Author: Wildbow

Gone and Done It – 17.15 | Pale

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“What is this?” Lucy’s mom asked her.  She held up the bundle.  “What’s going on?  What’s that mask?”

Lucy pulled the mask off, fast enough she nearly dropped it.  Avery did more to catch it than Lucy did.  Lucy pulled it against her chest, holding it with her wrists crossed over it.

“I…” she breathed the word, and looked to the others for support.  She locked eyes with Verona.

“Don’t-” Lucy’s mom told her.  “Don’t do what you did last night.  Don’t have Verona speak for you.  Just tell me.  Please.  What’s going on?”

“Please,” Kelsey echoed.

“That’s a lot to get into,” Lucy said.

“Try.”

“We only have, like, twenty minutes,” Verona noted.  “If we’re going to stay on schedule.”

“Stay on schedule for what?” Lucy’s mom asked, with rising anxiety in her voice.

“I… I feel like I should be better at this.”  Lucy gripped the mask tighter.  “I wrote letters.  As a just-in-case.  Edited them, replaced them, rewrote them.”

“In case of what?” her mom asked.

“In case- I died.”

“Same,” Avery said, quiet.

Kelsey laughed, nervous.  As a sound it had the same effect on the situation as the testing of a drill in the background of an imminent torture session.

It looked like it had the same effect on her mom.

“What are you doing that you think you’re going to die, Lucy?” her mom asked, voice very measured.

“In writing those letters- sorry, going back to that.  Trying to organize thoughts.  I tried writing out everything as it happened and I just- doesn’t work.  I couldn’t take twenty minutes to explain how we got here without missing everything that matters-”

“What is here?  What’s going on?” Connor asked, interrupting.  “Because it seems like-”

“Magic,” Verona said, quiet.

Lucy’s mom turned her head to look at Avery, then Connor and Kelsey, then Lucy.

Lucy almost took a step back from the force with which that look hit her.

“Can we go inside?” Avery asked.  “We don’t have a lot of time and we’re vulnerable like this.”

“Vulnerable?”

“Please.  Inside?” Lucy asked.

When her mom didn’t budge she went instead.  Lucy hurried up the steps and it looked like her mom wanted to reach for her but had arms full.  Lucy collected the sticks in her arms instead, hurrying inside.

Verona and Avery followed.  The parents had to follow after.

If Lucy was in a horror movie with a torturer ready to bring her worst fears to life, testing the tools, then hearing the front door close behind them, it was like that big sliding shutter had come down, latching and locking shut.

No avoiding this.

Or there was a way to avoid this but she couldn’t help but feel it would do permanent damage to her relationship with her mom.

The living room didn’t even feel like her living room.  Everything was the same but everything was off too.  The fact it was late and dark made it worse.  She reached for the light switch and missed twice.  She hadn’t done that in two years.

She couldn’t afford to reach out and miss here.

Lights on, the room illuminated.  She put the bundle down and pulled her clothes free of it, then didn’t know where to put them.  She ended up putting them on the armchair, then laying the sticks over them to cover them.  She pulled out the paper and found it torn and partially burned.  She pocketed it.

Procrastination done, she turned to see everyone in the living room and nobody sitting down.  It was like nobody in the room could go within one stride of any kind of comfort or easing down.

“Did Breanne see anything?” Avery asked.  “Do the cousins know?”

“No, just us.  I think,” Connor said.  “There’s something weird, isn’t there?  Keeping people from figuring it out?  Because talking to Kelsey-”

“The universe helps keep the secret, kinda,” Verona said.  “Well-timed interruptions, coincidences that help you think of explanations that aren’t, you know, oh shit, there’s magic in the world.”

“Terrifying,” Lucy’s mom said.

“It has… scary moments.  Look, I was saying, before-”

“Who is it that wants to hurt you?” her mom asked.

“Let me talk!?” Lucy raised her voice.

Nobody made noise.

“Us.  Let us talk,” Avery said.

Lucy nodded.  She wanted to cry, a bit, but she knew if she started, this would be a mess.  “I was saying, I was writing letters.  I agonized over letters.  And I was saying I don’t want to recite events in the order they happened, even though that’d give you the basic answers.  That never worked.”

“The what of what’s going on, maybe, the when,” Verona threw in.

Lucy nodded again, tense, a tightly controlled gesture.  “I’d rather explain everything important I’d miss doing that.  I- we’re trying to help people.  Kennet.  But there’re lots of people who’re vulnerable, exploited.  And really soon we’ve gotta go try to rescue things.  The reason they blew things up and scared you all, this timing, it’s to screw us up.  Stop us.”

“Who’s they?”

“Eighty-ish people who are trying to take over Ontario behind the scenes, basically,” Verona replied.

“America Tedd?” he asked.

Avery nodded.

“It takes too long to explain,” Lucy hurried to say, before things went on another tangent.  “But I want you to understand, I’m- we’re doing this to help people.  We kept secrets but we had to.”

“It’s a rule.  Puts you in danger if you know,” Verona added in.

“Why you in this danger, why you making these decisions?  Why you?” Lucy’s mom asked.

Lucy clutched the mask tighter.

“We were the ones who got chosen,” Avery replied.

“Chosen by who?”

“Miss,” Avery added.  “That’s her name.”

“Who is basically the bleeding moon in the sky right now, due to crash down on us sometime between dawn and noon, we think,” Verona said.  “Hence our need to go in… sixteen minutes.”

“Not helping,” Lucy told Verona, in her angriest whisper.

“What?” Kelsey asked.

“You’re the chosen one, like in Declan’s movies?” Avery’s dad asked.  He smirked.  “Shouldn’t be surprised.”

Kelsey laughed again.  That tension-ratcheting, nervous titter.  “What?”

“Picked, more than chosen,” Avery said.  “Chosen but not chosen ones.”

“Miss picked Avery first,” Verona said.  “Because hey, there’s magic in the world, but a lot of the power is in the hands of corrupt people.  She wanted to make Kennet a refuge for those who wanted to get away from that, or get away from… the badness that the current dynamics push them into.”

“Why you?” Lucy’s mom repeated.  “What do you have to do with that?”

“It started with Avery,” Lucy said.  “Because Avery’s great, caring, empathetic.  Miss needed someone a step removed from…”

“Reality,” Avery said.  “Society.  Norms.  Someone a little lost.  And I was lost for a bit.”

“Oh,” her mom said, voice soft, breaking a little.

“That sounds like everything a parent should be shielding you from,” Lucy’s mom said.  “Being picked out because you’re vulnerable?”

“A bit, yeah, I guess,” Verona replied.  “But we were all a bit other, a bit pushed out, pushed away, so yeah.  Lucy and I got approached and introduced to Avery because Miss had a shortlist of kids, and we were the best matches.  Which we are.”

Avery nodded.

“Children, though?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“Teenagers,” Lucy replied.

“Child!  You are my child!  You are young!”

The sudden volume and intensity made Lucy pull back.  The faint echo of the shout rang through the living room.  She would have pulled back more, even fled, but a stick stuck out of the bundle she’d laid across the armchair and poked her in the butt.

