”

Miss spoke from behind and below them, “Be aware, if you’re taking that route, Jude, you won’t want to use the rope on the Commons.  I do believe I put that in the notes.”

The conversation had turned light and then Avery had gotten into it, and the positive feeling dropped away as Miss reminded Avery of what she wasn’t saying.

“Yeah,” Avery replied, quieter.  “I told him.”

“Feels like you’re getting out of reach,” Jude said.

“Professionally.  As a Path Runner, Finder, practitioner.  I kinda liked when there were things I could share with you.”

“I’ll always need an ally, Jude.  Friends.”

“Yeah, but it’s nice to be the guy who knows stuff, sometimes.  My little cousins are terrible at listening to me.  A lot of this stuff is a chore to them.”

“Well, I’ll also need people to just… be an extra set of hands, or brains.  Like with Verona’s toothpicks and bubblegum.  This ritual.”

“Don’t make this a regular thing.  I couldn’t handle it.  I’m picturing myself thirty five years old, like some of my cousins who’re having kids now, but weary and shaking like a seventy year old.”

“Then Avery walks in the room, and you have the eyes of a baby opening their eyes to the world,” Snowdrop said.  “All glistening and full of life, and you’re all, ‘I’m renewed, let’s do this!  Life is good!'”

“Yyyyeah,” Jude replied.

“Avery,” Miss called up.

Avery paused, then turned.  She reversed direction.  Miss leaned against the railing behind the Ballerina, who blocked the view of Miss’s face.  The Ballerina pointed a slender finger.

At one of the windows.

“Do you want me to explain?” Miss asked.  “I could, we could speed this along, and you could get to your father, or I could explain, which might be essential if there’s a great deal of turmoil and you need to know the rules we’ve brought to Kennet Found.”

“Turmoil?” Avery asked.

“When the founding happens, I don’t know how long it will take to make sense of things, how long it will take to wrest control, or how long it may take to stabilize.”

“Give me a few seconds?” Avery asked.  She studied the image.  It was rectangular, the image slightly smaller than her, outlining a woman.  Some geometric shapes filled in the empty space around her- rolling fields and then empty sky.  Stones framed the edge of it.

She ran fingers along the edges of the frame, where stones jutted out to help protect the window.

“Got it,” Jude said.  “I think, anyway.”

Avery stepped back.  Jude hadn’t needed to touch anything.

She searched the image, then moved up to the stair Jude had been standing on.  He moved out of her way.

She moved up another stair, because Jude was a bit taller than her.

The moon’s light reflected on the glass.

She adjusted her position, centering the moon on a circle in the geometric shape, then reached out to touch it.

“No,” Miss said.

“Oh, that’s what I was going to do,” Jude said.

“It would delay us, mire us deeper.  That spot represents the sun, which lies elsewhere, beneath the field.  You couldn’t know, with how short a time you’ve been here, but it’s an answer to a puzzle, hinted at in texts downstairs.”

Avery moved again, exploring with the position of the reflected light, relative to her position.  There was one spot that was maybe ‘stars’, where the light hit a protrusion and refracted out, catching on faint rises in the glass.  It didn’t really create a complete image, though.  There was another circle besides the sun, though-  She shifted position to get the moonlight to line up with it.

“Moon in the Paths means secrets, hidden things, right?” Avery asked.

“Usually,” Jude replied.  “You can use the Gate of Ivory practice to change up how you see a Path so there’s a moon out, and it’ll often help you find hidden things, hints at answers to puzzles, that sort of thing.”

“Right, yep, read that,” Avery murmured.  “Also might make it so any hostile things on the Paths are more likely to ambush you or move silently.”

She had to lean out past the railing to get the light where she needed it.  When she got it aligned, the entire area around the buildings of the Stuck-In Place brightened slightly.  The moon’s reflection remained fixed in the circle when she moved back.  The light all around them was now faintly pink, mingling the white of the moons with the red of the blood they shed, but that only affected a few things, like Avery, Snowdrop, Jude, Miss, and the Ballerina.  Everything else was dark blue or black, with a few scattered things as white.

“Yes?” Avery asked, fingers out, checking with Miss.

“Yes.”

She touched the moon, and the reflection of the moon in the image dropped from its position, into the waiting hand of the woman.  The image filled in with reflected moonlight, giving her skin.

The woman in the painting walked out of frame, leaving the window blank.

“It’s a puzzle?” Jude asked.  “Escape room style?”

“No,” Miss replied.  “It’ll be easier to see if you ascend a bit.”

“Can I run?  Is there anything to watch out for?” Avery asked.

“You can run, and watch.”

Avery did.  She jogged up the stairs, and Snowdrop broke away from Miss and hurried after, as if Avery running off and Snowdrop needing to do her best to catch up had ingrained it into her.

They wound their way up the tower, toward the upper stage, where a series of windows caught the light, like a reverse lighthouse.

Snowdrop noticed first, but Snowdrop had better vision for the dark.  Avery drew on that same Lost sight.

As she climbed the tower, perspective shifted, out of sync.  Perspective and framing were linked here, they mattered more than on Earth, operating by slightly different rules.  A higher vantage point meant that things in the Stuck-In Place were higher as well.

From above, there was only black grass and wheat out in the uneven plains.  Then, as she climbed, she saw the dark shapes.  They looked like ruins, slightly uneven, sunken into the vast rolling plains and fields around the building with its jutting tower on top.  But as Avery climbed a full flight’s worth of stairs, they revealed themselves to be buildings that rose up to two or three times the distance she’d risen.  There was a faint cracking sound, deep, low, and off in the distance, and all the black wheat and tall, dark blue grass moved in reaction – the moons had lifted away from the horizon.

She watched as the fields changed.  At first it looked like the glossy black of the wheat and tall grass had caught the moonlight in a special way, but, even though they were distant, she could see how the tall grass or the tall weeds of those rolling plains had flowers and the flowers were opening.  The petals were as white as the moon was bright.  Rising buildings pushed field aside, and when they did, the ground that churned and rolled had even more of the flowers after one or two tumbles or turns than they’d had before.

And after another three or four flights worth of stairs, dizzying, she lost all sense of perspective relative to the rest of the world.  She could count stairs or try to judge by the layered stone architecture of the outside of the tower, the window height relative to her own, but there was no easy way to make sense of it all.  Things that had been askew straightened.  Bridges with supporting beams at a diagonal reached out, stone rubbing against stone, until they punched hard into the sills of massive decorative windows on distant buildings.  The buildings connected to one another with shafts, balconies meeting to connect two buildings, and even one jutting construction that stuck out the side of one building circled slowly around its partner building as it scaled up, rotating as it rose.  Until it was deposited on another construction and left behind.  The open face of the building that had left it behind connected to an open face in another construction.

She reached the top of the stairs and, with a slight hop, she set her foot down hard on the overlook of the reverse-lighthouse.  The moment she reached that vantage point was the moment the last pieces of fifty constructions all interconnected, settled, and ground together as they found their alignment, thrusting up another ten feet all at once, at a minimum.  It kicked up the flowers that had unfolded from horizon to horizon.  Many had already been disturbed, but this final thrust up kicked them up as high as the rooftops.  There were so many that it looked like the moons, bigger on the horizon than the Bowdler and Greensey ski hills back home, had come apart into those petals.

It all happened with a thud that reached the dead center of Avery’s chest and left her momentarily breathless, caught between pants for breath from the run up the metal stairs that had spiraled up the outside of the tower.

She leaned over the railing, panting for breath, looking around.

She looked up to find the moons had merged directly overhead, where the spire at the top of the reverse, light-catching lighthouse Avery was on extended all the way up to touch the moon.  Blood trickled down from the edges, evenly, because it wasn’t on any tilt now, bright, and funneled into gutters.  Some came down the spire’s point, spiraling down faint grooves.  All the way down to gutters and spouts.

As it ran through, off onto adjacent buildings, and into gutters there, the petals slowly took on more pink hues, like she’d noticed earlier.

Snowdrop caught up and Avery could, through the connection, feel the moment Snowdrop felt it all come into alignment.  She felt that thud in Snowdrop’s chest.

