Pale: 3.1 - Verona
Author: Wildbow

Verona

The giant doll’s hand receded back through the wall, tearing ribbons.  The damage as the wall distorted with the force of the hand’s movements made the windows on the other walls shatter.

Verona had hit her head as she’d fallen back, landing on her rear end.  Lucy had done much the same.  Eyes wide, Verona switched from the Sight and back again.  With the Sight, she saw a giant doll hand.  Without it, she saw nothing except the wind blowing in and stuff falling down.  But in the instants where things were switching, she could see a hand with a ring on it, shaped like a snake with its teeth hooked over the end of the tail.  She switched back.  Doll’s hand.

But on changing back to using her regular vision, the ribbons throughout the room were a bright, ominous red.

Furniture and bits of wood tumbled.  The ‘cocoon’ of ribbons was surrounded by the wood and stuff that had been in the cabin, and some of the things fell inward, banging or catching on ribbons and swinging.  There was a drum-like rap against the back of a cupboard that had been moved to the center of the room.

“You okay, Ronnie?” Lucy asked.  “That came out of nowhere.”

“Don’t know,” Verona said.

“You cracked your head.”

Verona rubbed the back of her head, checking.  No blood.  “I don’t think I have a concussion or anything.  I just fell.”

“Was this- is this something that’s supposed to happen?  Was that the Wolf taking the sacrifice?” Lucy asked.

“If it was, wouldn’t we have Avery back now?”

The floor of the room was in a bad enough state that they couldn’t really approach, and both sat there, stunned.  Verona had been nodding off a bit when the hand had crashed through.

Verona.  Verona.  Verona.

It was like a whisper with no source.  Verona shivered.

“Avery needs help,” Lucy said.

The two of them climbed to their feet.  Lucy navigated the broken floor to try to get to the point where she could see Avery, climbing on furniture and ducking under ribbons.

Verona stepped back, popped the door open, and looked.  Any doll?  other monsters?

Miss stood at the treeline, her face blocked by a branch.

Something that looked like Miss, anyway.

Verona looked back in Lucy’s direction, where Lucy was working to stick her head past ribbons and look down at where the Avery cocoon was protected by furniture.  “Is she okay?  Did the hand hurt her?”

“I can’t see her.  There’s like… a well.  She’s all the way down there.”

“Miss is outside.  I don’t think she wants to get close.  Do you want to go, should I go, do we go together?” Verona asked.

“I’ll stay.  I- we failed to protect her.  But I can try to protect this-” Lucy gestured at the ribbons, the furniture, her gesture interrupted as her arm bounced against a taut ribbon.  “-From further harm, I guess.”

“That came out of nowhere.  If we’d been standing on guard, if we had weapons in hand, we couldn’t have stopped it.”

Lucy’s frown deepened, and she didn’t reply.

“I’m going to go check with her.”

“Be safe.  Whatever that was, it could happen again.  The Other might still be out there.”

Verona nodded with some emphasis.  “I don’t know if it was an Other though.”

Lucy gave her a quizzical look.

“When I changed away from my Sight, it looked like a human hand for a moment.  Wearing a ring.”

“Woman’s hand or man’s?”

“Woman’s, I think.  Why?”

Lucy shook her head.  “Wondering if it’s anyone local.”

“I don’t think anyone wears a snake ring.  I’m going to go.”

“Give me the Hot Lead?” Lucy asked.  “Or do you want the sword ring?”

Verona reached for her bag, got the clasped box with the hot lead, and tossed it to Lucy.  She pulled on her hat, cape and mask, drew some cards out of the front flap of her bag, and opened the door as wide as it could go with the messed up walls.  She checked the coast was clear, then hurried forward.

She pulled out a card, a diagram already written on it, and held the pen, ready to make the final stroke that pulled it all together.

‘Miss’ called out, “I am not a threat, Verona.  Avery called out to me.  I wasn’t willing to draw any closer while the ritual is active.”

“Tell me something only you would know.”

“I don’t believe I can.”

“Why not?” Verona asked.

“Because any event meaningful enough to count had other people involved, witnesses, or forces that would track it.  I’ve dealt with Others and Practitioners, and forces tied to the Universe that have very long memories.”

“Tell me something,” Verona said, raising her voice a bit, anxious.  “Avery’s in trouble, and she’s one of the very few human beings I actually like.”

“I told you earlier that I was a Lost of the Paths, I escaped.  In the course of that escape, I got stuck on one area of the Paths.  A passing practitioner bound me.  He was very close to being immortal, and he used Others as a kind of protection, always in his company, compelled to take any bullet or knife directed at him, to use their power to ward off harm, and to make his life easier.  I do not remember my time before the Paths, because those memories and events are lost, and he was my very first introduction to practitioners.”

“What happened to him?”

“He did not leave the Path.  I do not know if he is dead or lost, but the effect is the same.  I’ve been dwelling on him a great deal, in context with you three.  With Avery in particular.”

Verona debated.  It was hard to picture someone who had to tell the truth telling that story and getting away with it.  It did feel like Miss.

“She’s in trouble,” Verona said, resolving to trust her.

“There are options.  One being that we could try to splice you two into the Trail to walk it.”

“Try?  No guarantee?”

“No guarantees.  Not without knowing what went wrong.  This is not the ritual, and would be leaning heavily on my understanding of these spaces and the rituals that mirror them.  The danger would be that if she’s stuck, much as I saw practitioners and roaming visitors get stuck in my time on the Paths, you could be trapped in the same mire.”