Lucy’s mom, clenching her fists together and pressing them together into a gesture that was almost praying, looked at Connor and Kelsey.  “You share my concern here, right?”

“Yeah,” Connor said.  His forehead was so scrunched together it looked like it’d leave permanent lines there.  “Yeah, I do.”

“Do you want the easy answer on that or the complicated one?” Verona asked.  “About why kids?”

“I want all the answers,” Connor said.

“No time for that.  Easy answer?  If the people they picked were too grown up I guess they come with preconceived ideas, and she wanted someone she could ease into the practice, new ways of thinking, without carrying too much baggage into it.”

“Or, taken from the other direction, someone she could mold,” Lucy’s mom said.  “That’s concerning.  That’s enough to make me sick.”

“Sorry,” Lucy said.

“It’s not you.  Not you okay?” her mom said, insistent.  “I’m not mad, not at you, I’m so scared right now, and we haven’t even touched on this supposed magic.  We’re talking about manipulative figures approaching you, roping you into- into what?  A revolution?”

“A bunch of stuff,” Lucy said.

“What’s the complicated part of that earlier thing?  Why they picked kids?” Connor asked.

He had a way of really latching onto details.

“She thought it would help slip some stuff past our enemies here,” Verona replied.  “If they underestimated us.  Three dumb incompetent kids brought in so outsiders wouldn’t come in.  Except then we weren’t dumb or incompetent.”

Lucy wished she could have a fifteen minute sit down with the others before deciding on a response to every question, but they didn’t have fifteen minutes for all the questions and answers, and it made everything feel very out of control.

“You had enemies from the beginning, then,” Lucy’s mom concluded.

“Yep,” Verona replied.

Connor frowned.  “As far back as when you met Avery?  When was that?  Spring?”

“Yeah,” Lucy replied.  “We were right in the middle of things to start, but we were also- we were doing good.  We were saving lives.”

“Brie?” her mom asked.  “That was the name, right?  She came up.”

Lucy nodded.  “But we didn’t save Gabe, from class.  Or Reagan.”

“Gabe?  I don’t remember a Gabe.”

“Exactly,” Verona said.

“God, Verona, don’t- please think about what you’re saying, we’re not trying to be funny or coy, okay?” Lucy asked.

“I’m not trying to do that.”

“Don’t leave things out,” Lucy’s mom said.  “Don’t lie.”

“Okay, uh, wait, wait-” Lucy stressed the last ‘wait’ because people were talking over one another.  “I want to make this clear.  The big thing about us three being part of all of this is we can’t lie, not without steep consequences.  We haven’t been able to lie since spring.”

“Almost all of the Others can’t lie either,” Verona supplied.

“Others?”

“Non-humans.  Ghosts, goblins, ghouls, fae.  Monsters, if you want to be weird about it.”

“Oh, there’s monsters,” Kelsey said, tittering again.

“We can’t lie,” Lucy repeated.  “We haven’t been lying, but we’ve had things we couldn’t talk about, because it gets punished.”

“By who?  Miss?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“No.  The universe.”

Her mom shook her head and turned away, pacing.

“Don’t- don’t walk away.  Don’t abandon me.”

“I’m not.  I’m not, I’m sorry.  I just can’t stand still like this.  This is a nightmare.  You do realize this is a parent’s worst nightmare?”

“Is it- could it actually be one?” Verona asked.

“I really don’t think it is.”

“What are you talking about?” Kelsey asked.

“We, hmmm,” Avery said, looking at Lucy.  “We know someone who manages nightmares.”

“Wow,” Kelsey whispered.  Lucy was glad she wasn’t laughing.

“Can I introduce him to a coworker of mine?” Connor asked.

“Her,” Avery said.

“Her.”

“Please be serious,” Lucy’s mom said.  “Please.  This is bad enough, I checked on my daughter as I got home and a short time after there was an explosion… and I went back into that room.  There were shreds of her around those sticks.”

“I’m glad Breanne didn’t see that,” Connor said, more seriously.  “For us it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, wasn’t it?”

“I thought at first Connor wasn’t well, the way he was fixating on certain things.  The moon,” Kelsey said.  “But we had a discussion with my sister and brother in law, as has become customary…”

Connor sighed.  “Caring for Grumble.  My dad.”

“And then we were out on the porch, talking over far too much wine.  Also customary.  The more details Connor brought up, the more I…”

“I envy you,” Lucy’s mom said.

“And then the explosion.  One last bit of weirdness.  Avery gone.  Phones were down.  Now… magic and monsters.”

“Others,” Lucy said, quiet.  “They’re people.  Which is a reality we’ve had a lot of arguments and things about.  The Others get bound, enslaved.  Places they managed are being taken over by humans.  Others.”

“Those arguments, were they with America?” Connor asked.

“Not her in particular.”

“The eighty people who are in Kennet?” Connor asked.

“With some of them, yeah,” Verona said.

“Does us having some idea about this make us- do we have to tell the truth now?” he asked.

“I didn’t even think about that,” Kelsey gasped.

“No,” Verona replied.  “You have to do a ritual to be welcomed into that world fully.  Usually strip naked-”

“Oh my god,” Lucy’s mom said.

“Which we didn’t do, we wore masks, hats and capes instead,” Lucy insisted.  “Please skip unnecessary details, Ronnie.”

“-bring special items, food for Others, draw a diagram in the dirt or in chalk on the floor, blah blah blah,” Verona finished.

“Are we in danger?” Connor asked.

“Possibly,” Verona replied.  “Buddy of mine left them the impression our places are protected, so an outright attack on our homes wouldn’t work.”

“But I guess America Tedd isn’t the type to listen to warnings,” Avery added.

“Are you in danger?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“Yeah,” Lucy admitted.  “But I’m okay with that, because-”

“I’m not okay with that.”

“I know,” Lucy told her.  She gripped the mask tighter.  “But that’s why I want this conversation to be- I guess I want it to be us explaining why we have to.”

“Kennet’s dying and that’s because of mystical stuff,” Avery said.

“Fuck Kennet,” Lucy’s mom said.  “There are lots of other towns.”

“The weird stuff with the cops?” Lucy asked.  “The surge of violent patients?  That wasn’t drugs.  This stuff has ramifications.”

“Political?  Are the ruling elite secretly wizards?” Connor asked.

“No,” Verona told him.

“Rules?”

Verona shook her head.  “Kind of.  That, and Avery was picked because she was lost, right?  We were all a bit Othered.  Lucy was angry and I was… you know my family situation.  The roads to magic lead away from that.  At best, you’re a rich person who knows people and gives really good advice or something, getting you an in with the innocent powers.”

“I don’t give a f- I don’t care if the prime minister is a baby eating ogre,” Lucy’s mom said.  “What I care about is that you’re talking about some time limit, and you’re hoping to walk out that door.  And my daughter’s going to be in danger?  There’s a very real possibility that that might be the last time I see her?”

