“Verona’s not coming,” Lucy reported, as she checked her phone. “She got on a call with her mom and she wants to keep talking.”
Lucy’s mom nodded. “Good. I mean, it would have been nice to have her company, but…”
“Good.”
“Mm hmmm. Do you think she’s telling her?”
“No,” Lucy answered. “Not with- lots of reasons. But I don’t think her mom would believe her. I don’t think she’d believe over a phone call even if you and me and Avery and Avery’s parents were all saying it. There’s a barrier you have to push past. But even if we ignored that that, like… it makes life weirder for her mom, right?”
Her mom nodded.
“And if something happens or her mom gets scared like you did with Cherrypop in the kitchen, then… does Verona go over there? Does she call Avery and pull Avery away from her life, so Avery’s dealing with her own mom and Verona’s mom?”
“I don’t- I know she’s your best friend, and I know it would hurt things, but I also don’t think it would be the worst thing ever if she went to live with her mom.”
That hurt.
That really hurt. Lucy drew her shoulders together, and felt acutely aware again of how the sweater she was wearing wasn’t hers.
Her mom cupped a hand around the back of Lucy’s neck and bent down, kissing the top of her forehead. “I know. I know, I do.”
“She’s changed.”
“You’ve changed.”
“But she’s changed a lot. I’ve been with her through most of this and- except for her being away, or her going to focus on Kennet below, I’ve been with her through all of it. And she changed this much. And it’s like- even while I’m watching-”
The doorbell rang.
Lucy followed her mom to the front hall. “-there’ve been these things that felt like- like I only barely caught her before she did something.”
Her mom stopped with a hand on the doorknob. “Is it okay to talk about this with a guest around or-?”
“Okay. After?”
Lucy nodded.
The door opened. Liberty was on the other side. She wore a white t-shirt under a suit jacket, with jeans, hair in a ponytail. She held out a handful of flowers in a cone of newspaper. “Thank you for having me.”
“Oh thank you. You didn’t have to.”
“My daddy brings liquor, wine for some people and whiskey for others, and I could’ve got some, but I figured that’d be weird.”
“Just a bit concerning,” Lucy’s mom said. “Come in, please.”
“You have a very nice home.”
“Thank you.”
They moved from the front hall to the open-concept kitchen, which sort of blended into the dining area, with big windows looking out on the back porch and backyard. Lucy’s mom checked on the oven.
“I wanted to ask, I know this is a weird request-” Liberty said.
“-could I invite someone to dinner?”
“We’ve got food, but-” Lucy’s mom looked at her.
“Human or goblin?” Lucy asked.
“Goblin. It’s totally okay to say no, and I’m pretty sure I can get them to be good. There’s a story, actually.”
“What story?”
“Well, I was looking after a bunch of kids at the Blue Heron, when everything was falling apart, supervision wasn’t really all there, even gave some lessons. And then things fell apart, right? Is this okay to talk about?”
Lucy nodded.
“So I tried to keep in touch with kids, but stuff was hard. Some of the kids, they come from weird and strict families, and I worried about ’em, so I sent some of my little helpers out to check on them.”
“That’s good,” Lucy said.
Liberty had a kind of nervous energy, with more emphasis on the energy than the nervousness, and it seemed to intensify with Lucy’s response. “I guess, yeah! I was just worried, mainly. And this one, she went all the way out to this one kid, to bring him some books I liked, and she did a really super job, brought the books intact, even after getting mugged on the way, and then she hung around with the kid when she didn’t have to. I want to reward her but I’m worried that depending on where she goes or if I end up heading back to daddy’s where we don’t generally allow random goblins on the premises-”
“What?” Lucy asked. “Wait, but goblins are your thing.”
“They’re a thing but they can be a thing that takes over, and if you have three goblins you can end up with five and then ten. Especially with me and ‘Meri. And the houses have nice things, so I kinda get it. I’m definitely looking forward to getting my own place so I don’t have to sweat it, though.”
“Okay, uh,” Lucy replied, a bit at a loss for words. She looked at her mom. “Maybe?”