Snowdrop hugged her as she caught up.  Avery put an arm around her shoulders, feeling Snowdrop heaving for breath after the exertion.

“How-” Jude asked, as he climbed the last few stairs.  He paused as his foot reached the top of the stairs.  He’d felt that thud.  “-how do you not want to die after running around like you do?”

He joined her at the railing.

“Damn,” he whispered.  “I get what she was saying now.  It’s not an escape room.  It’s-”

“An escape city?” Avery asked.  “Or a city of no escape, if you get stuck.”

“I will spare you the task of unraveling a puzzle that spans sixty-two buildings, and several underground passages,” Miss said, as she reached the top of the stairs.  The airborne petals that filled the air hid her face from view, and she walked with her hands behind her back.  “I have a natural intuition with these things, and it still took me a very long time.  I had to leave several times with the strings of this place pulling me back to it, to find help and answers outside before I found myself sliding back.”

“How much is there to do?” Avery asked, wondering if she could make it back in time, now.

“Only a little.  The key pieces of the puzzle align in the room we were in downstairs, below this tower.  They clarify the answers to other puzzles, and illuminate the way.  For this, I’ll simply tell you the way, and you can go in the dark.  The Ballerina in Blue is seeing to the essential puzzle pieces for us.”

There were scattered, sleepy Lost out there.  Ones who’d risen, in a fashion, in the same ways the constructions had.

A woman a few stories down stepped out onto a balcony, raising a hand.  She wore a wide hood, with a high-collared dress of the same style.  The dress was so black she almost disappeared into the dark background, head and hands visible, in almost an inverse of Miss.  But the inside of the hood, the inside of the collar, the inside of the sleeves, and the back of the dress that stopped at the upper thigh in front but draped to the ground at the back were a kaleidoscope of color that made it hard to take eyes off her.

Avery raised a hand in response.

Miss explained, “I believe a great power once found itself on the Paths, after a slumber so long it even forgot itself.  It withered and died while trying to waken, and this collected around the bones.  The fields around here are… they were black, for you, so I would say they are akin to tar, thickened by what sloughed off when that great power died, and when others were drawn in and couldn’t find their way out.  If they’d been the color of wheat, I would have called them quicksand.  If they’d been white, I’d have called them a quiet, ongoing avalanche, unwittingly burying the unwitting.”

“Tar for short, though?” Avery asked.  She couldn’t even see it now.

“Yes.  That tar represents forces that pull downward, even if you’re on other Paths.  And if you’re unwary here, a building may settle somewhere beneath that tar with you in it, or something may change and leave you stranded.  Subtle strings of it may tie you to things in the environment, and then when those things or the buildings relating to those things move beneath the field of tar, then you would move with them.”

“Wunderkand seemed to get out okay.”

“They did seem to, at the very least.  There was a reason the Ballerina closed the door firmly behind herself.  If they happened to find themselves right back there in that hallway, thirty minutes from now, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.  If they’ve been here before and worked out a workaround, I would not be surprised either.  In any event, I’m glad to have escaped their binding before they realized they could or should ask me for directions through.”

Avery nodded.

The moon turned red.  Avery looked up.  The change had turned the petals in the air red as well.

“That would be our sun.  The Ballerina is putting things in order for your departure.  Jude, I’m to understand you’re staying behind?  You’ll be here even as I depart?”

“Yeah.  That’s the plan, anyway.”

“I’ll show you the way, and tell you as much as I can, while we wait and while I prepare.”

“What do I need to know?”

What does Jude need to know?  The question resonated in Avery, producing a pang of doubt.

“I trust we have your confidence?” Miss asked.

“Yeah.”

“Wait,” Avery said, too late.

“Wait?” Jude asked.

Avery thought for a second.  She gave Snowdrop’s shoulders a squeeze, then dropped her arm.  She looked over at Miss.

A building dropped down, as fast as if there was suddenly nothing but empty space beneath it.  Until only a spike at the top remained  Things moved, falling into order around it- bridges meeting at the center of a dais, suspended on the spike.

The Ballerina stepped out of a nearby building and walked very gracefully along one of the bridges to the dais.

Avery looked over in Miss’s direction.  “I think Jude should know.”

“Even knowing it may interfere?”

“It’s fair, right?” Avery asked.

“I think it’s better to ask yourself than to ask me.  I accept your decision either way.”

“What the hell is going on?” Jude asked.  “Don’t tell me there’s something to this nuke that’s way bigger than-”

“No,” Avery replied, voice soft.

“Okay?”

Avery looked toward Miss and her eyes dropped to the ground as she did so, so she was looking at Miss’s feet.  She nodded.

“When Avery found herself stranded on the Forest Ribbon Trail, I went to her, to provide support even though I couldn’t extricate her.  It was me who directed her there in the first place, and I saw it as my responsibility,” Miss explained.

“For sure.  Not every teacher would do that,” Jude said.  “Why do I have a bad feeling?”

He met Avery’s eyes, and she made herself hold eye contact.

“I was stuck on the Paths after.  I once explored the Paths, finding my way free by trapping a practitioner, I was spellbound and made to serve another practitioner later.  As I told you earlier.”

“Right.  And?”

“And even with that knowledge, I am of the Paths.  The same locations that would eject someone like you into the closest fitting situation, be it a locked room or the nearest possible street called Oak Avenue or Oak street, they only take me to other Paths.  And in my wandering I found myself mired here.”

“Is there something else to this place?” Jude asked.

“There was a man there, near the entrance, where we met the three individuals from Wunderkand.  I’m reasonably certain it was a Garrick.  Also mired.”

“Big beard?” Jude asked, quieter.  He glanced at Avery.

“No,” Miss replied.

“Okay.  Because Dex didn’t come back from a path a few weeks back.  I liked Dex a lot.”

“This would have been early summer.”

“Max, maybe?  But Max disappeared at the end of Winter.”

“Perhaps.  I found some of his things scattered in the tall grass while walking out across the fields to the gears- to the moons, as you currently see them, but his name wasn’t on or among those things.  Jude, you should know, I think he’d been stumped on the opening of the Stuck-in-Place for a long time, finding himself back there with regularity.  He was desperate, he wasn’t willing to trust or negotiate, and he attacked me on sight.”

“And you killed him?” Jude asked, tone of voice different now.

“In essence.  It was a fraught moment.  I arranged for the Path’s mechanisms to strike out at him.”

“Is he Lost?  Or dead?”

“Dead.  What you see as the moon, right now, it struck him.”

Jude walked away, looking around, as if wanting to find somewhere to sit.  He settled on a pillar that held the upper portion of the tower up, breaking up the sections of railing, and leaned against it, slumping down to a sitting position.

“I thought you should know, before you committed.  And before you stayed with Miss,” Avery told him.

“Does knowing this make any of that better?” Jude asked.

“No, but you not knowing and me- hm.  Taking advantage?”

“It’d be taking a lot less advantage if you told me before I left today.”

“It- yeah.  Except I would’ve wanted to ask Miss.  In the absolute worst scenario, if your family went after her… I know that sounds bad, especially if you’re mad, if you don’t agree with what she did, or if you don’t believe her.  I know- I know I’m not handling this perfectly.”

“You really think the Garricks are that kind of family?  Big hunting party to go after a specific Lost that killed one of ours?”

“No.  But I didn’t think you’d be the sort of family to fight like you did with Finn and Luca, either.  You can’t ever truly know everything, and I just- I felt like I would’ve wanted to ask her before I shared with you.”

“I’m wondering now,” Jude said, feet on the ground, knees bent, arms over his knees.  He pulled off his little pilot hat with the goggles, and he looked up at her, hair messy.  “Would you have told me if I hadn’t mentioned the crush?”

Avery thought for a bit about that.

“The silence is really telling,” he said, more bitter than before.

“Not- it nudged things in that direction, I guess.”

“Because you know I’m biased, I’m going to cut you more slack-”

“You think I’m that type?  That I’d do that?  No.”

“I didn’t think you were the type to just hide that someone who killed a family member of mine was around us, that this big ritual we did involved them,” he replied.

“I- you were open with me, letting me know.  I wanted to be open too.”

“Did you know when you negotiated with us?  The Promenade solve?”