“Then I would do what I could, as would many of the other Others of Kennet, but there would be a chance our only real option would be to leave you there.  We would seek out another practitioner or set of practitioners to fill your current role.”

“That easily?  Cold,” Verona said.

“It wouldn’t be easy.  We inducted you, we would all pay a karmic cost and that would likely manifest in our next picks being disastrous.  Where’s Lucy?  We should figure out our next steps.”

“She’s watching out for more trouble.”

“Giant hand reached in.  Doll’s hand, but it looked like a human’s for a moment.  It had a ring on.  Middle finger, snake.”

“Nicolette Belanger wears a ring like that.  It could be her or someone in the same circle of practitioners.  What did the hand do?”

“It reached in and took the baby possum.”

Miss reacted to that, though the trees and leaves in the way made it hard to see how, or to see exactly what that reaction was.

Verona pressed, “Is Nicolette nearby?  Can we go after her like the other night?”

“She isn’t nearby.  John and Guilherme are patrolling, as are goblins.  Bring Lucy here.  We should decide our next steps.”

“Doesn’t Avery need protecting?”

“Without knowing more, I would guess if she was going to attack again, she would have already.  There are other reasons she might not.  Karmically, Nicolette would be the aggressor, when Avery has done the least to her and perhaps suffered the most.”

“The most?” Verona asked.

“Melissa was her classmate and teammate.  A small distinction, but-”

“-but you should go.  Get Lucy and bring her here.  We can discuss the nuances of practice at another time.”

Verona turned and jogged back.  She would have run, but she felt like she would be running more later.  “Lucy!”

Lucy stepped into the doorway, one ribbon almost knocking her hat off.  She was wearing her stuff now too.  When Verona motioned for her to come, she looked back, then hurried over.

“We have options,” Miss said.  “The first being that you could try to stitch your way into her instance of the Forest Ribbon Trail.  I don’t know if it would work-”

“-and we might get stuck too,” Verona said.

“What would we do?” Lucy asked.  “While in there?”

“You wouldn’t be able to bring a prey animal inside.  You’d need to pass the same hurdles, figure out new rules corresponding to the empty spaces left behind if she took any items with her, and then face down the wolf.  Some of the protections afforded to Finders wouldn’t apply.  You’d need to face the Wolf at his or her strongest, get to Avery, and then get her to the detour.”

Verona looked at Lucy.  Lucy’s eyebrows drew together.

“I should add, if she’s asking for help and she isn’t taking the detour, then something’s obstructing that route.  You would need to bypass that obstruction.  If you couldn’t, you would be lost, as she may be.”

“Obstructed how?” Lucy asked.

“She may have deposited an Other as another complication.  How did the hand move as it reached inside?”

Verona and Lucy mimed the hand movements.  Lucy deferred to Verona’s interpretation.

“Then it doesn’t seem she was holding something she could deposit within the ritual when she reached in.”

“Could we deposit something?”

“No.  I admit, I’m speaking in terms of theory and the hypothetical.  This would have required a lot of power and appropriate tools.  With that in mind, I suspect the Belangers as a group are involved, not just Nicolette.  Leading us to option two.”

“Which is?” Lucy asked.

“Negotiating with them.  I would hope I don’t need to reiterate what I’ve already said about the situation and the current dynamic.  Negotiation is a tricky affair, but what our enemies have worked, they may more easily unwork.”

“What would they want?” Verona asked.  “Information?”

“About Kennet?  Assuredly.  If they sensed you were desperate, which I imagine you are, they would ask for more.  It is hard to negotiate when they hold the cards, but there are ways.”

“With groups and personalities like theirs, there are times where, rather than obtain something, they would want to deny something to their many rivals.”

“Exclusivity?” Verona asked.

“Yes,” Miss said.  “But I cannot stress how dangerous this may be.  You would have some clout.  You’re the agreed-upon practitioners for this area.  But they may test you, they may seek to work around any boundaries we establish or lines we draw.  They may wrap you up in politics.  They may find avenues and angles to hurt you and sabotage you, out of envy, jealousy, greed, a desire for revenge, or because that is how some of them operate by default.”

“What are the other options?” Lucy asked.

“The third option would be to take what they took back.  Retrieve the sacrificial companion, walk the trail with the companion’s help, then have Avery sacrifice it.  Not an easy road, as you’d face the issue of both other options.  You would have to triumph over experienced, powerful practitioners who may be able to see you coming, and you would have to then walk the trail and use the detour at the end.”

“We have to deal with them anyway, don’t we?” Lucy asked.

“Yes, but I think we all would prefer to deal with them in a way that didn’t put us on the back foot.  Tomorrow is another day.  Tonight-”

“Avery,” Verona jumped in.  “Tonight is Avery.  Hungry Choir secondary.”

“Yes,” Miss said.  “There’s a fourth option, but let me postpone that.  For now, I’m going to go talk to the others, and bring them into this.  Charles may be a good contact if we’re dealing with the Belangers.  John and Guilherme need to know what to look out for.”

“What about Alpeana?” Verona asked.

“It’s good if she’s there on the other side.  For you two… if we’re going to walk the trail, one of you should get more ribbon.  Even if we aren’t walking the trail, it won’t hurt to have it.  Another one of you should make arrangements, in case Avery does not reappear in a timely manner.”

“Shops are closed and I don’t think we have much ribbon at our place,” Lucy said.  “Mostly gift stuff, and that wouldn’t be enough to wrap the baby possum, let alone both of us.”

“I might have some at my house,” Verona said.  “Remember those costumes my dad used to make?”

Lucy nodded.  “So you do that.  I’ll see if I can figure out how to keep Avery’s family from going nuts.”