“If I don’t walk out the door, then there’s a much higher chance that the moon falls on Kennet and reality as this town knows it shits itself.  That a man trying to take over Ontario wins, and he binds- mind controls, enslaves whole populations.  This is a man who let his son walk into a fight to the death he couldn’t win because he’d disappointed him.”

“That’s not a convincing argument,” Lucy’s mom said.  “I know it should be but all I hear is that you’d be dealing with someone that ruthless, or stepping out into a world where fight to the deaths happen in the first place.”

“That world has existed for all this time,” Lucy replied.  “And we have a chance at changing a small part of it to be something better and safer.”

“That’s a garbage trade.  I’m sorry.  Your safety for a shot at helping others?”

“It’s my choice to make,” Lucy insisted.

“I’m your parent, you’re my young daughter, so… is it?” Lucy’s mom asked.

“Nine minutes and change,” Verona murmured.

“Verona.  You can’t expect me to look your mother in the eye, someone I call a friend, and tell her that I let you go out into danger, when you were more or less in my charge.”

“I don’t.  If it came to that I expect you to say you tried but hey, I’m magic, so I caught you by surprise.”

“Please don’t fight my mom, Ronnie,” Lucy said.

“Not fighting.  Evading.”

“Mom, dad?” Avery asked.  “How are you doing?”

Kelsey reacted to that with another nervous laugh.  It set Lucy’s nerves on edge, it was so ill-fitting for what was happening.

“The moon,” Connor said.  “It’s the moon, it’s also this Miss person, and it’s crashing down?  Explain this to me.  What is it you’re doing?”

“Catching her,” Avery replied.  “She was normal, basically like you or Jasmine, but without a face or hands, but if she comes from a very magical place and crashes down… we can make Kennet magic.  But if we do this ritual, we can ensure it’s magic behind the scenes.  We can keep bad people from getting a good grip on it, give a sanctuary to people who need it, and fix a few other problems, like the way Kennet is- it’s twisting up.  Too hard to get into, too easy to leave.”

“Is that why you left?” Connor asked.

“No,” Avery replied.  “Sorry.  I wasn’t comfortable at home.  Everything else going on…”

“Seven minutes and a bit,” Verona said.

“…just left me tired, I guess.  Maybe if I was less tired I could’ve stuck it out.  Sorry.”

“You shouldn’t have felt like you needed to stick everything out,” Connor told her.  “Stop apologizing.  We agreed which house you went to wouldn’t ever be a thing you had to apologize for.”

“Okay.”

“I have so many questions.”  Connor put one hand on his wife’s back.  He looked anxious.  “I want to find a solution here.”

“Seven minutes to do that,” Verona pointed out, checking her phone.

“There’s no way to figure it all out because you could spend a whole lifetime studying one thing, like goblins, and there’d be so much more to figure out,” Lucy said.  “Which is why I want to make it clear, I swear, except for Paul, I’ve been trying to do real good.  What we’re doing is good, in the face of-”

“Whole systems of wrong,” Verona threw in.

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Lucy’s mom said.  “And you should never have been part of all of this.  That’s wrong.”

“I want to do this, I want to fight, I want to change things for the better.”

“Same here,” Avery said.

“Yeah,” Verona said.

“And you’re children.  I don’t see it as any different than if some greasy military recruiter had approached Booker when he was seventeen and lost and told him he could find purpose in the world if he went overseas and fought for his country.  You say the universe has rules and keeps secrets or retaliates?  Well I have my own damn rules and I’m keeping my daughter away from all of this and I’m saying if they want to put everything on the line at the cost of my daughter’s health and safety, without reaching out to her parent?  If they want to exploit someone like Verona, who is vivacious and creatively driven and so vulnerable because she’s dealing with a lot?  Maybe it’s fitting they lose this big fight because they don’t get them.  They don’t get to make the choice to risk them.  I don’t know if you two agree-”

“Oh, I can’t stop laughing because I’m nervous and scared, but I am in total agreement and total awe you can word that so well in the face of all of this,” Kelsey said.  “Total agreement.”

“Yeah,” Connor said.  He nodded.

“It’s called karma, by the way,” Verona said.  “The universal rules.”

“Perfect,” Lucy’s mother whispered the word, anger etched on her face.  “Call this karma too.”

This wasn’t working.  Lucy and her mom were getting more frustrated, Verona was being weird, and Avery felt like she was more and more on the sidelines.

Which kinda spelled out everyone’s worst impulses and character traits, maybe.

There was no time.

“You’re letting your mom-ego get in the way of things!” Lucy raised her voice.  “If you pull us away, it does a lot of damage-”

“Including to us.  We’d have to take responsibility,” Verona pointed out.

“I’ll take responsibility,” Jasmine replied.

“It doesn’t work that way!” Lucy got louder.  “You don’t understand this.  I’m asking you to please trust me.”

“I trust you, I love you, but I don’t trust- that world, out there!  Monsters or no monsters, whatever else, I’m not going to let you get dragged out to fight someone else’s war, revolution, whatever you want to call it-!”

“You’re willing to let people die?  There are- there’s Others that live forever and they get bound up in magic and made to serve generation after generation of family.  Miss was controlled to the point she was someone else’s puppet.  If you do this, if you act on this kneejerk reaction, if you drag me away from this, you’re going to find out about what’s really going on and how much we lost, and it’s going to mess you up!”

“I’m willing to risk that.  But I’m not going to take this arbitrary time limit that’s pressuring me to a decision-”

“Their time limit!  The bad guys’s!  The same people that paid America to attack us, the same people that are going to help put a guy in charge of Kennet and that can’t be revoked.  Be mad at them!”

It was impossible to get a word in edgewise.

Avery reached out.

She wasn’t sure how it would help, but at this point, she wasn’t sure a lot of things could hurt.

Snowdrop wasn’t far.  She knew the trees around Lucy’s place, and scrambled up one, over to the window that Lucy habitually left unlocked and warded.

Snowdrop promptly stepped down onto the computer chair by Lucy’s desk in her room, which slid, and fell.

The thump could be heard upstairs.

“What was that?”

“That was Snowdrop,” Avery said.

“Why?” Lucy asked.

“Why is the question why?  Don’t you mean what?” Jasmine asked.

“We know Snowdrop.”

“Wait, Snowdrop the animal you had pictures of on your phone,” Avery’s mom said.

Avery nodded.

“Back in Thunder Bay?”

Snowdrop, hurrying, reached the stairs, progressing down far enough that she could peek down, biting her upper lip with slight snaggleteeth.

Avery jerked her head.  Snowdrop came the rest of the way.  She ran up to Avery and collided with her in a one-armed hug, before smiling up at the parents.  Her shirt read ‘Garbage Girl’ and had a road-sign style graphic of a garbage man throwing garbage into a dump truck, all in black, with the opossum that was being chucked out with the trash standing out in white.

“That’s Snowdrop?” Avery’s mom asked.

Snowdrop opened her mouth and Avery covered it.  “Just so you know, before Snowdrop says anything that makes this way worse, she has a magic thing going on.  She says things contrary to what she means.”

“Good call,” Lucy said.

Snowdrop waved.