“At the tail end,” Avery replied.  “She told me while there was a break, you guys were discussing and organizing.  And then it was just so much- it felt like a thing that was far away, in the past, in a place I’d never seen or barely heard of, at that point.  But now being here, with you?  It registers.”

“Would’ve affected negotiations?” he asked.

“It wasn’t part of the calculus.”

Jude dropped his hat, so it landed between his feet.  The lens of the goggle made a small sound as it knocked on the stone of the building.

Avery gave him a moment, even with all her anxiety.  Snowdrop leaned into her.

“I am sorry for what happened, Jude,” Miss said.

“Yeah,” Jude replied.

“If you’d like, I can send you back, as I planned to do with Avery.”

“You said we had your confidence, but if we’ve lost it, that’s okay,” Avery told him.  “I wouldn’t expect you to keep stuff secret.  If you decide you think the Garricks should know more about this place, but don’t want any involvement with me or Miss, specifically…”

The idea kind of choked her some.

He stared at his hat for a bit.  His hand closed into a fist, then relaxed.  A few seconds later, his boot scuffed as he moved it a bit to one side.  He looked up.  “I feel like whatever I do now, I’m kind of the bad guy, you know?”

Avery didn’t reply.

“Miss?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“The situation happened as you explained?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t left anything out?”

“Too open a question.  Nothing strategic.  There was no cunning in my phrasing.  I intended to be open.”

Jude nodded.  “Then okay.  Sounds like it was you and a scared, starved, trapped guy.  Two people in a bad situation.  Self defense?”

“I feel it was self defense on my part, yes,” Miss replied.  “Self defense on his, I think he’d argue, were he here, albeit informed by paranoia, fed in turn by a bad situation.”

“Was it quick?”

“Frantic, then maybe a second or two of panic, as he realized, then it would’ve been quick.”

“Okay.  The Garricks aren’t going to come after you.  You don’t need to worry about that, I guess.”

“I appreciate that.”

“I’ll tell them.  Max’s family would want to know, if it’s him.  I want to take his stuff.”

“When we go back down, I will give you what I found.  There’s likely to be much more in the field.  I only collected what I found while walking across.”

“I don’t know if I’ll them them it was you.  Don’t, uh, don’t screw me over and go sharing with them, if I don’t?  Telling them what you told me, telling them I knew and didn’t say?”

“I won’t,” Miss told him.

Avery nodded as he glanced at her.  She swallowed.

“If I stay, it feels bad.  If I act righteous, get too mad about you not saying, I risk blowing things up my family is- that they’re counting on,” Jude said.  “Holy shit, I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with anything this heavy, ever.”

“I’m sorry,” Avery said.

“Yeah, I bet.  You know I can forgive her more easily than I can forgive you?” Jude asked Avery.

She nodded.  The air felt thick, making it hard to swallow or find words.

“The negotiations would’ve gone differently,” Jude mused aloud.  “If we’d known.  Different tone.  Harder.”

“Yeah.  That wasn’t-”  She had to swallow before continuing.  “It wasn’t really my intent, to deceive to get a better outcome.”

“That’s good.  I’m glad.  I’m still not cool with this though.”

Avery nodded.  “I’m- I guess it’s that I’m a ditz, usually.  I go on autopilot real easy, I- don’t think about stuff enough.  And usually it’s little things like forgetting my shin guards or derping my way through a conversation about heavy stuff with Lucy or Verona.  But this was that on the big scale, I guess?”

She felt like she was rambling.

Jude nodded.

“You deserved me to think about it more.”

“Okay,” Jude replied, like he wasn’t even really hearing her.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know.  You said.”

“I just thought that, you know, it was better to tell-”

“Stop.”  Jude’s voice was hard, angry.

She fell silent.

“Stop- talking,” he said, staring down at his hat.  “I’m trying to think, and each time you talk it’s like my brain is rebooting to zero and I gotta give a shitty short response and then start thinking all over from the beginning.”

Avery pressed her lips together.

“I want to figure this out, so I don’t hate myself tomorrow for giving the wrong response or making the wrong call.  So my family doesn’t hate me.  So- I don’t know what happens between us, as friends.”

Avery swallowed.

He thought for another short bit.

“The negotiation.  The Promenade solve.  There’s still a few thousand left we owe you in books and items, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I dunno, I’ll send you a receipt.  Cost of taking Max’s stuff out of here or something.  For the remainder.  I don’t know what my family should do or how they’d react but let’s get the scales zeroed out.  Back to neutral?  So we don’t owe you anything.”

He met Avery’s eyes and she nodded.

“It feels like that’s not enough.  My parents want to talk to you about the Cakewalk solve.  It’ll be another negotiation, I know our guys are wringing their hands, because they know you know they want it, and we gave you a lot already.  Go real easy on us?”

She nodded.

He nodded as well, eyes dropping.  “I’ll stay.  I’ll do what I offered to do.  Your big ritual, we’ll keep helping.  Call if you need something.  Sounds important.”

“Thank you,” Avery replied, quiet.

“I was going to offer-” Jude started.  He stopped, then shook his head.  “When this kicks off, after, there’s going to be something left behind, isn’t there?  A connection between here and your town?”

“Anatopistic,” Miss told him.  “It would be something representative of Kennet.  A way out, not fitting the scene it’s in.  Very likely in that main room down there.  A poster of a man skiing, perhaps.”

“I was going to offer, you know, you leave, I’m here a bit, guarding things with Miss, dressing up and empowering the ritual, so it’s all secure, things are steady, they’re easier.  Just like we were going to do.  But part of that was me having to go home, get yelled at about Luca, tell people after, right?  But maybe instead I could come to your town, through that poster or whatever.  It’s easier, you’re already trusting me a lot.  And I kind of wanted to see.  Then I’d call home and see if I couldn’t get a big Garrick airdrop of Finders onto the situation.  Obviously not easy, depends on a lot.”

“Tricky,” Avery said, quiet.

He nodded.  He didn’t seem so pissed at her speaking up, that time.  “Tricky.  Maybe the wider family doesn’t want to get involved, maybe it’s too hard to drop in, maybe people are too mad over me sending Luca home.  I don’t know.  But I thought I’d offer and I thought it’d be really cool.  Moment for us to shine, another really cool story to tell twenty years from now.  Like how I was just hanging out with the Ballerina in Blue for a short while.  Bet I could tell a Finder that it was a thing I did, a decade from now, and they’d spit out their drink.”

He said it with a kind of humor in his voice, but no humor on his face, and the end result gave it a kind of wry sound.

Avery nodded.

“Did you tell me for me or for yourself?” he asked.

“Both?  It’d end up being this big thing between us.  It just… being here, knowing it happened, that made it feel more real.”

“Okay,” he said.  He heaved out a sigh.  “I think I get it.  I don’t like it, I’m not sure how I feel about it.  This is- this is heavy in a way I’ve never had to handle before.”

You said that before, Avery thought, but she didn’t say it out loud.

He got to his feet, picking up his hat as he did so.  He ran fingers through his hair.

“I don’t know if I’ll push hard for that airdrop, now.  Getting entangled with any big families would be a real mess.”

“Yeah,” Avery replied.

“I’ll think about it.  Don’t, uh-” he paused.  “Don’t text or email me-?”

Avery’s heart sank.

“-not like, acting normal?  Like nothing happened?  Because this was a lie and we were friendly and chummy while the lie was there and if you did that it’d- it’d feel the same?”

“By omission,” Miss said.

“What?” Jude asked.

“A lie by omission.  I don’t mean to dismiss, downplay, or make excuses for our falsehood.  Only to support your word so it’s more true.”

“By omission, yeah.  That’s what I meant.  Okay.  In fact, maybe don’t email me?  Don’t text, don’t call?  Unless you have to, for an emergency with the ritual?” Jude asked Avery.  “Pure business?”

“Okay.”

“Let me make that call.  If I do.  I don’t know if this is the last time we see each other, barring a chance meeting on the Paths, if this is strictly business from here on out, or if I’m going to get my thoughts together a day from now and think I was a petty ratshit rat for bringing up the Promenade solve deal and getting you to agree to cheaping out, feeling super embarrassed.”