“I think she just needs to appear to be in bed,” Verona told Lucy.  “There’s a lot of people in her house, so getting in is tricky.”

“No kidding about the number of people in there,” Lucy said.  “The trick Maricica taught me should let me take on some of the properties of the moonlight, like I did with the rain, and get in through the window that way.”

“Kerry, her kid sister, has a touch-activated lamp by her bed.  If you bump it it’ll glow.  I was playing with it.  And you’ll want to keep an eye out for Sheridan.  Avery said she’s on her phone late, even though she’s not supposed to be.  So she might be under her covers with the phone.”

“I’ll send Maricica to you,” Miss said.  “She’ll give you glamour and advice.”

Lucy nodded, her eyebrows drawing together again in concern or concentration.  It was so hard to tell whether it was one or the other that Verona wondered if they were one and the same for Lucy.

“We rendezvous here?” Lucy asked.  “Who watches Avery?”

“That is more the ritual than Avery at this moment, and Avery should be considered very far away,” Miss told them.  “If we’re rallying everyone against an imminent and ongoing threat, I could ask Matthew and Edith to guard things.  Between them, they should know the things to watch out for.”

Lucy shifted her footing, her voice hardening.  “If things were capable of going this wrong, like the emergency escape animal getting taken, then don’t you think maybe we should have gotten that kind of help from the start?”

“I gave the gift I did because I thought the trail and several of the boons would suit Avery in particular.  I would not have recommended it if I didn’t think she could walk it.  This kind of interference isn’t the kind of thing any of us could plan for,” Miss said.  “We can only decide how we handle it.”

“Then let’s handle it,” Verona said, interjecting before Lucy could get madder.  “Sooner is better than later.”

“It is,” Miss said.  “I’ll send Matthew and Edith.  I’ll check in once every minute or so until they arrive to watch.  If our enemies move against us any faster than that, there won’t be much any of us three can do.”

“Not okay,” Lucy said.

Then Miss was gone, standing by a tree with leaves in the way of her face in the center of Verona’s vision, gone in the time Verona’s eye flicked right to look at where the eyeball animals lay dead in the woods.

“That’s not good enough!” Lucy called out.

Verona took Lucy’s arm, tugging.  At least for the part where they were going back to Kennet, they were traveling the same direction.

“That’s not the first, second, third, or even fourth time that we’ve heard about the dangers of practices and stuff after the fact.  Now this?”

“I think Miss is right, about this being the kind of thing you can’t really account for,” Verona stated, as they walked.  They were walking up a slight incline and they’d walked earlier in the day, and then walked here.  Verona’s legs were already tiring.

“I hate it.  They can’t lie, but we can’t trust them either.  At least one of them is involved in this huge crime that’s messing up the entire town.  We can blame Nicolette Belanger, but the people who are making all of this bloody-”

Lucy swept her hand out, indicating the path and the trees.  Verona turned on her sight.

Here wasn’t as bad as other places, for the bloodiness, but it was still apparent.  Trees looked hollow, with what looked like flayed animal corpses sealed in plastic bags stuffed inside them.  There were a few tree branches with bark missing, and it looked like they were hollow, the inside stuffed with more bloody plastic sheeting.

She turned off her Sight, and the tree branches now had wood showing where the bark was missing.

“We’re supposed to check with each other if we’re dealing with Faerie.  Miss is sending Maricica.”

“Decide what you want to do in advance.  Make a plan, you’re going moon mode, using your glamour thing, you maybe go cat mode or something if you need to, in order to get out or get where you’re going.  You’re setting up an Avery image.”

“I haven’t read the notes for that one in depth.  Someone took the notes to copy them into notebooks.”

“Technically that one was her gift to me.”

“Even so,” Lucy said.  “What do I do to create the Avery image?”

“Get her to show you the techniques for manipulating glamour.  If the animal thing I was taught applies, look for a brush, or something with her hair on it.  Use the hair as a starting point to rub or stroke out the bigger glamour shape.”

“So I can get in, moon mode, I slip over to her bed, being careful of Kerry-”

“Sleeps on the bottom bunk.”

“Bunk to… right of the window, if you go in that way.  There’s a bookshelf that cuts across the room, for privacy.  She may be focused on her phone.”

“I can look for a hairbrush-”

“Too problematic,” Verona said.  “Three girls with similar hair colors all in the one bedroom?  You might get a second Kerry in the top bunk, or a giant doll if Kerry borrows the doll to brush her doll’s hair, or Sheridan, or something.”

“Would she have hair on her pillow?”

“Probably.  You should be able to make a reasonable fake Avery that looks like she’s asleep and breathing, then you get out.  Moon mode again.  Maybe from the top bunk straight to the window.”

“There has to be a pattern I can mimic.  But I’ll see.”

“Stick to the plan, have Maricica teach you specifics.”

“I’m thinking I’ll leave a note.  “Woke up early, left early.  Buys us until the afternoon.  If it comes to that, we can block calls from the school.”

Verona nodded, her eyes wide.

They fast-walked in silence, making their way down the dark trail.  Lucy’s flashlight shone the way for Lucy.  Verona’s Sight provided help when the moon wasn’t enough light to find their way.

Verona didn’t say it, but she was pretty sure Lucy was thinking the same thing.

If this situation really did extend until later tomorrow, to the point that all of those countermeasures were needed, then the situation was really, really bad.

“I should head over that way,” Lucy said, as they reached the point where the trail opened up to the bottom end of town.  “I may stop by home to assure my mom everything’s okay, then slip out again.  I have my phone.”

“Good luck finding that ribbon.”