“Who or what is Snowdrop?” Avery’s mom asked.

“Some witches have black cats and I have Snow,” Avery said.  “She backs me up.”

She let go.

“America and Braxton did this and she’s still around.  The rest of them are sleeping in despite her attempts to wake ’em.  Your houses are unprotected, but the others are feeling really confident about our chances at pulling this off.  Downhill from here.”

“Translating to America pulled this and she ran, woke up the rest of them.  We’ve got guards at the houses, but our guys are feeling nervous about the plan.  Only gets harder from here,” Avery explained.

“That’s not what I meant,” Snowdrop said.

“We can’t afford to take the time to translate,” Lucy said.

“It’s not like we’re making any headway your way,” Avery replied.

“There’s no headway to make,” Jasmine told them.  “Your safety is my first priority.”

“Which is why we need to do this,” Verona said.  “If this goes bad, and Kennet gets hit by the Founding, none of our intended protections, something like three thousand people probably become aware of magic, and Karma means we take the flack.”

“This seems haphazard,” Avery’s dad said.  “If the stakes are that high…”

“Because we’re up against something bigger, stronger, older,” Lucy said.  “And things keep setting us back.  So much of it comes down to the next few hours.  Maybe the next hour.”

“Just over four minutes,” Verona said.  “Then that hour starts.”

“Snowdrop, hi,” Avery’s mom said.  “You might be my first introduction to all this that isn’t an explosion, a bleeding moon, or a bundle of sticks.”

“I’m all three of those things.”

“Okay, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Can’t say the same for you.  You’re so mean to Avery.”

“I- I see.  Opposite speak?” she asked Avery.

“Not exactly opposite.  But yeah, basically.”

“Can you maybe… stop doing that?” Avery’s mom asked.

“I’ll stop, sure.”

“This is wasting time,” Lucy whispered.

“Why-?” Avery’s dad asked.  He gestured at Snowdrop.  “No offense, but why her?”

“None taken,” Snowdrop said.

“Long story.”

“Are you soulmates, is it predestined when you become a- whatever?” Avery’s mom asked.  “Do Lucy and Verona-?”

“We’re partners.  Romantic and junk,” Snowdrop said.

“I picked her.  To extend her life past an opossum’s usual two to four years, and because it was my magic that made her… Snowdrop,” Avery said.

“Is Nora magic?”

“Or Jeanine, is the sports team real?”

“It’s real, they aren’t magic.”

“Liberty?”

“Kelsey, I don’t think any- wait.”

“America and Liberty and Anthem Tedd, yeah.  Liberty’s so wacky with magic I worried about introducing her to you,” Avery said.

“We’ve got a deadline where we really should be gone and working on stuff,” Lucy stressed.

“There’s no deadline if you’re not going.”

“We kinda have to.  Or the consequences…”

“My dad said that.  Before he- he broke my mask, magic stuff, gifts I’d received, work I’d done,” Verona said.  “You’re not going.”

“Verona, honey,” Jasmine said.  “I can’t tell if I should hear that as genuine or if it’s manipulative, but it feels-”

“It’s genuine.  I don’t know why I said it.  This all feels bad,” Verona replied.  “The entire thing just jumped to mind, really vivid in my head.  Sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, but if it’s dangerous, I can’t conscience… can’t someone else handle things?”

“Not when this is as big as it is.”

This was going in circles.

“Snow,” Avery said.  “Who’s outside?”

“Everyone except the leadership, and the ghouls.”

“Louise?”

“Hanging back.  She’s a ways off.  They’re going to skip the whole talk over what to do next and go straight to emergency measures.”

“What are these names?” Avery’s mom asked.

“Just-”

Avery left Snowdrop and crossed the living room, and her mom and dad moved very quickly, blocking the way between the living room and the front hallway.  Her mom was still carrying the bundle of sticks.

“It’s okay,” Avery said.  She paused, then reached for Snowdrop.  Snowdrop took her hand, then became an opossum, clinging to her hand.  Avery moved her over to the bundle of sticks her mom still carried, and Snowdrop settled into the crook of her arm, leaning into the sticks.  “Here.  Cuddling Snowdrop is good when you need to ease up.”

Her mom gave Snowdrop a tentative pat.  Her dad reached out to scratch Snowdrop’s lower back, probably the most strategic spot to reach for that was furthest from the mouth without being rump or belly.

Avery circled the furniture in a way that put her further from the door, as she walked over to the window.  She popped the latch on the window, which made her dad startle again, like he thought she’d open the window and jump through the screen on the other side.  “Anyone out there?”

Crooked Rook, wearing the guise of an old woman, stepped out to stand at the end of the lawn.

Jasmine looked.  “I know her.”

“Can you get Louise?”

Rook left.

“We only have a couple minutes,” Lucy said.

“It’s okay if we go a bit over,” Verona said.  “I just don’t want to lose track of time overall.”

“That was the woman who saved me when the man I’d been dating turned aggressive,” Jasmine said.

“The people who were responsible for the violence, and Kennet getting all twisted up, they led him to you, to distract us.  Like you’re being used against us now,” Lucy said.  “Rook and Zed, among others, they helped.”

“Is Zed-”

“Tech wizard with emphasis on the wizard,” Verona clarified.

The headlights illuminated the dark street, which had few streetlights.

Louise’s car pulled up.  She climbed out, and stood by the driver’s side door.

“Can one of you let her in?” Avery asked her parents.

Her dad went.

Louise went to the door.  Avery fretted over the time.

“Hi,” Avery’s dad said.  “Louise?  I’m Connor.”

“Louise is in charge, essentially,” Lucy said.

Louise walked with Avery’s dad to the doorway.  She was wearing a dark flannel top that looked like it had pockets for the hands at the sides built in.  Thirty-five, but looked older with how tired she was, and her eyes were bleeding.

“So you’re the person to blame?” Jasmine asked.

“I don’t know,” Louise said.  “It depends on the topic.”

“I want to slap someone for how my daughter’s been treated, and-”

“Not Louise,” Lucy interrupted.  “She’s- not to blame.”

“What are you?”

“Tired, concerned,” Louise replied.

“She’s human,” Avery clarified.

“With an eye condition, I guess?” her dad joked.  “Sorry.”

“No.  Don’t worry.  It won’t stain your carpet.  It’s the universe’s penchant for drama, I think,” Louise said.

“Louise is late to this.  She joined the group to give humans a say.  She watched over us, and was someone we could go to when we needed to talk to an adult,” Avery said.  “Because we couldn’t go to you.  We should’ve gone to her more, I think.  If you have questions, I think she could answer them?”

“I’m happy to do anything you need,” Louise said.  “I drove over to give a ride if it was needed, and to talk to the rest about contingency plans.”

“Are there any?” Jasmine asked.

“No good ones, I don’t think.”

Avery looked out the window.  Then motioned.

Rook came in.  Between the time she was out on the driveway and the time she walked through the front door, she dropped the guise of being human.

She cut an intimidating figure, dressed in black, reasonably tall, rigid, dark, with colorful skin, white hair, and an arrangement of objects at her back.