“I think you’ve been really fair,” Avery told him.

“Okay,” he said.  “Could go the other way.  I don’t know if I’ll be angry, later, even.”

“Can I ask- did you know him?  Max?”

“No.  But I know people who did.  He was family, even if I never really talked to him.”

Avery nodded.  “Didn’t mean it should matter less or anything.  Was just wondering.”

“Yeah.”

“Avery?” Miss asked  “We’re running short on time.”

Avery nodded.  She glanced back at Jude.

She let Miss lead her away.  Jude remained where he was, looking out at the Stuck-In Place.

“I’m sorry for my part in that,” Miss said.

“It’s fine.  You had to, from the sounds of it.”

“It’s hard not to look back and wonder if I shouldn’t have devoted more focus in the moment to finding another way.  Or finding the right words.  Much as you told Jude, how you wished you’d devoted more thought to him and his family.”

Avery sighed.  Snowdrop walked with an arm around her back, nuzzling the back of her armpit.

“I hope he doesn’t end the friendship.  He’s one of the better things to come out of my relationship with the Garricks,” Avery said.

“I hope so too.”

They walked around to the other end of the tower.

“You’ll have to jump,” Miss said, indicating a bridge.  It was a floor down and about ten feet away.  It was narrow enough that only one person would be able to cross at a time.

“Jump?”

“From here to there.  The bridge will move as you fall, down and away.  Everything will drop away.  You shouldn’t use the black rope for this jump, you can use it for most other crossings.”

Avery frowned.

“The Ballerina has set things up here.  The illumination of the stars on various windows like the ones you manipulated the moon in help illustrate a map on the floor, in the large room far below us.  It forms a sequence, from the highest point of light to a horizontal crossing, from there to the left and down.  The series of interlinked riddles spread across this place is only one part of it.  One must be assured of the answer and they must then act on it.  If they’re wrong, the architecture will fall away too fast, places to land won’t be where they’re needed.”

“Can’t scout it out?” Avery asked.

“Much of it is hidden from view from nearly any ascent or descent you could make.”

Avery nodded.

“Easy,” Snowdrop said.

Miss moved behind Avery.  “This is the route I took to get back to you and to Kennet.  The way out of the Stuck-In Place.”

“Can I move over, jump, go past the window there?” Avery asked, indicating a window near where the bridge extended out from the interior of the building.

“You could.”

“Write down the directions?”

Miss passed Avery a paper.  Avery checked it.  It had the shorthand- the answer to the riddle, and it had the list of movements she needed to make, making sense of the arcane markings.  She tucked it into her bag strap, the bit with text mostly sticking out, then took Snow’s hand.  Snowdrop became an opossum, and Avery lifted her up.  “You navigate.”

There was an affirmative from Snowdrop, who settled in, getting a grip, and adjusted the paper.

Avery hesitated.  She turned to Miss, who stood with a geyser of moon-white liquid blocking the view of her face.  “You were there for me when I was stuck with the Wolf.  I want to be here for you, if there’s any way I can.  If you have worries, needs?  Anything you want to communicate?”

“You’ve already done more than enough.  Fighting for Kennet’s sake.  I asked for worlds out of you.  You’ve braved Abyss, Ruins, Path, and the uglier side of mortaldom.  You’ve been to the Undercity, I assume.”

“Important new place?  Of course.”

“Of course.  You’ve been to Warren, to many other places.  You’ve faced enemies from each of those corners.  I’ve put much on your shoulders.  All three of you.  I know that those burdens I had you take on are ones that have made you buckle under their weight, shed tears, feel worry, shame, and everything else.  That’s not to denigrate.  Anyone with a heart would.”

Avery put her hands in her pockets, listening.  This wasn’t exactly what she’d expected.

“I know your friendships and family have strained at times.  I know you’ve endured and seen things that will sit with you for a very long time.”

“Made mistakes that will,” Avery said, glancing over in Jude’s direction.

“That is not yours.  It is mine.  Don’t take that onto your shoulders.”

“The self-defense might’ve been you, but the decision not to tell him at a better time?  Me.”

“I’d rather you let me take the blame.  But my point, regardless, is that I want to acknowledge what I asked of you.  In doing this, I’m not doing anything I haven’t asked you to do.  I’ll do my part.”

“It sounds almost like you’re trying to reassure yourself, not me.”

“Perhaps.”

“Are you going to be okay?  Are you going to be you?”

“I do hope so, but the reality is that I’ve never heard of anyone who has done this the way we’ll be doing it, with the intentions and aim we have.  I think, judging by our visits from the Page of Suns, we’re treading into unprecedented waters.  I don’t know what will happen.  You have a jump in front of you.  Ten feet out, perhaps twenty feet down as things adjust on your descent.  You shouldn’t be hurt, but it’s scary, isn’t it?”

Avery nodded, looking over.  It was a twenty story drop.

“I made that jump to get back to Kennet.  Now I face a leap, and it may as well be a jump from here to a place so far below me that it’s not even a speck in the distance, and I don’t know what will happen to me and everything I’ve spent the last decade trying to build, as I make my landing, if I make it.”

Avery nodded.

“Best you go, Avery.  You’ll be late as it is.”

Avery wanted to bring up other things, like what the Page had said about Rook, but… no use.

“Can I give you a hug?” Avery asked.

“If we’re ever to hug, best to do it now.  I don’t know what shape I’ll be in, quite literally, come tomorrow afternoon.”

Avery moved over, closing her eyes, and hugged Miss.  She felt Miss’s arms around her, and felt Snowdrop reach out while in opossum form, to hug Miss’s shoulder.

Then, gripping the railing, she hopped over.  She held on, though, and poised herself on the far side of it.  A long drop below, to a storm of black wheat and illuminated flower petals, blood red to the point they seemed like they’d been clipped out of another reality and left to flutter here.

The moon high above was the same.

Avery bent her legs, drew in a breath, and made the leap.  A curtain billowed out of the window, and her hand reached out- letting it run through her hand without her grabbing it, as a just-in-case.  She landed at the balcony that formed one end of the bridge, stumbled, and landed awkwardly, rolling with the landing but while also trying not to squish Snowdrop or roll into her bag and dislocate a shoulder or anything.  Her stomach pulled where she’d taped up the shallow wound.

She got up, and Snowdrop managed the paper, sending an impulse.  But Avery remembered.

She looked up at Miss, and was surprised at how distant they were now.

Jude had walked over to stand at Miss’s side.

Avery moved on.  Across the bridge, into the building, and down.

Another crossing- she black roped it, then black roped again.  There was one area that was bound to be under too much observation, so she leaped it, over to another building.  The downward movement saw things sink at different rates around her.  It made every jump from one vantage point to a lower one a heady thing, like jumping in a dream that was fiercely determined to be a falling dream, no matter what realities it had to bend or break.

The Ballerina in Blue was standing at one archway as Avery ran over to it.  Avery put up a hand.

The Ballerina did the same, and Avery gave her a light high-five.

Moving on.  Another leap down, onto a slanted roof, which she turned and met full-body with a grunt, right shoulder, bag, hip, and right foot meeting the angle at the same time.  The roof’s natural curve funneled her, and her arms and legs windmilled as she was shot off the side.

Onto a lower rooftop.  There were only three buildings now, and a moon so large in the sky it seemed intent on swallowing things- or growing so large and bulging so far down it would crush even the abbreviated tower that Jude and Miss were on.

Another leap down, onto a rooftop that was only about a half-foot up out of the field.  It dipped- and she hit tall grass, black grain, and flower petals.

All of it scattered, grass pulling at her, her fall into petals so dense they might as well be a bed of the things.

And through.  Into a camouflaged hole, past more clouds of flower petals.

Past clouds.

Into the sky above Kennet, which was so small below her it looked like a smudge of light she could block out with her hand out as far as she could get it in front of her face.

Aaaaaaa, Snowdrop communicated through the familiar link.

Her jacket, parts of her bag, hair, and the various bracelets and things she’d wrapped around her left arm all fluttered madly in the rush of wind that came with falling from the stratosphere.

She didn’t dare to be afraid.  It felt like if she was, if she didn’t trust this, then that would break the spell, or signal something that would make things go wrong with what Miss was going to be doing.