“Is this a good, uh, example for a goblin?” her mom asked.
“Yes. I think so,” Liberty said.
“I guess?” Lucy offered, unsure. Maybe it would be a good thing.
“Okay,” Lucy’s mom said.
“I’ll just call ’em at the backyard,” Liberty said, hesitating for a second to verify that was okay, before going.
“She’s nervous,” Lucy’s mom observed, quiet.
“I think there’s a lot going on. Her sister, family…”
“Lewdtube!” Liberty hollered outside, hands cupped at her mouth. “Lewdtube! Lewdtube!”
“Lewdtube,” Lucy’s mom commented, shaking her head.
Lewdtube showed up, bounding across the porch. She was built like a mostly hairless ferret, long and somewhat flexible in the body but with short limbs and a rat tail, and she had a face that was halfway between a ferret and a frog. Her ears weren’t especially pointed, but scraggly hair came together in tufts at the end of each, making them look longer than they were. Liberty picked her up and murmured some words.
“Want to have dinner with me and these people? And us hanging out can be your present?”
“Yes!”
“They’ve had experiences with ruder, mean goblins, so let’s change things up in a weird way by being super good, okay? And a lot of the time, when a goblin is really good, it’s only so they can pull a prank right or do something rude or awful right at the end, but we won’t. If we do it right, it’ll be great. So ironic.”
Lewdtube was suppressing giggles.
“Come on. If you don’t know what to do to be polite, follow my lead. Here. Let’s give you these…”
When Liberty stood up and stepped away from Lewdtube, the goblin had little bows on her ear-tufts.
“Is Verona coming?”
“She’s busy with a family thing.” Lucy said.
“Family,” Liberty replied. “Oh man.”
“It’s a good thing, I think, for Verona. You doing okay? I know this is a lot. We appreciate it.”
“It’s America, she’s needed a serious chill pill for a while.”
“Chill pill up the-” Lewdtube started, then paused. “Street- uh, there might be a pharmacy. I wonder if they sell them there.”
“What a good thought,” Liberty said, picking up the goblin. “Do we have something like phone books we could stack on the chair for my girl here?”
The goblin twisted around to flop over, head on Liberty’s shoulder.
“Oh yeah,” Lucy replied. “Here, uh… some old ones. We tear out pages for starting the fireplace. They’re not that big, though. Small town.”
“There are some old dictionaries on the bottom shelf,” her mom pointed out. “And we have a lot of very terrible books in the- I don’t even know what to call it. The reading room?”
“The Lost reading room?” Lucy suggested. “It’s Found, not Lost, but Lost sounds way better.”
“Very cool,” Liberty said.
“I don’t know if you want me to do up something like a portal that we can cover up?” Lucy told her mom. “So you can go when you want without my help?”
“Whatever you think works. I trust you with this.”
“Which chair is good for L.T.?” Liberty asked, holding the first few books. “I should sit next to her.”
“Over there. Here, I’ll set the table.”
Lucy headed upstairs, to her room, because it was the space she was most comfortable with drawing on the wall, and drew a portal. Then she had to let it take her through and go all the way down to the sub-floor. She got some of the biggest books.
It would have been nice if she could hear what was being said in the kitchen in Kennet above. Her mom, Liberty, and a goblin there.
She hurried up, arms full. By the time she got back to the kitchen, the books were sliding out of her arms. Liberty caught them and helped her put them on the end of the table before they fell to the floor.
“I appreciate you working for me,” Lewdtube said.
“Weirdly phrased but nice sentiment,” Liberty said.
The goblin giggled to herself.
“We were just saying. Is a second goblin okay, in Verona’s seat?” Lucy’s mom asked.
“I promised him some one-on-one time since he was taking on some extra work, running interference while I traveled by Warren,” Liberty added.
“And one goblin becomes two?” Lucy asked. “We were just talking about how that happens.”
“You can say no,” Liberty said.
“I’m not saying no. Just… observing,” Lucy said. “If he’s good?”
“He’s good.”
“Let’s keep it strictly to two,” her mom said. “And maybe if you can, avoid screaming something strange that the neighbors will hear?”