“You saved me from Steven,” Jasmine said.

“I helped.”

“What is this?” Jasmine asked, turning.

Avery beckoned again.

“Wait.”

“I remember him,” Avery’s dad said.  He looked at Avery’s mom.  “The man from the restaurant.”

Toadswallow, like Rook, wore a human guise up until the moment he walked through the doorway.  Avery’s dad stepped back away from Toadswallow as he became small, the front door banging against the wall or doorstopper as Avery’s dad moved into it.

“Bubble, lovely, best you stay outside.  This seems to be a delicate situation, and while you have your graces…”

“Others would get upset at you for that kind of trash talk,” Bubbleyum said.  Standing behind Toadswallow, she leaned over his head, curling forward, to kiss him.  Toadswallow beamed a little after, though he tried to hide it.

Toadswallow approached, stopping in the doorway.  He then walked away, back into the front hall.  He came back, dragging the mat that wet boots usually went on.  He placed it down.  He put it by the door and plopped himself down.  “Don’t want to get my grubby self on your nice white carpet or furniture.  Sir Toadswallow.  Charmed.”

“Charmed, sir,” Avery’s mom said.

“Hi Toad,” Avery said.

Verona turned her phone so Avery could see it.  There was a timer on display, and it had passed the required time.  No alarm sounded, but the number had turned red and counted onward.

They were eating into crucial time now.  Time they might need to draw a second diagram if a piece of technomancy failed, or if they had to relocate and draw something as an emergency.

Others followed, without being beckoned.  Tashlit and the ghouls.  Tashlit hugged Verona from behind, with Verona hesitating, stiff, before leaning back into her.  Chloe said something about her sweater and then gave Lucy a kiss on the cheek.  Nibble looked at the widescreen television like a hormonal teenage Rowan had just walked into a room with a topless model in it, then settled in, standing by Chloe.

“Guilherme?” Lucy asked.

“Injured.  Fought Grayson Hennigar and lost,” Rook said.

“His pride is more injured than anything else, don’t worry,” Toadswallow said.

“Knowing Guilherme, injured pride is worrying,” Lucy said.

“Matthew is still absent,” Rook noted.

“I haven’t gone back to get him,” Avery said.  “I will after.  I don’t think he’s in good shape.”

Grandfather entered.  He hung back a bit, almost more in the front hall than the living room.

“What are you going to do?” Avery’s dad asked the assembled Others.

“I don’t know,” Toadswallow said, playing with the sounds of the words as he said them.  He rolled his head over, looking up at Avery and Lucy.  “What are we going to do?”

“This isn’t us strongarming you or trying to scare you,” Avery told the parents.

“I was a little worried it was,” Jasmine replied.

“But I guess… if you’re mad, be mad at them.  But also, if you’re going to say we shouldn’t keep them from being captured and used by power hungry wizards and witches-”

“Practitioners,” Verona said.

“-At least look them in the eye,” Avery finished.

“I was there from the start,” Toadswallow said.  “Most of these others joined later.  If you’re going to be mad, be mad at me.”

“I don’t think I could reach down far enough to slap you, like I want to,” Jasmine said.

“Toadswallow would probably enjoy being slapped around,” Grandfather said.

“Best to punch or kick.  Slaps- it’s complicated,” Toadswallow said.

“He’d enjoy that too, I bet.”

“I’d rather focus on the second part though,” Lucy said.  “Please?”

“You’re mad,” Toadswallow observed.

“Yeah.  You took my daughter.  You put her in danger.  You put her in a situation where she’s lying to me.  Verona- did this make her situation with her dad worse?  Avery?  Saying I’m mad is putting it lightly.  With this Miss Other most of all.”

“Miss is on her way, whether you like it or not,” Rook said.

“Then do what you want.  Kick, punch, hurl me into a wood chipper,” Toadswallow said.  “Or castigate Miss if and when she’s available.  Like Crooked Rook said, she’s coming.  If you’re angry and you want someone punished, I think any of us would accept your terms.  Go to Louise, make your argument.  Make it a trial, even.  I’ll plead guilty.  I think Miss would as well. Matthew, even, though he’s been through a lot, and it would be a kind of cruelty.”

“And Edith?” Avery’s mom asked.  “The name came up, said together.”

“If you want to give Edith the what-for, I won’t complain,” Toadswallow said, with a half-smile.

“Edith is one of the people who secretly sent that guy after you,” Lucy said, quiet.  “Betrayal.”

“I don’t care,” Jasmine said.  “I don’t know about any of that.  I’ll hear about it later, I’m sure.  But I have some idea of what you want them to do.  You want to send them out into danger, and I can’t let you.  No.”

“If you’re mad, Jasmine,” Toadswallow said, “We will bear the full brunt of it.  Ten times over, if we must.  But not tonight.  Too many would hurt.  We deserve your anger, but the likes of Chloe and Nibble over there, they don’t.  They would be put down.  Grandfather here beside me doesn’t.  He’d be captured by one of the many violent practitioners in Kennet, and put to work, sent to battlefields over and over again until he broke.  Like his compatriots.”

“Like John would have been,” Lucy said.  She pulled the dog tag out from under her shirt collar.

“The girls,” Toadswallow said.  “They don’t deserve to live with regret.  With having to defy you and break your hearts, or with having to stay and know that so much was lost because they did as you asked.”

“We’re really out of time,” Verona said.

“They don’t deserve that,” Toadswallow repeated.  “Your daughters are exceptional.  I was a cur pretending to be a gentleman, I still am, but I’ve found some goodness in me I couldn’t have without them.  Miss, I think, has found the same kind of growth, through them.  Warmth, and weakness, even, through the regret.  She wouldn’t be putting everything on the line to do this if she hadn’t.”

“You’ve put something impossible in front of us,” Avery’s mom said.

“I compared this to a greasy soldier recruiting my son to fight someone else’s war, before,” Jasmine said.

“Fair,” Toadswallow said, glancing up at Grandfather.

“But now- I can’t help but think of the parable I’d hear in nursing school.  My daughter on the butcher’s block.  For each eye, someone gets sight, for her heart, her lungs, her kidneys, her liver, each one a life saved.  Then for Verona and Avery too?”

“I work in healthcare tech,” Avery’s dad said.  “And from my limited exposure to doctors and nurses, I know that too many work themselves to the bone.  I know nurses don’t get paid enough.  Putting themselves on the butcher’s block, as you describe it.  Organs donated out.  Years given.”

“We at least are adults capable of making the fully informed decision.”

“It sounds like you’re wanting to let Avery go,” Avery’s mom said.  She had a hand on Snowdrop.

“Yeah,” her dad murmured.  “Leaning that direction.”

Avery pressed her hands over her heart.  “Can I go?”

Her mom looked at her.  There were tears in her eyes but she wasn’t crying.

“We might not be adults but we’re not children either,” Lucy told Jasmine.

“Go.  Be safe.  Don’t you dare put yourself in danger.  Especially not tonight,” Avery’s mom said.

“I need Snowdrop.  And the Fetch.”