Instead, she held feelings back like a breath trapped in her lungs, and faced the fall as Kennet sped its way toward her.

Strands of black grass, wheat, and petals snapped as she got close.  She hadn’t realized they were attached to her.

Tar, she thought, as they continued to tug and pull at her.  She made a punching motion in the air to correct her trajectory and ensure she wouldn’t faceplant.

The breaking weeds and grasses slowed her fall.  She hit the grass hard, still, with a loud impact.  She’d landed in the valley outside Kennet.

A large dog started barking.  Its owner had been walking it, not looking Avery’s direction, but the dog had noticed her arrival, and it almost did a backflip as it tugged on the leash, leaped, and tried to convey to its owner what it had just seen.

Five seconds after Avery’s arrival, she was still being chased and showered in scattered flower petals and strands of black grass.  She straightened, made sure Snowdrop was okay, and then got her phone out.  No service- it usually took a minute or so to kick in, after.  She gave herself that minute, walking out to get a good vantage point.

The wheel in the sky was gone.  But the moon was out, bright, overlarge, and weeping blood.

The phone buzzed as the messages she’d been sent and unable to receive came in.

She messaged Verona and Lucy first.  I’m okay.

Then Nora.  She wasn’t sure what to type, but she gave it a shot, then made herself send it.

Avery:
I miss your face.  Wish I was with you.

She was putting her phone back in her pocket when she got a reply.

A picture from Nora, eyes wide and looking to the side, smiling a bit.  It was captioned: ‘face’.

That helped her mood a bit.  She fussed over herself for a bit, then took a picture, trying her best to look cool, looking off to the side, phone at arm’s length.  She double checked there wasn’t any blood and then sent it back.  Face.

Nora’s response came back.

Nora:
I like the antler filter.  Artsy.

Avery pulled the antler off, where it hovered over her head, then handed it to Snowdrop.  “Warn me next time?”

Snowdrop clamped it in her teeth, then put the antler in Avery’s bag.

Then she replied to Nora: Dinner with dad.  Hope we can chat later.

Nora sent a long line of four leaf clovers in response.

She navigated her way out of the trees, and hopped down the slope.

She paused as she landed.

Then she ran home, hand at her injured side, to get changed out of bloodstained clothing and go to her dinner date with her dad.

“Thank you, thank god,” Lucy said.  She looked like Avery.  “I was worried I’d have to go through this dinner with your dad and that would have been a mess.”

“I wonder if it would be better or worse if it was Verona trying?” Avery mused.  “She’s clever enough to navigate the tricky questions.”

“She’d do okay, I think.  She can be too clever or do stuff for fun, but when it comes to you, we’d want to look after you.”

Lucy cast off the glamour.  “How was it?”

“Eventful.  Miss is scared.”

“And you?”

“I screwed up with Jude.  I’ll tell you later.”

“There’s stuff to catch you up on too.  Talk to me right after, ‘kay?”

“That bad?”

“Talk to me after.  Right after.  Have your dinner with your dad.  Rest.  If Miss is good, you did good work.”

“You saying ‘right after’ like that is making me want to skip this.”

Lucy gave Avery a light push.  “And be careful, keep an eye out, okay?  It’s scary out there.  Stay discreet.”

Avery nodded.

Avery flipped up her hood to make herself harder to identify, and jogged the next block over toward the ice cream place.  It had once had bright pink signage, but it was painted wood and it had accumulated a gray tinge over the pink.  The parking lot was as empty as she’d ever seen it on a weekend- two cars.  Her dad was standing out by their car, outside.  He was dressed more relaxed, wearing a dark blue sweater that hugged his narrow body, jeans, and boots.  His hair and beard were short, cut just before they’d all come for the weekend, she was guessing.

A set of concrete stairs made the slope between the flat lot and the road above easier to navigate, and she leaped the last six stairs to the parking lot.

Yeah.  That felt weirdly soft as landings went.  She was pretty sure that she had a boon working now – a reward for a successful path.  Testing would be required.  The Garricks had a little ritual that could help puzzle out boons, in the same way that Path features could be worked out.  But her working theory was that she could fall a long distance and not hurt herself.  What she didn’t know was if it was a thing that only worked a few times a day, if it only worked in the dark, if it stopped working after a certain distance, or something else.

Verona would like it, on the ‘cats always land on their feet’ principle, which was cool, because Avery did want to show those guys the Stuck-In Place eventually.

“There you are.”

“Here I am,” Avery said.

He looked up at the moon again.  “You see this?”

“Yeah.”

“Nobody seems to know what it is.”

“You think it’s a plume of smoke in the distance?  Refracting red light?”

“That doesn’t look like smoke,” her dad replied.  He got out his phone.  “I tried to search for information about this, and you’ll never guess what I got.”

“Never’s a long time.”

He thumbed his way through the phone for a second.  The light from the screen illuminated his face for a moment, then it turned darker as the page or image loaded.

He showed her.

Search term, image search: “Bleeding moon optical illusion Kennet Ontario”

Only search result: a picture of a gold ring with a little emerald turtle inset into the top.

“I bet I could’ve guessed that.”

“Haha,” he said, smiling a little.  “I wonder if there’s something in the water.”

“I would not rule that out, considering.”

“I have a theory about the search term, though.  You want the really long answer, the long-ish answer, the short answer, or the ‘please dad, don’t spew technobabble at me’ answer?”

“I’ll take the short one.  I’m curious.”

“So, to speed up these search terms, service providers will sometimes host frequently-used data at nodes, waystations along the way-”

“This is the short answer?”

“I think maybe something got corrupted or twisted around at a node.  A server needs rebooting.”

“That’s a solid sounding theory, to someone who doesn’t know much about that stuff.”

“Do I still have my teaching chops, after homeschooling you guys all those years?”

“We did most of that ourselves, you know.  Self-study, going to you when we had the occasional question…”

“Give me some credit.  And come on.  Milkshakes and burgers await, and I’m hungry.”

He held the door for her, and she went straight to the counter, waiting behind some people who were ordering.  It was late enough that they were getting ice cream for dessert, instead of going for the dinner fare.

“Can’t help but notice you were running around all day,” her dad said.

“You have no idea,” she told him.

“I’d love to hear about it.”

She was given a reprieve because the family ahead of them finished, and moved aside.

She ordered some deep fried pickles, fries, a portobello burger, and a milkshake half as big as her head, thick.

The milkshake was mostly why she came here.

They settled into the booth.  Avery slumped over, arm stretched out over the table, head on her arm, and took a bite of pickle.

“Tired, huh?”

“Mmm.  And hungry, but too tired to eat.”

“A lot of family is a lot,” he said.  “Even to me.”

She nodded.  Her finger stroked the big glass of milkshake, condensation running from her fingers to her wrist, and down to her sleeve.  Out of desire for milkshake, and because being crumpled forward made the cut on her stomach hurt, she sat up.  She hauled back on the double straws for a few seconds until it reached her mouth, then cut through the cold with some burger.

“Thanks for doing this with me,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she replied.  “Same, I guess?  I don’t- I’m not sure exactly what to say or do.”

“I don’t know either,” he replied.  “But this feels overdue.  I’ve been trying to do it with Declan and Kerry.  I’d like to do it with Sheridan too, but I think that would be like pulling teeth.”

“She’s a softie at heart,” Avery replied.

They ate for a few seconds.  Avery took another pull on the milkshake.

“Do you want to talk about…?” he asked.

“No,” she replied.

“Just like that, huh?” he asked.  “Firm no?”

She nodded, chewing.

“Is it touchy?  I don’t- I don’t want to breach boundaries, but if I know a bit more about that ‘no’, I can try to fix things, maybe?” he asked.

She swallowed.  “I want you to be my dad.”

“I am.”

“You are, but you weren’t.  Mom left, and it felt like every single conversation with you, every interaction, we were talking around me being gay, or it was a shadow over things, or you were working on stuff.  And I don’t want it to be a shadow.”

He nodded.  “Okay.  That’s fair.  It recontextualizes a lot.”