“Not strange,” Liberty said, as she went over to the back door. “Flopsy! Flopsy! Flopsy!”
“Still loud,” Lucy’s mom noted.
Liberty grunted as she picked up the goblin. He looked like a rabbit had been crossbred with a brick and the result was very unhappy about the whole situation. Dour, jowly expression, dense, and covered in light, uneven, spiky fur.
“Flopsy-” Liberty grunted. “-weighs a lot more than you’d think. But he’s helped me out lots. Leads one of my raiding parties.”
“Raiding?” Lucy’s mom asked.
“When I need to send my goblins out to go after someone or something.”
“Do you have to do that a lot?”
“I’m trying to reduce my mom’s stress over this entire thing,” Lucy said, quiet, as she helped with organizing the books.
“Not a ton. It’s like, uh, if you go out into the woods and there’s a bear, sometimes you need some bluster to get the bear to back down. A bunch of barking dogs work. Except what we’re talking about is smarter than a bear. And definitely sometimes smarter than a dog, right?” Liberty asked, as she plunked Flopsy down on a stack of books, on one chair at the kitchen island, where the chairs were almost like stools, they were tall enough. Lucy had worried the books would slide out, but Flopsy weighed enough to press them down and maximize friction. Seventy five pounds of goblin in a twenty pound package.
“That’s worrying,” Lucy’s mom said. “Things smarter than bears, but just as dangerous?”
“Just gotta know how to navigate it all, and I think we do okay,” Liberty said. “Right?”
“Yeah,” Lucy agreed.
Lucy’s mom brought food to the table as they got the goblins set up. “Schnitzels and mashed cauliflower. Some greens, I put some asparagus to the side. I know it’s not for everyone.”
Lucy did her best to look innocent.
“Really?” Liberty asked. “It’s so good.”
“It’s the more bitter vegetable tastes, I dunno. I’ll eat ’em, but given an option… usually give it a pass, I guess?”
“More for us.”
Liberty leaned down for the goblins, murmuring.
“Can make your pee stink.”
“There’s lemon slices for the schnitzels, along with spicy mustard and straight hot sauce,” Lucy’s mom pointed out.
“Not that hot,” Lucy added, seeing Liberty turn her interest to the hot sauce. “Sorry.”
“Too bad.”
“What’s that?” her mom asked.
“Safe bet when it comes to Liberty and goblins is to think they want to go to an extreme, I guess, right?”
“Usually!” Liberty replied. “Yeah. Really hot hot sauce is cool, but this is super nice too. I actually haven’t had home cooking for a while.”
“I could’ve guessed from the sharp teeth. Does that- is that okay? Does that hurt?”
“Sometimes! When I breathe in wrong or drink something cold. Nerves exposed here and there. But it’s worth it.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“I used to have braces. Those were worse. I cut them out because they were driving me around the bend. Was a cool aesthetic for a bit.”
“She has magic for dealing with little nuisances,” Lucy pointed out. “Minor cuts, scrapes, nerve pain…”
“Yeah. It’s great. Actually, uh, Sir Toadswallow was the one who taught me that. I was a little tomboy, skinned my knees while wearing those clunky four-wheel rollerskates, and we had a nanny who was fussing over me, and while she was getting things to get me cleaned up, drying the tears from my face, and America was getting grumpy at me, telling me not to cry, Toadswallow was the one who sat next to me and he’s asked me, ‘do you want a hug and comfort, or do you want some magic?‘”
“And you took the magic?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah! Totally. That poor nanny couldn’t keep up with me after. There wasn’t anything slowing me down for a while after that. Climbing trees, jumping off things I shouldn’t, crazy wipeouts. This smells delicious, by the way.”
“It smells real good,” Lewdtube said, her head and shoulders barely over the upper edge of the plate. “Can I have lots of asparagus?”
“Please,” Liberty stage-whispered, hand at her mouth.
“Please.”
The goblin giggled madly as the asparagus was heaped onto her plate.
“I don’t know how much you all eat. Verona eats like a bird. Here, do you want to serve yourselves?”