“Good luck running interference and dealing with the Faerie.”

“You drive me nuts sometimes,” Lucy told Verona.  “But I’m glad it’s you helping me out at a time like this.”

“Same.  I just-” Verona started.

Verona shook her head.  She gave Lucy a farewell wave, and then picked up the pace.  It was easier to cover more ground now that they weren’t having to step over camouflaged roots and dips in the path.

I just wished we could be helping Avery out more right now.  What do we do?

She didn’t want to vent to Lucy, when Lucy had the same anxieties and issues.  It’d just be putting negativity on her friend.

“Get back as fast as you can?” Lucy asked.  “I’m not sure if I can, and I, uh, I don’t trust Avery with Matthew and Edith.”

Verona nodded.  “I’ll call when I get there.”

Her neighborhood was familiar, but after that sudden and violent attack from the giant doll hand, and just how… she struggled to identify the word for it.  Spooked?  Discombobulated?  She felt shaky, after the attack, and knowing Avery was in trouble, asking for help, and they could only talk about maybe plans with Miss?  It left her feeling like her insides had been shaken up by that shakiness and left with everything out of place.

The feeling and context made her neighborhood feel more sinister than familiar.  The feeling extended to her Sight, as she scanned her surroundings with her special mode of vision, looking out for trouble.

For the first time, the skinned meat things, and that spiderwebby plastic wrap felt a little bit sinister.

She pulled off her stuff, stuffing mask, hat, and cape into her bag, then let herself in quietly.

Straight to the basement.  She shrugged out of her bag and dropped it by the stairs.

The basement was partially refinished, with what looked like really basic office furniture or furniture from the teacher’s lounge, office carpeting, and drop ceiling installed, and a tiny bathroom where the sink was right in front of the face of anyone sitting down.  The laundry room was one unfinished part, as was the storage room in the other corner.  Wooden struts marked out walls that were eventually going to get put up.

It was dad’s long term plan.  He’d talked about it enough.  By the time she moved out, he’d knock out an exterior wall for a door, have this be an apartment area, separate from the main house, he could draw an income and escape his debt.

In reality, it probably was going to take until she was seventeen and gone, at the very least.  Work only got done when she and her dad both had vacation time, if she was home.  Most holidays, summers, March breaks, and long weekends had been her being asked to help with painting, putting in the carpet and the cork-bottomed interlocking flooring, doing insulation… stuff.  She’d do it until her mom came and picked her up, if her mom came and picked her up, go spend time with her mom, and then come back and resume it, with her dad acting anxious, like there was a time crunch.

On a level, she wondered if he saw it as quality time.

The storage area had a workbench in it, mostly covered in bags of stuff from last Christmas, that had never found a space on the wooden racks, with some rusty tools lying here and there.  The wooden racks were her target.

There were old costumes and stuff from back in the day.  When she’d get excited about a character or a show, and her dad would pull on his two years of tailoring from after he’d gone to high school, get some of the tailoring patterns from a store or online, and put together some amazing costumes.

She dug through it, finding the dusty, leftover fabric, ranging from the stretchy stuff from her supervillain costume to the fuzzy stuff for the cat costume. She set them aside.

Another big tarp bag had the costumes, the oldest at the bottom, put away as she’d grown out of them.  The last bunch just shoved away all together, from that time period she’d stopped dressing up altogether.  Right at the top, there was the thief costume, which… she had very mixed feelings about.  She’d read a book about a thief in a fantasy world, she’d loved it, and had gone to her dad, asking to be a thief for Halloween, talking about her book.

He’d pulled together a costume that consisted of a black turtleneck, black pants, a grappling hook made of silver pipe cleaners, and after she’d refused to put stuff on her face to darken it to ‘be a better thief’, a balaclava.

She’d wanted a cloak with a jewel clasp and hood, and superfluous belts.  But it had been too late to change it or do something different.

She hadn’t been able to hide her disappointment.  Then the next year, he’d left it up to her to put her costume together.  She wasn’t sure if it was because she hadn’t been grateful enough, if she’d hurt his feelings, or if it had been the divorce distracting him.

But that had been the end of the costumes.  A lot of things had ended around then.

There was some ribbon left over from her ‘Bathory’ costume.  She’d really hoped there would be more.  This was, like, a tenth of what they needed.  Of what Avery needed.

She emptied everything out, sorted through it, then packed it back up.  She moved on to the next thing.  There was some more tailoring and sewing stuff from Christmases long past.  More ribbon, in blues and reds.

Only a third of what they probably needed, and that would need two splices.

“Come on, come on,” she said, as she packed up the bag, shoved it back, and got another.  “Something else.”

“Verona!” her dad called down.

“If you’re downstairs, can you put the laundry on?  I think there’s sheets in the dryer to fold, and you’ll have to take my work shirts out of the washer.  Do not put any of my clothes in the dryer!”

“It’ll only take you five minutes.  I need confirmation about not putting my clothes in the dryer.  You’ve made that mistake a few times.”

“Can I do it tomorrow?  Small emergency?”

“Did you forget a project until the last minute again?”

“No.  My friends need stuff.  Just give me tonight to get some stuff done, please, and I’ll help you with laundry and stuff later.”

This bag was old fashioned cooking stuff.  She searched it anyway, in vain hopes that there would be something.

What was Avery dealing with right now?

“Verona,” her dad said.  He’d come down the stairs, and now stood at the bottom of the stairwell, looking through to the end of the storage room, where she knelt.  “When you do the laundry, tonight, please, shake out all of my clothes when you put them on the drying rack.  You remember what I showed you, about holding it by the shoulders and not the sleeves or the bottom of the shirt?  If you do it the wrong way, it makes the sleeves stretch out.”