“Or you’d talk about Declan and make excuses for him.  It’s a boy thing, or it’s an ADHD thing.  Or you’d talk about Grumble and oh, he’s old, he’s set in his ways.  Or you’d ask me to be tolerant of Kerry, she’s young.  And then when it came to me?  I wouldn’t get that, like, default,” Avery replied.

“I’m sorry.  That’s… very well said.”

“I went a whole month barely thinking about things because it sucked to think about, and then sorta came up with that just now.  You know, it’s not even that I did anything wrong?  Declan’s a big jerk, and Grumble’s a bigot, and Kerry’s a brat.  And like… Kerry okay.  We were all brats.”

“You were actually pretty easy.  Mostly.”

Avery shrugged.  “I’m sure I had my moments.”

“Yeah.”

“So I just- can we just not get into it?  Because it’s a whole conversation and while we’re having that conversation…”

“I’m not being a dad.”

“Mmm.”  She took a bite of fried pickle.

“Okay,” he said.  “Your mom and I talked about a lot of this stuff, and I was expecting the problem to be different.”

“it kinda sucks you’re talking about this behind my back.”

“We’re your parents.”

“But it’s more of that shadow, you know?  Like, what is there to talk about?  The best response, my dream response, is like… oh, you’re gay?  That’s nice.  Like, who cares?  Sheridan got it right.  Sheridan rolled with it and then joked about Kerry’s friend peeing in my bed.”

“Ha.  Yeah,” her dad said.

“So yeah,” Avery replied.

“So yeah,” her dad echoed her.  “Changing the subject a bit?”

“Sure.  Please.”

“Your mom?  How’s she?”

“She’s busy.  I think- I dunno, I feel like she likes being a mom more, with the smaller family unit?  The lack of friends in the new place is throwing her, I think.”

“That happens.  But you’re doing okay friendwise?”

“Yeah.  Sports team helps a ton.  Coach likes me.  Team’s funny as heck.  I go for runs, see people.”

“And Sheridan?”

“She’s… Sheridan.  But she’s been cool with my friends when they come over, and I think she’s big on the podcast idea.”

“Going to gift her a little something as she leaves to go back to Thunder Bay.  We’ll see if we can’t urge her to get into something.  I think all she needs is one thing that excites her.  It’s how it was with me.”

Avery nodded.  Her stomach still hurt, even sitting straighter, and she adjusted her position again, shifting so she was almost lying across the bench.  With arm around the tray, she pulled it close enough she could get the milkshake’s straw into her mouth.

He extended a hand, and poked her bracelet, on the arm that was wrapped around the tray.  “What’s this about?  Couldn’t help but notice you’ve been collecting these.”

Avery pushed her sleeve up.

“Oh, you really have been collecting them.”

“Mmm.  This one’s a charm bracelet.”

“Sports charms.”

“It’s a- don’t touch.”

He pulled his hand back, just shy of having touched a charm.

“Could be disastrous.”

“Ah.  Are they actual charms, then?”

“Magic,” she told him.

“I don’t want to upset your good luck.”

“And this friendship bracelet represents how I’m doing.  It changes.”

“You have a bunch, then?  Different colors for different feelings?”

“Something like that.  Not always feelings.”

“It’s a little worn out,” he said.

“Yeah.  Exactly.”

He nodded.

“Verona made it.  Black, dark blue, red.”

“With a bit of grass in the weave.”

“Yeah,” Avery said, poking at the strand of black grass.

“Dark colors, very intense red.  Does that mean anything?”

She thought of Miss, standing on that tower.  Of Jude.  “Melancholy, a bit, but bold.”

“And this?”

“You know Miss Hardy?”

“I remember Miss Hardy.  Important person to you.”

“She was.  She had a bracelet with wooden beads a lot like this, but rounder.  There was a whole thing because one of them had what looks like a swastika, but it was the wrong way around.  Originally it was a Mayan thing, I think?  I’m not sure.”

“Hmm.  Emulating her?”

“Coincidence.  Verona made that too.”

“Verona makes you a lot of stuff, huh?”

“She’s finishing a jacket for me.  Nora, at school, she suggested it.  I don’t know if Verona will be able to do it this weekend, though.  Things are a bit crazy.”

“Bleeding moon optical illusion, internet’s obsessed with turtle jewelry.”

Avery smiled.

She pushed Sootsleeves’ gray twist of frayed, burned cloth forward, from the widest part of her forearm toward her wrist.  “This is the newest one.  Apparently, it’s a favor from an actual queen.  Had a kingdom and everything.”

He reached out, held back from actually touching it until she moved her wrist closer, hand over the charm bracelet, and felt it.  “Soft.  Bit burned.  An actual queen, huh?”

“Apparently.”

“Did something bad happen to this queen?  Burning?”

“Got kidnapped, stowed away in a basement somewhere.  She’s still got a kingdom but mostly she drives around in a white convertible, smoking and getting drive through.”

“There’s worse outcomes,” her dad replied.  He reached out and touched another bracelet.  “I do remember this one.”

“Olivia.”

“Mm hmm.  What a shame that was.”

“Really was.  I wonder what she’d be like, if I met her today.”

“I think if she saw you, she’d be really impressed,” Avery’s dad said.  “I know I am.”

“You’re my dad, you pretty much have to say that.”

“I do mean it.  You’ve got an air around you.”

“An air?”

“An aura.  You’ve grown up a lot.  I’m really, really proud of you.  I think if you and Olivia crossed paths, she’d be left thinking she’s an idiot, letting the friendship go like she did.”

Avery smiled a bit.  “But I screwed up a bit.  With a guy I was talking to online.”

“A guy?”

“Jude.”

She took a bite.  And her dad was eating too.

It was still hard talking to her dad, especially after her mom had primed her, on a level, because she felt like any mention of stuff like Verona giving her the stylized jacket or friendship bracelet, or Sootsleeves, or Nora, her dad might be having a big internal dialogue about it.  Just like how Avery’s mom would immediately go ‘girlfriend?’ at every mention of a female friend.  Or assume that any sleepover was going to end up being rude.  Even with a cousin?

Even mentioning Jude, she couldn’t help but read into his tone and feel like her dad had had a thought.

“So what happened?”

“Ahhhh… I’m not good at explaining this.  I let him down.  Another friend of mine, a mentor, someone who helped me a lot with getting through the bad patches, getting to where I am now…”

“Ms. Hardy?”

“No.  But… similar, I guess.”

“Or Matthew and Edith?”

“What?” Avery asked, alarmed.

“It came up.  We overheard bits.”

Nerves jangling, Avery shook her head.  “No.  No, not them.  Jude’s someone I talk to online.”

“So those other names, they aren’t online?  Are they local?”

“It doesn’t matter.  Look, trying to share feelings.”

“Right.”

“She hurt his family, and then when she realized the situations were linked… she told me and I didn’t tell him.  And I just fessed up earlier today.”

“How bad did she hurt his family?”

“Pretty-”

Avery paused.  She was sitting with her back to the door, with her hood up, to keep a lower profile, but there was a napkin dispenser with a reflective surface, and she could see the reflections in the window.  Three people, distorted by the uneven metal, only blurry colors.

But Avery could see as the dark shadowy parts of their faces where their eyes should be flared with color as they used the Sight.  Her bracelet ticked three times for the three individuals.

“-Bad.”

She grabbed some napkins from the dispenser and pulled them into her lap, beneath the table, getting a marker from her pocket.

“Everything okay?”

“I think I might know them,” she murmured, lifting up the marker and pointing it back over her shoulder, toward the window.  She still hadn’t turned around.  Connection block-

“Who are they?”

The bell on the door jangled.

“Dad?” Avery asked, quiet.  “Do me a favor?  Go into the bathroom?”

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Dad, seriously.  If you love me, if you trust me, if you really do believe I’m a good person, please just- just listen to me and go into the bathroom and I’ll try to explain later.”

He stood up from his seat, watching the approaching group.

“Avery Kelly!”

America Tedd.

“Lucy Lucy Lucy,” Avery whispered.  “Verona Verona Verona.”

America Tedd drew her head down and forward, shrugging her shoulders, whispering, “Fuck you fuck you fuck you.”

Avery saw the connection that had formed between herself and the others, and she saw it wither and die in the face of America’s words.