“The what?”

Avery took the bundle of sticks.  She dug inside- “The papers.”

“I got you,” Verona said.  “What do you need?”

“A distraction.  Another Avery running around.  Snowdrop?  You go with it.  And we’ll give you the black rope.  Snow and Fetch-Avery are our decoy.  We want to draw as much attention as possible, away from the valley.”

“On it,” Verona said.  She pulled out paper and began writing out the symbols and marks.

“What’s your plan?” Lucy asked.

“If it’s me alone, I go to the Path, get Matthew, jump straight down to the valley.  I’ll work by hand while the technomancy works.  Two at once, since time’s short.  We keep the ritual circle that works best, same signals as before.”

“And if it’s not?” Verona asked.

“You and Lucy would hit the hospital roof and school roof.  We scrap the diagrams that don’t work.”

Lucy looked at her mom, then lurched forward, hugging her.

“Please.”

Jasmine looked at the various Others.

Jasmine didn’t speak, but she nodded.  Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

But Lucy heard.  Verona grabbed the back of her shirt, and they scooped up their bags on their way to the door.

Avery took the paper and pressed it into the bundle, feeding it glamour from the High Summer rose.  Another Avery began to take shape.

“I need to raid your house for things to get onto the Path.”

“Like a forest path?” her mom asked.

“Exactly like,” Snowdrop replied.

“Bail, bail, bail, bail.  Get out of there.”

The school rooftop was located only a short distance from the hospital.  From the one roof top, with a bit of her Sight and some tricks to extend her vision, she could see Lucy at work, fending off a pair of practitioners.

A pair of dolls were crawling up the side of the hospital, avoiding being seen from any windows.  Toward Lucy.  One of them looked like one of the things from the rooftop, while another was just very large and very tall, with an oversized head for even its stature.

“Incoming, north side, up the wall, bail, get out of there.”

Verona got the Sanguine Stone out.  She was only partially done with the diagram on the school rooftop, but she cleared away gravel and began drawing something more extensive.  Vacuum, bit of pull, wind… she eyeballed the breadth of the school rooftop, then put down 75′.  The chalk came out nice and clean, at least.  She’d have to come back here to do other diagrams, sometime.

“Get out of there!” Verona raised her voice, seeing Lucy back away from the one elementalist who liked to surround himself in electricity.  “Abandon it!”

A few more quick notes.  The diagram was ending up cone-shaped, and at the wider end, facing Lucy, she was finding herself doing a lot of targeting and measurement stuff.  Stop at the corner between horizontal and vertical.

She put the sanguine stone down in the heart of the diagram she’d just whipped up, then stepped on it, applying her weight.

It was a power source, feeding power into the lines.  The chalk turned bright, blood red, illuminating her faintly.

But there was backlash.  It was unpredictable, but the practices she used could turn back on her.  More power, more backlash.

She needed this to reach all the way over there.

The first, many-limbed doll reached the corner of the rooftop, looking like an octopus with sixteen various chains of doll limbs trailing behind it.  It reached the roof’s edge, climbing over, hunched and bulky, with the trail behind it like a long dress on the red carpet or something.  The tall, big-headed one climbed immediately after it.

Verona struck the last line of chalk across the diagram.  It turned red, and everything fired off.  She ducked down, hair from the sides of her head slapping her eyes, nearly picking her up off the roof from the force of it all.

The wind parted, creating an absence, and that absence then pulled air in from the furthest point.  The doll on the roof’s edge was yanked off the rooftop, out into open space.  A few stray limbs that were gripping the roof’s edge were torn away.

It crashed onto the parking lot, the ceramic shattering into thousands of pieces.

The big-headed one managed to hold onto something well enough to avoid being pulled away from the wall.

The backlash came for Verona.  Except she’d anticipated it throwing her away from the diagram, across the roof.  Things twisted, light glinting off the stone to paint lines into the air, and she was hurled off the school roof, toward the hospital.  The school was only two stories, but the rooms were large, so it was the equivalent of being hucked off a four story building.

Don’t have enough glamour to spare for this.

She transformed herself into a bird, got her equilibrium, and then circled around, back toward the roof.  She landed, and kept the glamour partially around herself, leaving her clothes heavily decorated with black feathers.

There were others on the ground, moving toward her and the school.

It’s a school day too, she reminded herself.  The last she’d checked, it had been seven-fifteen in the morning, sunrise was at seven thirty, and school started at eight.

Which was criminal, and really fucking inconvenient.  Especially when there was a chance Miss might not arrive until noon, if she misjudged the time.

She double-checked on Lucy.

The big-headed doll was just getting over the roof’s edge now.  It raised its head up, back, and then slammed it into the rooftop.

Cracking it.

About fifty regular-sized child’s dolls, bereft of clothing, all white ceramic, came tumbling out.  They moved toward Lucy as a tide.  Barely breaking stride, Lucy turned her long-handled mallet into a scythe and swept it through the ones in front.

Verona erased the mark she’d added for the sanguine vacuum-pull, grabbing the stone, and moved toward the diagram she still needed to finish, rubbing anxiously at her palm.

“You should focus more on your surroundings.”

The first of the people had scaled up the side of the building.  A face she recognized from the Blue Heron, even though they’d never really interacted.  Easton Songetay.

He had two summonings on either side of him.  They were armored, and the flesh beneath the armor was blurry, like solid smoke.  Behind them was a doll in elegant clothing, and a twenty-something practitioner who might’ve been a relative of Mrs. Graubard, wearing slightly more modern elegant clothing.

“Hi, Easton,” Verona said.  “Hi… something Graubard?”

“Yeah.  Doesn’t matter,” the woman said.

“Right, good to know.  Can you get your family’s dolls to stop harassing my friend, please?  We’ve got stuff to do.”

“So this is the big diagram, huh?” Easton asked.  He was a bit older than Verona, and had buzzed his hair short, with a fade at the sides and back.  He wore a gauntlet and that apparently let him control the summonings.  He took a long look at the work Verona was doing.  “Why three?  One at the school, one at the hospital, one at the factory?”

“Why the hell not?” Verona asked.

He looked to one side.  “Escape route?”

Verona looked up and over.  She’d drawn the diagram that would let her flip more securely between Kennet above and Kennet below.  “Oh.  Could be.”

“And a barrier.  You didn’t take any classes on barriers, I take it?” he asked.  He put the gauntlet out, and the diagram work she’d done to safeguard the edges of the roof that were easiest to get up onto began to shimmer, distorting under the strain.

Two more Others climbed up after him, animal-people, with smashed-in faces, like pugs, each with magic circles around their necks, like collars.

“Not very strong,” he said.  He punched the barrier and it collapsed.

“Not supposed to be,” she said.  She stomped, and shattered some of the glamour that was hiding more diagram work at the roof’s edge.  A line connected the ‘escape route’ to the four sides of the roof.  With the barrier no longer in the way, Easton Songetay, the three Others, and the Graubard were standing in a linked part of the diagram.