“Can we not do this right now, please?” she asked.  Nothing in the baking stuff bag. She’d hoped there would be something from wrapping up a thing mom or dad had brought to work.

“You can do something for your friends but you can’t help me out?  Even with the little things?”

“Please?” she asked.  “This is kind of a priority thing.”

“Yet I’m never your priority.”

“I cook dinner most nights.  I clean.  I do most of the laundry.”

“These are basic things that need doing, Verona.  To keep a house running.  It’s the two of us, I don’t have the time or wherewithal, so yes, some of it is up to you.”

He entered the storage room, blocking off a good share of the light from the main section of the basement.  The storage area was unfinished and still had a dull orange lightbulb that probably hadn’t been changed in five years.

She couldn’t keep searching while her dad was on her like this.

“Can’t there be give and take?” she asked.  “Can’t one of us pick up the slack for the other?”

“I’m always the one picking up the slack, Verona.  Every week.  Every time I go to work.  Every single time the month ends and I do the bills, and two or three times a year when I have to take out credit to keep things afloat, because taking care of you is expensive, and your mother does not contribute enough.  I should have asked for more, but I thought it was important we keep the house you were born in, for you, so I let her get away with murder.”

“Dad,” she said, standing.  That shakiness was worse.  “This is really, really important, and I can’t tell you why.  But if it isn’t a ten out of ten for major, freaky, top priority stuff, it’s really close.”

“Everything’s top priority when you’re a teenager.  Believe me, I remember.”

She didn’t know what to do with the feeling of frustration welling inside of her.  She’d kind of thought and hoped that those feelings had died, so she could process this sort of thing better.

But Avery- she couldn’t shake that mental image of those blood-red ribbons, and Avery stuck in that cabin, possibly having to run from monsters or something, where every minute wasted could matter.

If she’d been her dad’s height, she might have slapped him, and then kept slapping him, in some vain effort to get through to him.

Instead, she felt like she had when she’d been a small cat, a six year old stampeding toward her.  A little kid, completely unable to understand what she tried to express in body language or vocalizations.

She approached her dad, and after a moment’s hesitation, she hugged him.

“You don’t hug me enough, like this,” he said.

“Please, please, please.  Just this once, if you only ever ease up or listen to me once from now on, can you help me tonight?” she asked, quiet.  “Help me with this and I’ll step it up and try to be the daughter you want me to be.  But I need help tonight.  It’s an emergency.”

“Only ever once in our lifetimes?” he asked.  “Verona, I listen to you all the time.  I go easy on you all the time, when it kills me that I sacrifice constantly for you and you can’t do the smallest things for me.  You have to make it sound like the end of the world to get out of laundry, you promise me you’ll mow the lawn and you don’t.  You forget my birthday.”

She let go of him, backing up.  Her eyes dropped to the floor.

“When are you going to ease up on me?  When are you going to listen to me?  I need help, Verona!  ‘Just once’, what is that!?  Do you know how hard it is to have to fight with you and your manipulations, your lies, to get the most basic stuff done!?”

He was raising his voice as he got going.

“Just once, I’d like you to be grateful.  Just once, I’d like you to be thoughtful.  You never acknowledge what I do.  Ever.  No, instead, when it’s my birthday, you forget, and you bring me a towel with ‘I love Vancouver’ on it, like a consolation prize.”

She’d forgotten that.  Or, more accurately, she’d put it out of mind.  He’d been so upset, so hurt, she’d flailed trying to find a way to make it better.  The towel had been part of it, along with chocolates and stuff she’d brought back.  Stones and shells from the seashore in a nice glass cup.  He had those on his shelf.

“I held onto that, you know!  As a reminder!  And I still make sacrifices, Verona, despite that reminder, despite the hundreds of other ways you’ve cut me so deeply, lying, manipulating, doing anything you can to worm your way out of helping me in even small ways!”

“Sacrifices?” she asked, bitter.  “How much do I really cost?”

“Food, Verona!?  Electricity!  You leave the lights on!  Internet!  If it wasn’t for you I’d have basic internet!  Water!  Those clothes you just ordered were half paid for by me!  Me!  More than, considering your piece of shit mother can’t even pay your child support on the regular!  Yes, she sent that one e-transfer, but it’s all money from the both of us!  Mostly me!  Those pizzas you like!?”

“I eat like a bird, I barely leave one light on, and you have the television on in two rooms sometimes.  I’m gone most weekends anyway.”

“Paying for a whole other human being is a lot more than you seem to think!”

“I’m gone most weekends anyway because I can’t stand it here,” she said, raising her eyes from the floor to look him in the eyes.  “I’m not the only one.  Just about everyone I know who knows you thinks you’re weird.  People think you’re a bad father.  You’re not- you’re not all that.  Jasmine’s a single mom too and she manages, and she isn’t this shitty to Lucy.”

“I think your coworkers hate you because you’re toxic!  Your family doesn’t come to visit because you’re so bitter and just about all you do is talk about work and bitch and moan!  You hate work?  Boo hoo!  Most people do!  And I didn’t ask for you to take care of me!  I didn’t sign onto this life in this shitty house I have to clean all the time!  I asked you for help tonight and you did the opposite!”

“How does it feel, huh?” he asked, his voice choked with hurt.

“It feels-” she grasped for words.  For an idea.  She was trying to be careful not to lie, at the same time.

Like if I spoke, I’d swear never to hug you again, and the only reason I’m keeping my mouth shut is because I don’t want to put myself in a position to be forsworn.