Snowdrop, Avery reached out.

Avery glanced at her dad.  Of course he wouldn’t go into the bathroom with these menacing people around.

“We don’t want trouble,” the teenager behind the counter said.  He was sorta buff, but had a scattering of bad acne on his cheeks.  He looked at Avery.  “Want me to call the police?”

One of the two guys who’d come in with America picked up one of the big glass milkshake glasses from above the trash, still waiting to be washed from earlier, and he slammed it into the glass display that protected the counter.  Glass shattered and fell into ice cream and the little open containers of toppings.

“Police won’t do shit,” America told him.  “Phone lines aren’t working anyway.  Stay put.  I don’t have a beef with you, but if you don’t stay out of the way and stop interrupting, my buddy’s going to keep breaking things.  You can explain that to your boss later.”

The guy behind the counter looked back at a coworker in the back, a girl about Sheridan’s age, and then picked up the phone anyway.

The guy broke another of the glass panels, then hurdled the counter, putting himself on the same side of it as the guy with the phone.

As he advanced, the guy let the phone handset fall, dangling from its twirly cord, and retreated toward his coworker.

“What’s going on, Avery?” her dad asked.

“What is going on, Avery Kelly?” America asked.  “I’m guessing your poor dad doesn’t know what you’ve been up to?  Who you’ve been hanging out with?”

“Talked about it some,” Avery said, quiet.

“Really now?  Did you tell him you or one of your friends aided and abetted in murder?  Or about the three kids who were almost certainly murdered?  I’m betting you know about that.  Such a nice thing about a town this small and uneventful, the news report about that is still near the top of the websites online.”

“Don’t,” Avery said, voice firm.

America advanced down the little shop.  She reached across the counter for a burger one of the employees might have been making for themselves, due to the lack of customers, shook off some glass, and then took a bite.  She swallowed, “Or?”

“Just don’t.  Don’t do this.”

“You know if I was told I could fuck with you, get back at you, screw everything up for you, I would?  I would take time off of good paying work to beat the bone marrow out of you and half the things you care about, and shit on the rest of it.  Bone marrow and heaping, steaming shit.  I would pay for the chance.  And you know what?”

“You’re getting paid?” Avery asked.

“I’m getting paid a good amount,” America said.

“Avery,” Avery’s dad said.

He tried to move her behind him.  She resisted, not budging.

“We’ll be generous,” America said.  “Your call.  You aren’t going to get off easy.  I’m not that nice.  But your dad?  Is that your dad?”

Avery didn’t reply.

“It’s your choice.  Do we hospitalize him, or do we hold him down and have one of my buddies lay a big fat one on his face?”

“Neither.”

“If you don’t choose, we’ll do both, and then you can end up with infected wounds, crap in a perforated eyelid, crap in gouges in your face, can’t get it clean-”

“You’re not really like this, America,” Avery told her.  “I don’t want to believe this is who you really are.  Liberty’s cool and sweet and good.  You’re her sister.”

“Don’t bring her up.  You made her cry, Kelly.”

Avery reached into her pocket, and America tensed.

Her phone.  Her thumb moved over the screen.  She passed it back to her dad.  “Liberty.  On my contact list.  Get her on speaker.  She might be the only person who can talk America down.”

“My daddy says hi, by the way,” America said.  “He’s here too, you know.  Want to play that game kids play?  My dad can beat up your dad?”

“Your childhood teacher, Toadsie, he wouldn’t-”

“Don’t bring him up.  He’s the reason I was pissed at you in the first place.”

“He wouldn’t want you to do this either.”

“He’s not paying me thirteen thousand dollars to burn your house down, beat and shit on your family, and dismantle everything you care about, Kelly.  So you tell me.  Money on the one hand, absentee mentor on the other.  Who’s going to win?  Oh, such a hard choice.”

Avery and her dad had backed up as America and the other guy she was with advanced down the length of the narrow restaurant, counter on one side and booths on the other, with a short bar with stools.  They reached the end of the line, just out of sight of the counter.  The woman’s bathroom was to Avery’s right, the men’s behind her.  Her dad was in the corner, his shoulders touching the two doors.

“In,” Avery whispered.

“With you,” he said, taking hold of her shoulder with one hand, the phone still in the other.

She moved like she was going to go, already thinking about how to seal the door, giving her a narrow, tight space to do practice in.  To do something.

But as her dad turned the guy by America lunged, veins standing out in his neck.  Avery grabbed at him, but her hands only tore shirt, barely altering his trajectory.

He slammed Avery’s dad into the door, hand on the back of the head.  face-first.  Some doors might have swung open, barely any harm done.  These doors were too heavy for that.

Leaving blood behind, as her dad crumpled, hands to his face, phone falling to the floor.

Nose broken, a crimson, horizontal slit across the bridge.

Avery stooped down to grab the phone, and the guy kicked her.  The door to the women’s washroom behind her made for the worst of both worlds.  She was knocked into the side of the door closest to the hinges, which was solid enough it hurt, but the door moved, so it didn’t give her any stability.

Her dad lunged at the guy, who fended him off, grabbed him by the back of the sweater, and hurled him hard into a table in the back corner booth.

“Dad!  Don’t fight!” Avery called out.

“You’re awful at it,” America added.

“They’re professionals, I think,” Avery told him.

“Yeah,” America told her.

Avery stood up a bit, and walked backwards into the door, easing it open.  Nobody inside the women’s washroom.

“You think you’ll be safer if we’re out of sight?” America asked.

Avery glanced down at her phone, saw the contact list was open, and went straight to Liberty.

America came at her, lunging into the bathroom, pausing for a full second to kick the door halfway to closed, and then retched a stream of vomit toward Avery.

Avery ducked into one of the two stalls to escape it.  Black rope-

America kicked the stall door in, but Avery was already in the next stall, hand on the divider to help anchor her as she swung around, kicking America in the side and knocking her into the toilet.

“Stop!” Avery told her.  “Stop this!”

America Tedd pulled her chin back, with a faint gurgling sound, and Avery hurried to kick the door.  It swung inward, and it banged against the wall and then bounced back to a closed position, as the stream of vomit hit it.

“Anus incinerator,” America said, from within the stall. “Pepper so hot it works retroactively.”

Avery wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, and started to look for a way to draw a circle around herself, when she saw the stream of vomit near the sinks and the vomit at the floor of the one stall turn from a yellow-green to a pink color, churning-

It spat like hot oil, bits flying off, charred and actively burning.  Smoke rolled off it.

She headed for the door and then shied away from the heat.

Spell cards- something-.  Avery grabbed the stack of spell cards.

America left the stall, face red, eyes bugging out, sweaty.

The fluid on the ground ignited.  A streak of fire on the one side of the bathroom and in the one stall.

Avery held up a spell card, blank side facing America.  America held up a lighter shaped like a naked lady.

“Whatcha going to do, witch girl?” America asked.  Her hand jerked.  Avery went to throw the spell card, then reconsidered at the last half-second, changing targets.

It was a simple water explosion card.  She’d been about to aim it at the door, to secure her escape route.  But she could remember Rowan getting cooking lessons from her mom.  Lessons on fire and hot grease.

She threw closer to America, instead.

Water exploded into steam and spitting hot oil, which sprayed around America, and America’s lighter worked its magic.  The fire in the room all moved in a direction based on the lighter’s orientation.  Which meant it came rushing toward Avery.

Avery threw herself back into the corner, fell, and punched, giving herself a push against the wall as the fire swept toward her.

Black rope.  Into the far stall, the handicap one.  She looked down at the phone, and hit the button.

She burst out, aiming for a kick at America’s back.

And America, not turning around, reached over and grabbed her by the ankle and wrist, doing a quarter-turn to slam Avery into the sink.

“You think I don’t learn my lessons, you little bitch?  I remember how you fight.  So I made an adjustment, so you can’t be sneaky.  Eyes in the back of my head.  Temporary adjustment for special circumstances.”

She moved her hair.  There they were.  Goblin eyes, inset.

Avery started to rise, then stopped as America stepped closer, turning to face her.

“‘Meri?”

“Lib,” America said.  “Just dealing with business.  Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s Avery calling?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.