The diagram flared, and they were promptly dumped onto the rooftop in Kennet Below, where they would be surrounded by the Vice Principal’s army.

“It’s mostly supposed to help keep you guys grouped up so I can do that,” Verona said.  She bent down and replaced the barrier part of the diagram, then winced as she stood up, hand at her back.

Bending over to draw diagrams was going to make her stooped over and creaky when she was old.  If she got that far.

Having to constantly fend off these interruptions was making the stress ratchet up.  Verona hurried to add more to the diagram.  She’d already done this once, and memory mostly served.  She understood the logic of it, which helped.  It was why she’d said it was important to the Garricks.

Peckersnot peeped loudly.

“Hey man, please tell me you’re here to save me time, not tell me about another distraction,” she said.

He pointed at the ‘escape route’.  The gate between Kennet above and Kennet below.

“Fuck.  Okay.”

She kept the stuff she was holding, hurrying over, checked the coast was clear, wiped some stuff away, and added other things.  Making it autonomous on its own.  She touched it.  “You’d better fucking believe this is for Kennet’s sake, I’m giving my all here.”

It took that as permission to draw power.  White lines glowed, and the diagram did its flippy thing.

The School Nurse, young, rode on her steed, and was surrounded by rabid grade schoolers.  “I’m supposed to help you or something.”

“The enemy is below and around the school.  Actual school starts in like, thirty, forty minutes, so don’t get seen.  People will start to show up early,” Verona said, as she hurried back to the diagram proper.

“This early?” the school nurse asked.

“Don’t ask me.  I didn’t make the rules.  It’s dumb,” Verona said, as she walked back.  She used the time she was walking to keep eyes on Lucy in the distance.  She was hurrying to get diagram work done.

“It is dumb,” the school nurse said.  She rapped the cage around the head of her steed.  “Stay, guard the third witch.  Don’t touch anything unless she says to.  Be good or you get another toilet water cleanse.”

Verona was already back at the main diagram by the time they were gone, heading into the school through the door on the rooftop.  They had to squeeze by Tashlit, who was lurking in the shadows, hiding in case someone climbed onto the roof, standing guard in case someone came up from inside the building.  It allowed Verona to focus on the perimeter.

Her phone rang and she found herself actually snarling in frustration.

Her dad?  Had he woken up and seen-

Phone.  Phones weren’t working.

She hurried to answer.

“Hey,” Zed said.

“Heyy.  Look, I’m behind, we got delayed by family stuff.”

“I’ve got Lucy on the call, Verona.  Avery’s busy.  She’s doing one last walk-around.  She’s done.”

“Done?”

“The diagram.  It’s set.  She says nobody’s in the valley.  They’re focused on you two and the fake Avery at the factory.  Technomancy burned the diagram into the field.  She’s walking the edges of it that are closest to town, to make sure there’s nothing like a really inconveniently placed mirror or puddle that could have messed with the laser and created a gap.  Even if it did, it’s probably going to be a small leak.  A weird offshoot.  Maybe a patch of horrorfication.  But she’s done.”

“I used technomancy too, but I keep having to patch it up whenever someone comes through, trampling it,” Lucy said.  “I think I’d have to bail anyway.  Like Verona keeps shouting at me from the distance.  Anthem is down there.  I’m going to duck inside.”

“Be careful.  I’ve got a technomancy connection to your phone right now, to get past the various layers of whatever you’ve got going on there.  That’s not something we want close to sensitive hospital equipment.”

“One of those things is a Bugge,” Verona told him.

“Well… is it a friendly Bugge?”

“Jury is still out.”

“If you could ask it to not eat my… everything, that would be great.  Getting back to the point- scrap what you’ve got before you run, Lucy.”

“On it.”

“Verona, same.  I think you guys are good.  Avery just texted me to say things look sound.  She’s scrapping the half diagram she drew herself.”

“Verify you’re Zed?” Lucy asked.

“I am Zed Sadler, your very worried, excited friend, so sworn.”

“So… just like that?” Lucy asked.  “It’s just a question of waiting?”

“It’s a few questions.  Hold on before you run, if you can.”

“Scrapping my work.  What questions?”

“Avery wants to know if the mundane items are set up.”

Verona looked over.  “The items set up?”

Peckersnot nodded.

“Think so,” Verona reported.

“Then, second question.  Heavy one.  I can text Jude.  Tell him to tell Miss to make the jump.”

“You’re sure?” Verona asked Peckersnot, covering the microphone part of the phone.

He shrugged, nodded, then gestured a few times.

“Then if Avery and Lucy are ready…” Verona said.  She looked at her diagram, ninety percent done.  She sorta wished it was hers they were using.  “Ashes to dust, dust to ashes.”

Those same words written at the diagram’s edge lit up.  They fed into certain lines and runes, connected to the main diagram…

All the chalk on the rooftop was stripped away, as if by one massive broom that had an ability to sweep one hundred percent of the chalk.  It came off the roof as a big white cloud.

“Then yeah.”

“Confirm for me in clear language.”

“Confirmed,” Verona replied.

“Confirming,” Lucy said.  “I really have to go.”

“Be safe.  I’m telling him sunrise is in minutes.”

“I’m very aware of how worried you’ve been while you’ve been nagging me from the other rooftop,” Lucy said.  “Love you all.”

“Love you, Luce,” Verona said.

Why did saying that make everything feel so much more ominous?

“Tash!” Verona called out.

Tashlit leaned out of the door.

“That’s it.  You want to come with me, or do you want to stay?”

Tashlit gestured.

“Okay.  Be safe navigating your way back, okay?”

Tashlit nodded.

Verona picked Peckersnot up, put him at the back of her head, then reused some of the bird-form glamour.  She ascended to the skies as a crow, Peckersnot riding her, legs on either side of her neck.

On the road below her, she saw runework flare into existence.  Ghostly archers stepped out of nowhere to raise bows- aiming.

Right.  This was a thing.  Better hope they were made by-

Each and all of them missed.

That one lady.

She swooped down to the rooftop where Snowdrop, the various goblins, the ghouls, and fake Avery were.  She landed on fake Avery, breaking twigs and things.  Snowdrop tackled her a second later.  Peckersnot tackled Snowdrop around the face.

“It’s me,” Verona said.  She hurried to get the glamour and things, then looked at the rooftop.  Snowdrop belatedly let her go.

The diagram here was nonsense.  Pure non-diagram work that would leave people scratching their heads about what they were doing.

Verona collected Avery’s clothes and the spare glamour, got the paper from inside the Fetch, and then got Peckersnot again.

“Black rope?” she asked.

“Mine,” Snowdrop replied.

Verona took it.  “We’re done, I guess.  I think they think we were mostly done… Anthem at the hospital, whatever, final decisive attack.”

“Grayson isn’t here,” Snowdrop said.

“Yeah, okay.  Well… we’re done.  Unless there’s a last minute rug-pull, that’s it.  Goblins to the Warrens, undercity to Kennet below, pull back, rest, recuperate, and cross your fingers, claws, paws, or whatever you have that this doesn’t blow everything up.”

“I’m with them?” Snowdrop asked.