Like I’m brimming with hurt and anger and I can’t do a freaking thing about it that doesn’t involve the practice… and I want to save my juice for helping Avery.

“I’m going to go help my friend.  Can you move out of the doorway?  You’re in my light.”

She bent down to pick up the ribbons.

“Move!” she told him.

“If you’re not going to listen to me, why should I listen to you?”

She drew in a breath, bit back a retort, and that retort bumped up against the frustration that was surging in her throat and chest, overflowing.

She screamed at him, top of her lungs, until the lack of available air made it taper off.

Then she gulped in a breath of air and did it again.

“You’re going to bother the neighbors!”

“I don’t care!  I want them to be bothered!  You freak me out!  Go away!”

“Verona, don’t-” he reached for her and she fought, scratching, kicking, backing away until she bumped into a shelf.

Then she screamed at him again.  It felt feeble, because she didn’t have the air in her lungs.

“Go!  Go!  Go away!  Before I do something we both regret!  Go!”

She screamed at him, charging at him, to push him in the stomach.  When he backed up enough, she slammed the door in his face.

He opened it almost immediately, as she bent down to get the cloth material, ribbons, and other stuff she’d put aside.

He looked bewildered, and she couldn’t even bring herself to hope that the bewilderment would lead to some introspection or thought.

At best, she hoped that he wouldn’t call the police, because of the screaming.

She pushed past him and hurried to her bag, which she snatched up.

“Verona, stop, and let’s have a conversation,” he said, behind her.

She carried on upstairs.  Avery needed her.  She wanted to get to the part where they saved Avery.  Even a more dangerous Forest Ribbon Trail had to be better than this.

He seized her by the wrist.  Her entire body jerked to a stop, her shins banging against the toothy metal stair-edges that were by the side door, so people coming in the side way wouldn’t slip off the stairs.

She turned and on finding his face at the same level as hers, screamed at him, her nose an inch from his.

He reached for her mouth and she pulled back, eyes wide.  Then she leaned forward and spat in his face.

She walked up to the side door, hauled it open, and left.

Verona used her narrow scissors with care, her Sight on to give her the vision in the gloom.  The ribbon-filled cabin was drafty, but draft wasn’t so bad.  The bugs were annoying, but she could endure that.

The red ribbons all fed into the hole in the floor in the middle of the cabin.  Avery was still in there.

The scissors parted fabric with a soothing ripping sound.

“You look tranquil,” Matthew said.  “Surprising, considering.”

She looked up, meeting his very dark eyes with her purple ones.  He stood there with his hands in his pockets.

She sat, working to cut the cloth she’d scrounged up from the storage room into ribbons.  They turned at odd angles at times, but… it was better than nothing, and it at least let her feel like she was helping.

“Cute traps,” he said, indicating.

She looked over the clearing.  She’d scattered a bunch of the notecards around, each with a sketched out rune.  If some doll thing or attacker came for her or Avery, there’d be some flash and noise.

She had some of the more destructive runes with her.  She didn’t want to put them out there in case a friendly tripped them.

“Miss had a message.  Stop whatever you’re doing, and go very still.  Don’t speak, don’t move a muscle and definitely don’t touch any ribbons.  Or, if you’re okay leaving Avery here, step away from the cabin and the clearing.”

“Why?” she asked, speaking for the first time.

“She wants to investigate, but she describes it as being like a fly navigating a spider’s web.  Every disturbance, even a disturbance in the air, makes it harder.”

He nodded, and then he walked away, picking his way across Verona’s improvised minefield.

She exhaled, setting her scissors and the cloth down.

Miss, hands in her pockets, hair blowing across her face, walked over.  Several of the little notecards blew in the wind, some in her direction.  They danced around her but didn’t make contact.

Verona kept her eyes down, remaining very still, her breaths shallow.

Easy, when it felt like she’d spent a week’s worth of emotion in the last hour, with nothing left to spare.

It was a raw sort of tranquil, if it was ‘tranquil’ like Matthew had said.

She saw Matthew and Edith talking, standing amid the trees at the clearing’s edge, while Miss walked a circuit around the cabin.

Then they stepped out of sight, and Miss stepped into the cabin, walking past Verona.  The woman picked her way through ribbons with care.

“They got lucky, we got unlucky, or they know a dangerous amount about the Trail,” Miss said.  “I would guess the last one.  Knowing dangerous details is the Augur’s trade.”

Verona remained silent, keeping her head still.

“There is no detour anymore, judging by this orientation and angle of attack.  That closes off options one and three.”

Option one was splicing themselves into Avery’s version of the trail, walking a harder road to catch up to her, and leading her to the detour.

“Making your own ribbons out of cloth?” Miss asked.

In keeping with Matthew’s request, Verona remained silent.  She glanced up toward Miss.

“It’ll do in a pinch, if we end up needing the trail for some other reason.  A rougher road with less defined edges, perhaps.”

Made sense.  Verona was glad if it helped at all.

“Munch enlisted some help to tighten the perimeter.  More eyes on the periphery of Kennet.  They reported John had an altercation with a driver on the road.  He was driving Matthew’s truck, and Matthew may be upset when he hears about what’s happened to it,” Miss said.

“Nicolette was racing here.  According to the goblins, John Stiles drove her off the road, then drove off before she could figure out what to do with him.  When I’m done here, you should summon him, to expedite his trip back.”

Off to the side, Lucy had arrived.  Matthew and Edith intercepted her, keeping her from drawing any closer.