“Please. That works. Flopsy is pretty much a guarantee you won’t have leftovers if you don’t want any. It all just kind of compacts in there, you’d be surprised how much.”
“What do you goblins normally eat?”
“Trash!” Lewdtube exclaimed. “Uhh, nothing as nice as this.”
“Good one,” Liberty said, winking at the goblin. The goblin grinned up at her.
“Thank you. I’m glad you approve,” Lucy’s mom said, looking weirded out. “You said you haven’t had home cooking in a while, Liberty? What do you normally do?”
“It really depends where I’m at. The Blue Heron is pretty nice, but after the Blue Heron I was with my daddy for a short while, and we eat at restaurants when we’re all together. Then I was at one of the houses.”
“One of them?”
“Yeah. Uh. One of the ones without any chefs on staff. It was actually a lot like this one, but not as nice. Just me, and the goblins who wouldn’t make much of a mess, and my daddy leaves me money. I mostly get what’s easy and goblin-compatible.”
“Were you all on your own?”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s cool though. My dad works, I can fend for myself. Got enough wilderness training under my belt, I could survive just about anywhere, no problem, a house in a nice neighborhood with a budget and people who come in once every three days to clean or check on the property, whether I’m there or not? Easy peasy.”
“And America? Was she with you?”
Liberty, mouth full, shook her head. She swallowed. “Been busy. With everything going on.”
“Understandable.”
“I think the way things went at the Blue Heron really messed her up. We had Toadswallow when we were kids and then he left us, and that’s around the time daddy was getting busy, and I think America was really hurt by that. And then she didn’t really have a replacement until Alexander.”
“The headmaster? Bell-”
“Belanger,” Lucy clarified. Please don’t get into the circumstances of death.
“Thank you.”
“And he’s the one who passed?”
“Yes,” Lucy said, dropping her eyes.
This conversation felt like a minefield.
“Wow, you’re super on the ball with all this!” Liberty said, excited. To her left, Flopsy had his mouth level to the plate’s edge, and was using a fork to slide the food into. His eyes rolled up to look at Liberty. Liberty leaned forward. “Didn’t you only learn about all of this really recently?”
“Very recently. But my daughter was kind enough to give me the notes she’s been taking along the way. And if your teenage daughter ever gives you a pile of reading material that’s all, ‘this is everything intense, weird, and crazy that’s going on in my life’, well, you read it, don’t you? You go over it twice, and you take your own notes.”
“Like you’re- like you’re, uh, you’re super into it, right? You’re excited, you really want to figure out what she’s about?” Liberty asked.
“Yes. Absolutely. Naturally. ‘Into it’ and ‘excited’ might not be the exact right words, but yes. I care, I’m invested.”
“Sir Toadswallow was that for us. We’ve had tutors for forever, in one of the main houses we’ve got three people who live there and they like, they look after the innocent library, and they talk about how they’re going to educate us, assess what we’re missing, what we gotta do. Personal trainer, same deal. Consults with daddy. But they don’t-”
“Do you go to regular school? Sorry, I’m interrupting.”
“I do. Public school. When not at the Blue Heron. But we alternate regular and magic school so the tutors sometimes help us to catch up, and they’re on staff and they sometimes travel to wherever we are. Sometimes to be supervision. And sometimes there’s one at one house and two at another, and guest tutors sometimes. Um, but what I was saying, is for them, it’s very cut and dry. Like there’s a certain bar they have to get us to meet and they get us there. You know?”
“Get that at regular school too,” Lucy noted.
“Usually, for sure!” Liberty said. “Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. But then there’s Toadswallow and he was all… genuinely excited, and interested, and it wasn’t like, you ask a question, get an answer, tutor makes a note. You can ask him stuff and he’ll give you more than you asked for. Like he thought we could pull anything off. And then I guess he didn’t anymore?”
“That’s not exactly how it happened, I think. I think he still sees potential in you,” Lucy said.
“Maybe we should change the subject,” Liberty said, looking momentarily uncomfortable. A tension had appeared in her that made Lucy think she’d touched a nerve.
Which she hadn’t. She was trying to pull things away from the nerve. But it was that touchy.