“What are you doing, ‘Meri?  You’re fighting Avery?”

“Work,” America said.  “Dad said it’s okay.”

The fire crackled at the one side of the bathroom.

“I didn’t say it’s okay.  She’s a friend, ‘Meri.  She was good to me.”

“She made you cry.”

“Fuck you, who the fuck are you to decide any of that?” Liberty asked, voice coming over the phone.  “If I’m crying like a weenie then that’s for me to deal with.  What the fuck are you doing telling Avery about my crap, huh?  Fuck you!”

“Fuck you!” America retorted.  “Big sister rules, I gotta stand up for you when you can’t do it yourself.”

“Fuck your rules, fuck this.  Avery, what is she doing?”

“Trying to poop on my dad.”

“Don’t poop on Avery’s dad, America!  I know stuff, I can tell dad stuff, I will go all out if you screw with Avery.”

“It’s contracted.”

“Fuck off, fuck that, no.”

“Yep,” America said.  “Thirteen thousand, signed and sealed for Musser, so I’m not about to back down.”

“I hope thirteen thousand is worth me hating you for a long time, you jerkass.  I’ll still love you but I’ll hate you and it’ll suck for both of us.  I’m going to make you fucking miserable!  You don’t fuck with my friends!  Remember the deal, America?  This is awfully close to a breach!”

“Oh my god.  You are a weenie,” America said, rolling her eyes about as much as was humanly possible.

Avery took the opportunity where America’s eyes weren’t on her, lunging forward- putting herself between America’s feet.  She black roped.

And America stumbled, kicking, not finding Avery there.  She turned around, then kicked the bathroom door to the stall that wasn’t on fire.

Avery stood closer to the door, near the fire in the corner she’d been huddled at.  She went for the door, pulling it open.

America had been intent on another retching, but with the door hauled open, Avery’s dad was there.  America stopped.

But the guy was there, twisting Avery’s dad’s arm, leaning on him so he was trapped in the booth.  Avery went for him, ready to pull him off, and found him too strong.  He lifted her up and pushed her away, and she fell over.

The landing was soft, at least.

America exited the bathroom.  The mist of a fire extinguisher followed her.  She held the little red container like a bludgeon, now.  Her eyes moved up, away from Avery-

The bell on the door jangled.  Avery could sense it enough to know who they were, but she didn’t understand how.  Her sense of things through the familiar bond wasn’t that strong.

Four people entered.  Snowdrop was among them.

Then there was a man, about five feet tall- shorter than Avery, broad in the gut, wearing a sweater vest, button-up shirt, khakis, and a tie that looked like it was made of upholstery from couches that never sold.  He wore round glasses, and had a self-indulgent smile that kind of made his chin sink into his neck.

Behind him, hand on his shoulder, was a woman with dyed pink hair and cleavage on full display.  She was just old enough the pink hair looked a bit out of place, but confident enough to pull it off.  Her gaze was level, dangerous, and unflinching, and she chewed bubble gum.

And then, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, a woman with very large eyes, scraggly hair, and a lot of tape over her nose.  It created the same silhouette as a bat nose.  She stood there, skinny and dangerous looking in a complimentary way.  Like how an especially skinny addict could be assumed to be scary because they were probably unhinged, with very little to loose.

“Oh my god,” America exclaimed.  “You guys dressed up?  I never thought I’d see the day.”

Dee sneezed.  “Bleh.”

Avery checked her phone.  The call had ended.

“I would’ve liked our reunion to be on a happier note,” Toadswallow said.

“I can’t believe you did this.  It’s hilarious.  How are they ever going to let you live this down?”

They glamoured up?  Avery thought.

“I’ve got clout.  Don’t worry about it, dearie,” Toadswallow said.  “Worry about what you’re doing right here.”

Bubbleyum popped the bubble she was blowing.

Dee sneezed again.

America sniffed with amusement.

“Is this who you want to be, my dear?  Is this what you want to do?  Because I remember a little girl with really great dreams.  And this is what you’re becoming?  A thug?  I thought we talked about this in depth.”

“Can you blame me if I forget?  You were gone so very long.”

“Because of your daddy.  He thought I had too much influence over you.  He wants you to follow in his footsteps.”

“Is that so?  Interesting theory.”

“Fact.  I swear it.”

“Can verify,” Bubbleyum said.

America fell silent.

“Walk away,” Toadswallow said.

“I’m stronger than you, Toads.  You’re a lot of things but you’re not a fighter.”

“Want to see if you’re stronger than me?” Bubbleyum asked, before blowing another bubble.

“The bitch who stands behind a sad sack, cowardly, child-abandoning, small blob of a man?”

“Want to see?” Bubbleyum asked.  “Let’s go around back.  Or into the ladies room.”

“Or go, ‘Meri dear,” Toadswallow said.  “I’m willing to bet there’s a part of you that’s feeling like scum on chickenshit, talking to me right now.  Working with Musser?  I know you don’t like his type.”

“Liberty’s not too keen either,” Avery added.

“Fuck you,” America spat the words, turning.

“Go, my dear.  You made your statement, you made your move.  So go.  Unless you’re willing to grovel for forgiveness here.”

“Nah,” America replied.

“So just go.  Back to your daddy.  Back to that man who represents everything you hate.  Think hard about what you’re doing.  If you want to meet for a sit down, hear more about my last real encounter with your daddy, ask.  But you made your point.  This is as close as you’ll get to a win, while you’re on the wrong side.”

“Yeah, sure,” America said.  She walked toward him, and stared down Bubbleyum as she squeezed past, neither of them ceding much ground as they crossed paths.  Dee sneezed again, and Snowdrop gave her a pat on the back.

The other two guys followed after.

The door jangled closed.  Toadswallow in his human glamour watched as America got into a car and drove off.

“I gotta get out of this getup,” Dee said.  “Then maybe crawl into a greasy hole in the ground and consider dying.”

“Mmm, take a picture for Ben-”

The door jangled as Bubbleyum pulled it open for Toadswallow.  The conversation continued, with not even a glance Avery’s way from any of the three goblins.

Just Snowdrop.  Avery nodded slightly.

Then it was silent.

Avery checked on her dad, and saw him pull up his sweater, showing his bruised ribs.  His nose was broken, and his hand might have been stepped on.

He started to ask a question, then had a coughing fit instead.

Avery hugged him as gently as she could, then, after her dad fussed over her a bit to make sure she wasn’t too hurt- prompting a small gasp when he touched where she’d been kicked in the ribs, she helped him up.

The guy at the counter was calling police, or his boss.  Avery and her dad left the ice cream place.  She wasn’t sure what the plan was, but being in a place with only one exit felt bad.

They stopped by the car.  The two left tires had been slashed.

Across the small parking lot, on the road, Sootsleeves’ dingy white convertible pulled up to the intersection.  She looked over.

And Avery saw her dad notice her.  And his eyes went to the one twisted-up bit of gray cloth that Avery had at her wrist.

Sootsleeves was checking in, seeing if Avery wanted a ride.

Avery moved her hand in a place her dad couldn’t see, flicking four fingers at a time, asking Sootsleeves to move on.

Which only helped a little.

“She’s cute.”

“What?” Avery asked, alarmed, worried her dad had a concussion.  Was he saying America, who’d wanted to shit on his-

“Nora?  It was right there when you handed me your phone.”

“Ah.  She’s pretty darn cool.”

“Cool.”

“Drums.”

“Oh, I feel bad for her parents, but that’s neat.”

Avery smiled some.

Were they not going to talk about-

She noticed how her dad was studying her.

He drew in a deep breath, as if he was gathering himself to say or ask something, and then coughed more, holding his hand to his side.  There was moisture in the eye Avery could see when the painful coughing fit stopped.

She leaned into him as gently as she could to hug him, and he hugged her back, his eyes going up to the sky, where the moon continued to bleed openly.  Little hairs all over Avery’s arms and neck stood up.

They were going to talk about it.  No avoiding it.

But she also needed to talk to Lucy and Verona, and figure out what the fuck had had Lucy so worried and if it had anything to do with this.

Which, she would quickly find out, didn’t have anything to do with this, and was pretty damn bad on its own.

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