“You’re with me.  We didn’t exactly make plans for after, and we can’t use our cell phones, but…”

Verona picked up Snowdrop, who, after two tugs on her arm, went small, letting Verona lift her to her shoulder.

Then she used the black rope.  Crossing Kennet.

Lucy had beat her there, to Jasmine’s house.  Everyone was on the back porch.  Jasmine, Kelsey, Connor, Louise.  Some Dog Tags were at the sides of the backyard, keeping an eye out for those coming and going.

“Are you okay?” Jasmine asked.  Arms out.  She hugged Verona tight.

Verona nodded.

“Is Avery?” Kelsey asked.

“I think so.  But she’s got to get from there to here.  That takes a bit,” Verona replied.

“I think I need that opossum, if Avery says the cuddles help,” Kelsey said.

Verona passed Snowdrop over, even though she would’ve liked the cuddle for herself.

They’d had an advantage.  Their opposition was tired.  A few nights without proper sleep.  The one night they’d been organized enough to sleep well, they’d been woken up early, gathered up to come after them and interfere in things.  A few people in the invading group just didn’t care, or were actively against the idea of what they were doing.  McCauleigh.  Andrea.

It really helped that the invaders didn’t seem to know what the moon was about.

But there was no guarantee.  No guarantee the right person wasn’t looking in the right direction, to see the marks etched out into the valley, writ large.  No guarantee that a talented Driscoll hadn’t come into town, finding some vantage point or way to see the diagrams Lucy and Verona were drawing.  No guarantee that they’d get within a gasp of making this all work and then having some elementalist sap key parts of the diagram with lightning or something.

There was no way to be confident or okay with all of this.  No way to know if she’d be forsworn in five minutes or if she’d be okay.  Her headache pounded, her stomach tight and sick.  Pain pulled at her hand, making it want to twist into a claw shape.

No way to be sure, as the bleeding moon hatched like an egg.

The wind blew hard, away from Miss.  She was curled up, surrounded by fragments of the hollow moon, black hair blowing across her face, long sleeves obscuring her hands, and a long dress masking her feet.

It took almost thirty seconds for that wind to blow from the easternmost reaches of Kennet to Lucy’s house, at the western end.

Things stirred violently, papers picking up.  Shingles peeled away from rooftops, siding of housing pulled away.  Papers, shingles, siding, and all other sorts of things hit invisible surfaces and configured themselves into more buildings, and more housing.

“It’s beautiful,” Jasmine said.

It felt very, very lonely to not be sharing this with her own parents.

She’d realized she was ‘acting out’ when Lucy had gotten on her case for maybe the third or fourth time, while they were talking to the parents.  Why.  So she’d fallen silent, mostly, only keeping track of the mission.

Avery’s parents were Avery’s parents and Lucy’s mom was Lucy’s mom.

Her own mom, it would have complicated things too much.

Her dad?  Fuck nah.

Tashlit was living her own life, finding her own groove, her own place.  Her own peace.  A friend but not a best friend, by Verona’s metric.

Jeremy would rather be with a horse girl than a non-girlfriend girl.  She missed the peace the quiet times with him had brought.  The friendship.

She had a house of her own and not so much to put in it.  Nobody to put in it, aside from the occasional visitor.

But she’d pulled this.  She’d come up with the diagram.  This was her idea.  Some help from various corners, but it was hers at the core of it, really.  Hers and Miss’s.  Practice at its most wild and inspired.

She watched as the various mundane item diagrams unspooled.  Distant objects, each surrounded by a simple magic circle, connected by lines, all pulled away from where they’d been set up and hidden, feeding into Miss’s orbit.  They formed a kind of old-school halo around her, twelve little circles that backed her, each made up of several items.

Two weren’t fully intact.  The wrong items, counterfeits, or something had been misplaced or interfered with.

Surrounded by fluttering cloth and hair, Miss turned her head, reaching out with a hand hidden by a sleeve.  She found replacement items in Kennet.  Strands of white reaching in and pulling objects free, to fit the mundane.

When the last mundane circle was complete, Verona felt a middle-of-the-gut tug deep in her belly.  The kind that went with teleportation.  Or stepping between realms.  Light shone up from the valley, and Miss’s fall became less aimless and uncontrolled.

Verona reached out with her injured hand, toward the moon-sized Miss, as Miss fell.  The sun was rising, and as it did, the blood red of the moon found something to latch onto.  The sky became deep, blood red in the span of a second.

Verona’s hand remained outstretched.  With her Sight, she saw as Lis reached out, that maze-like construction of roadways and blueprints reaching out across the sky.

Red sky… Lis…

Don’t let them.  This isn’t for them.  Verona snapped her hand together into a fist.

The red was snatched away with such force that Lis’s extension was forced to recede, hurled back to the edges of the horizon.  It became the color of Miss’s dress, while the sky was black.  Then, a moment later, that was cast off.  She chose deep regal blue instead, turning her body to face Kennet.

Verona dropped her hand down, ‘exploding’ the fist into splayed fingers as Miss made contact.  Her hand trembled, the nerve damage making it hard to hold open like that, without pressing it into something.

Moons were jarred from their hiding place behind the ski hill, raised up.  And, in a ripple that extended from Miss, buildings were jarred up from their foundations.

Every building got another floor of height.  Most were just raised up one story, a new ground floor added.  Others were emerging from houses, wearing masks.  Crosswalks were lifted up and away from streets, becoming raised paths and bridges that connected buildings on one side to buildings on the other.  Roads disconnected from intersections, or became sets of stairs, the squares of intersections now platforms where different paths of different height all connected.  Debris was caught by the air, floating lazily around them, like snowfall, but darker, sharper-edged, components looking for a place to fit in, surfaces to create.

“Masks on,” Lucy said, as they watched the changes ripple toward them.

Rook had apparently provided the adults with simple white masks.  Verona put on the cat mask.  Lucy donned the fox mask.

It reached Jasmine’s house.  They ducked down, anticipating the house changing, only to feel themselves rising with it.  The porch that was nearly level with the lawn was thrust up twelve feet, the wood of it shattering, splinters catching in the wind, leaving mossy stone below.

They had to find their way down.  Onto the street, to vantage points where they could see things clearly.

“Did it work?” Jasmine asked.  Awed.  “Regular Kennet is somehow okay here?”

Verona reached out for her Demesne.  She pushed at it, and felt it move between Kennet above, Kennet below, and Kennet found.

She nodded, opened her mouth to respond, and hiccuped a slight, tearless sob instead.

Lucy hugged her, nearly knocking her off her feet.

Avery was there, at a high vantage point, her back to them, watching.  She spotted them, then jumped the fifty feet down to them.  Snowdrop tackled her with a hug, laughing.

The ski hills had risen up too, and were decorated.  Forest mingled with ruined constructions in black slate, while leaving the slopes themselves intact and free.  And Miss, who still loomed on the horizon, had altered the edges of Kennet, so that buildings out there blocked the way.  The shrines were out there, as towers, ringing Kennet found.

Sealing the invading practitioners in.

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