Liberty looked down at her goblins. “You guys good?”
“This is real good. Thank you,” Lewdtube said.
“You’re very welcome,” Lucy’s mom said
“Okay, uh, changing the subject away from Toadswallow,” Liberty said, in a very ‘I can’t help it’ way, “but saying what I was going to say, I think Alexander was kind of that for ‘Meri, you know?”
And we’re back to the subject of Alexander. And I haven’t quite told my mom that John shot him.
I will, but things have been… tough.
Lucy’s mom gave her a sympathetic look. “That’s hard. Any death is. Especially for someone who sees potential in you.”
“Yeah. That’s it. Potential. More America than me, though. And like, she’s old enough, it’s uncool to go to daddy for that kind of thing. I can though. But don’t tell on me. I know it’s a bit kiddish, and I can’t pull it off for that much longer.”
“I don’t think it’s kiddish to value your parents’ attention and support,” Lucy’s mom said.
“You’re biased,” Lucy muttered, which got a chuckle out of her mom and Liberty. Lewdtube saw Liberty chuckling and laughed, out of tune of the moment. Liberty gave her a stroke on the head, then did the same for Flopsy, who’d leaned over a few inches toward Liberty, almost at the point of falling off the chair. His eyes closed as she scratched the full length of one his floppy, absurdly thin and long bunny ears, that didn’t suit the rest of him.
It all felt a bit heavy, though. Like, couldn’t literally anyone who was sitting in on this conversation see that there was a huge gap here? That Anthem Tedd wasn’t helping Liberty at all, basically? That Liberty was reacting to that?
Or maybe she was the biased one. Maybe Lucy’s experiences of being let down meant she couldn’t assess these things fairly.
It still felt heavy.
“So, L.T.?” Lucy’s mom asked. “I hear you did a good deed?”
“I did?” L.T. asked, eyes widening, as she looked around, reacting in the same way another person would if they’d been caught naked in public.
“Taking books to a little- boy, was it?”
“Boy,” Liberty confirmed.
“And then spending time with him?”
“Oh yeah! I forgot!”
“It’s why we’re hanging out tonight,” Liberty said.
“Cool.”
“What did you do together?”
“Uhhhhh…” the goblin drew out the sound. Lucy could pretty much see the goblin coming up with five ideas and deciding to drop them for one reason or another. “Walked in the woods to um, to a secret spot. Played in a field. Talked. He read books to me.”
“Oh, did you read Camp Stamp? I sent him those.”
“Yeah!”
“I read those when I was little,” Lucy said. “Paul- read me the first one, actually.”
“Yep,” her mother confirmed.
“Paul?” Liberty asked.
“Ex stepdad.”
“Gotcha, gotcha.”
“It sounds like you’re doing terrific, L.T. And- Flopsy, was it? I like your name more than a lot of the other goblin names.”
Flopsy sat there, body and head still, eyes roving around, looking like he didn’t want to be put on the spot.
“Am I bothering him?”
“It’s good for him,” Liberty said. She poked Flopsy.
“Ye,” Flopsy said, not even a full word, but a half of a confirmation, voice deep. “I’m Flops.”
“And you’re a soldier, a general?”
“I raid. Run fast, hit stuff.”
“I guess that kind of leads me to other questions. Like how dangerous this all is, and how dangerous what’s happening tonight is,” Lucy’s mom said. “I think about what happened to Avery and her dad- sorry. I don’t know if that’s alright to bring up.”
“Why? Clarify?” Liberty asked.
“Your sister. Attacking them at the ice cream place. They called you partway through.”
“Oh. What happened, exactly?”
“They got hurt. Connor still has a bit of a bruise around his nose, slight black eyes. Avery had a cut on her stomach.”
“Oh,” Liberty said. “Well… balls.”
Lewdtube hurried to get to a standing position, going hand-over-hand along the table’s edge to better reach where Liberty’s hand was, the full length of her body stretched out so she could touch. “Mind your manners. Swearing, gosh.”