“She’s at the Wolf’s part of the path, enduring its company.  She can’t use the detour and she can’t negotiate without the animal.  If you brought the animal to her, you couldn’t use the detour, so one or both of you would then be stuck.”

“There were ribbons torn out,” Miss said, and there was a strange tone to her voice.

Meaning what!? Verona thought, and she almost moved.

“…This is a complication.  I’ll go, so you can move, I’ll explain when I address everyone.  Thank you for cooperating.”

Verona waited until she saw Miss near Lucy before she rose to her feet.  She felt stiff, exhausted, and it didn’t have anything to do with walking.

“Keep strong, Ave,” Verona spoke in the direction of the hole in the middle of the cabin.  “We’re on it.”

She walked over to the others, stepping around the scattered, windblown runes.  In the background, others had gathered.  Miss, Charles, Edith, Charles, Toadswallow, and Munch.

“I had my phone on mute while I was sneaking around the house,” Lucy told Verona.  “I only got your message about your dad maybe calling around after.  I had to pretend to be Avery, midway through the drawing up of the fake in her bed.”

“Sorry,” Verona said.

Lucy gave her a curious look, studying her expression.

Then Lucy gave her a hug.

Verona accepted it, hugging back tight.

“We’ll work this Avery thing out, and this thing with your dad will be over in a few years.”

As they parted the hug, Verona pulled off her dog tag, and threw it down.  She didn’t have a massive threat or confrontation to march toward, but she could take a step in the direction of home, and of Kennet, which was a bit bloody from the Carmine Beast’s death, and getting bloodier over time.

“Thank you,” John said.

“You trashed my truck?” Matthew asked.

“I scraped the side,” John said.  “And left it by the side of the road about a half hour up the road.  I’ll fetch it as soon as this situation is resolved, and I can cover the costs.”

“You have money?” Lucy asked.

“I take it off the Others I kill.”

“Do Others have that much money?” Verona asked.

“I don’t spend much,” John said.  He turned to Miss, then stopped.  “Miss, are you okay?”

The branches were denser, and Miss stood further back.

Almost everything about her head was hidden, now, not just her face.

“The cost of getting too close,” Miss said.  “You were about to say…?”

“Nicolette Belanger was after something.  Moving to points she could stop and search.  Lookout points, bridges.  She’d get ahead, then look back the way she came.  I put a stop to that, but she was quick to react.”

“Standard for Augurs.  She saw you coming,” Miss said.

“She had a shadow about her,” John said.  “Around her head.”

“She could have looked too deep at something dark,” Matthew said.

“Good,” Lucy muttered.

“It wasn’t there when we confronted her the other night.”

A tree limb bowed, as Maricica perched on it.  Her wings draped down to pool on the ground.

Even more brilliant and eye catching in the moonlight.  Verona averted her gaze.

“Our practitioners’ families have settled.  You may want to go back soon, Lucy.  Your mother will look in on you in thirty minutes or so,” Maricica said, smiling.

“Dish, Miss?  Verona asked.  “Options one and three were out, and there’s other problems?”

“They tore ribbons when they extracted our new friend here,” Miss said.  “Ribbons are the path.  A patching together of two ribbons can be a telling bump in the path.  A tearing is…”

“We can’t travel it?” Lucy asked.

“So we’re down to negotiating with these practitioners?” Verona asked.

“And a fourth option,” Lucy said, to Miss.  “You hinted at it.”

“Yes.  I could go after her.  I know how to walk the Path.  I may have to, if Avery’s staying there for any period of time.  I can’t negotiate with the Wolf, and I can’t be a sacrifice for her, but I could try to keep her focused and sane.  I could hope to see some means of escaping, as I did when I first discovered the detour.”

“You discovered it?” Verona asked.

“Known by me, Avery, and some of those present, as far as I’m aware.  I thought about trading the knowledge to Finders for currency that could be used with the Belangers, but I am almost certain that would exacerbate every single problem we have.  Including Avery’s entrapment and the increased attentions of the outsider practitioners.”

“So it’s probably negotiation,” Lucy said.  “What did Nicolette want?  Could we get there first, if John slowed her down?”

“Och, aye,” a voice said from the treetops, not far from Maricica.  “I haf ta think this bairn is part o’ it.”

“You’re back,” Miss said.

“Bairn?” Verona asked.

A kid, eight or nine or so, flipped down from the branch, dangling by her knees so she was upside down.  She wore cargo shorts and a tee that said ‘Trash Face’, her hair was greasy, and she had dark circles around her eyes.

“Hate ta say, but she’s a wee bit glaikit.”

“I am,” the kid said.

“Our opossum,” Miss said.  “Hello, dear.”

The kid dropped from the branch, landing on all fours, as Miss approached.  She backed away a half step, then stopped retreating.

Miss bent down, until her face and head were at a level with the kid’s  She reached up to wipe at a smudge of dirt and fix the kid’s hair.

Everything hidden from those present, except for the kid.

“She followed me.  I don’t know why, I don’t have anything.”

“What do you have?” Miss asked.

The kid reached into a pocket, pulling out a book, along with various other scraps of paper.  Spell notes, maybe, crumpled papers, torn pages.

“Is this what she’s after?” Miss asked.

“Nah, I don’t matter.”

“That’s something, then,” Miss said.  “How was Avery when you saw her?”

“Great.  But she’s a real wimp when it counts.”

“And Nicolette?  The woman with the snake ring.”

Verona watched the exchange.  “Hunh?”

“She’s not ‘glaikit’, as you would put it, Alpeana.  She’s contrary by nature.”

“You couldn’t have told us this before?” Lucy asked.

“I didn’t know the opossum’s rule until I saw her here, as this spirit of the Path.  But even if I knew there was no way to tell how the rule or tendency would manifest.  Another opossum could have had a different approach than expressing the opposite of what she means.”

“This wee bairn went to tha meeting place I was to meet tha lassie at.”

“I didn’t know anything about what that Avery twit was planning, where she came from, or any of that,” the little girl said.

“Nicolette thought the companion animal would come straight here.  She went there,” Miss said.

“Couldn’t hitch a ride on the back of a truck.  Made for a boring trip.”

“Does this help?  If Nicolette needs these papers- could we trade?  Get her to undo what she did to Avery?”

Miss paced, walking through the trees.  “Undo… I don’t know.  We can hope, and we can broach the subject, but that’s only one part of the problem.  Do the other Belangers know, or was Nicolette acting in secret?”

“The head honcho doesn’t know crap.  I dunno about the others.”

“Alexander?” Charles asked, speaking for the first time.

“That’s a yes, Charles,” Miss supplied.

“I get that.  I’m not an idiot,” Charles grumbled.

“If there are no objections,” Miss said, “I will go talk to Nicolette, to broach the subject of a meeting.”

“I mean,” Verona said.  “If there’s no other way…”

“Be prepared to declare yourself practitioners over this area.  Depending on their response, this could be war, extortion, or the beginning of a siege.”

Verona looked at the various Others around the group.  Edith’s eyes burned.  Matthew’s were dark.  Maricica looked amused, her legs kicking, while Alpeana was next to her on the branch, knees drawn up to her chest.  Toadswallow and Munch had sidled up to the opossum girl.  Guilherme was off patrolling, as were the other goblins.

The only other absence was telling.  The Choir.

Verona didn’t want to think about that.

“No objections?” Miss asked.

Miss stepped behind a tree and disappeared.

“I gotta go home.  Are you staying?” Lucy asked Verona.  “Watching over her?”

“I’ll be back.  Miss?  Stop in and let me know what’s next?”

“Oh.  And I’ve reread my old notes about stuff, but I don’t suppose we could trade books?” Lucy asked.

“I want to look over spell stuff.  You can have my books if you want stuff to read.”

Verona shrugged, nodding.  She turned to Charles, pressing her hands together in a plea.  “Charles, if you could give us any details that would give us an edge against the Belangers…”

“Few things would please me more,” Charles said.  “Keeping in mind it was ages ago.”

“When dealing with an Augur, a key point is that when they see, they open up a vulnerability for you to attack them through.  Every seeing is a weakness,” Charles said.

Verona, sitting in the cabin, her cloak around her for warmth, took notes in Lucy’s book.  It was hard to write with the little kid curled up beside her, head mashed in between Verona’s hip and thigh, using her leg as a pillow.  Every movement jostled her.

“They focus primarily on immaterial things.  Echoes, spirits, incarnations- often especially incarnations.  Any sentiment or pillar of human nature can be something they specialize in.  Alexander was good at seeing the kinds and shapes of Strife, capital S, and karmic flows.  When he incurs a karmic debt, he is good at staying ahead of it until he can discharge it or pass it on.  I would imagine that if he’s a teacher at this school of his, he would be teaching some classes on Karma.”

“The Strife aspect was part of what we were going to summon, that day I was forsworn,” Charles said.  “The specialty in tracking karma was… something I should have anticipated.”

“With Nicolette sending omens in to investigate… she was looking for trouble, and then more trouble happened.  That’s how Melissa got hurt.  Does Alexander cause strife to happen by turning his Sight on things?”

“It surrounds him, yes.  He’s good at navigating it, to the extent that it may be something of a shield of his.  His underlings may fight more among themselves as a consequence.”

There was a knock on the door.

Verona glanced at the ribbons, then at the door.  She touched her spell cards.

“It’s me,” Miss said.

“There’s an appointment, midday tomorrow.  With Nicolette and others.”

“She refused to budge on that point.  She had things she was sworn to look after.  She promised to make a concession in exchange.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  She looked again at the red ribbons and the spot she’d last seen Avery.  “Who are the others?”

“Other augurs from Blue Heron, Alexander included.”

“We’re working out a bit of a plan,” Verona said.

“Good.  I hope I’m there to see it,” Miss said.

“What do you mean?” Verona asked.

“You’re going in?” Charles asked.

“I told Avery Kelly that if she guessed my true nature, it might matter,” Miss said.

“Yeah?” Verona asked.

“I’ve decided I’ll make my way to her, so she has an advocate, someone by her side.”

“Will we see you again?” Charles asked.

“I don’t know,” Miss said, crossing into the room.  Her head was hidden by gloom, then by the thickest intersection of ribbons.  “But if you don’t, know that I’m happier braving the Paths once again than I am dealing with practitioners.  I found my way out once.”

“Tell her we said hi, okay?  That we’re on this,” Verona asked.  “That Lucy came up with something.  So she just has to tough it out a while longer.”

Verona held up her phone to show Miss the text.  Miss didn’t seem like she read it.

“Goodbye Miss,” Charles said.  “You were fairer than most.”

“If it’s all I’ve done, I hope I inspire you both to be the same,” Miss said.  “Whatever paths you walk.”

Every ribbon in the room stirred, like they’d been plucked.  The torn ribbons fluttered as if a wind had passed through.  Miss was gone.

“Good riddance,” the opossum girl muttered.

“Let’s resume,” Charles growled the words.  “Where were we?”

“His underlings fight among one another,” Verona answered him, her eyes glowing in the dark cabin with the red ribbons.