“You are very right, L.T.,” Liberty said. She gave the goblin a pat, and helped her sit back down, lifting the goblin’s upper body back over. “Well done.”
The goblin, smiling, looked like she could barely contain herself.
Flopsy sat there like a bump on a log, dour, eyes very concerned.
“Um, does L.T. want seconds?” Lucy’s mom asked.
“No thank you,” Lewdtube replied, struggling more.
“Or Flopsy?”
“Flopsy’s good, I think,” Liberty answered for him. “I meant what I said, you could have a whole pig on your table and I think he could polish it off. He’s nigh-bottomless. It’d just help him be a little wrecking ball. Right?”
She gave Flopsy’s ears a good scratch, and he nodded.
“What about you two? If not, I can put it away. Liberty?”
“This was good enough it almost brought tears to my eyes, but I shouldn’t get too full, if I’m going to be out there. Just in case I can’t convince ‘Meri.”
“Lucy?”
“Same.”
“Okay. I want to say I’m really worried about how you’re talking about this. About the danger, that you’re preparing for a fight. Are the Dog Tags going to be there?”
“Some,” Lucy replied. “Most of them are going to be handling the main thing, which is meant to take our attention so we aren’t aware of the big goblin.”
“I really don’t like that we’re talking tactics and diversions. There’s nobody else?”
“Liberty’s the only one who can really talk straight to America,” Lucy said, because that was easier than talking about the other half of it.
“Toadswallow can’t?”
“Toadswallow tried. While dressed up as a human, at the ice cream place. It didn’t really work.”
“Dressed up how?” L.T. asked, sitting up. “Huh?”
“A super secret trick very few goblins would ever think of using,” Lucy said.
“Let us talk about this, okay?” Liberty told the ferret-ish goblin. “You deserve a voice but this is a sensitive topic. I’ll reward you later because you were so wonderfully polite here.”
“It’s so weird how polite you are,” Lucy said, mocking some emotion, hands at the side of her head.
The goblin stifled giggles.
Flopsy sighed.
“It has to be me,” Liberty said. “I’m magicked up so I’m harder to hurt. It’s okay.”
“And Verona’s helping,” Lucy said. “She stays out of the way.”
“Yeah,” Liberty said.
“Is Lucy? Are you, Lucy? Are you harder to hurt? Are you staying out of the way?”
There it was. Damn it. Lucy had hoped to keep the focus on Liberty. Vainly hoped.
“Lucy sparred with America at the Blue Heron and won,” Liberty said.
“Did she spar with America with another twenty hostile, unpredictable practitioners around?”
“She’s sharp,” Liberty pointed out.
Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose.
“You can’t send Dog Tags? Or Toadswallow, or the giant Fae?”
“I have one idea on how to handle America. I think I’m the only one who can pull it off. If someone else comes to me and says they have a better idea and someone else can pull it off, I’m okay with that.”
“But they don’t have someone else, and they can’t, can they?”
“I guess we find out when we touch base with the Others,” Lucy said. “In the meantime, trust me? I know- I know that’s really rotten to say when I was keeping secrets- I was forced to keep secrets, kind of.”
“Yeah,” Liberty added, quiet.
Just a bit of backup was nice.
“I’d like to come,” Lucy’s mom said. “To see, to be able to watch and make sure there’s really no other way.”
“I don’t-” Lucy started, stopped, then frowned. “No?”
“Why not?”
“Because-”
“Because it’s not safe? Then you absolutely shouldn’t be going.”
“It’s not safe for you. I can handle myself.”
“That is asinine,” her mother retorted.
“Help,” Lucy told Liberty.
“I can help protect her.”
“Not the help I wanted.”
“Thank you, Liberty,” Lucy’s mom said.
“It’s super cool that your mom wants to see you in action, though. I love that,” Liberty gushed. “I wish my daddy came to more of my things.”
“Come on, Liberty, no. Mom, no.”
“Yes. And no tricks, no connection blocks, none of that. Okay?”
Lucy groaned.
“Okay? Say it, please.”
Lucy groaned again.
“This is fun,” Liberty said. “And this was delicious. Thank you Mrs. Ellingson. That is your name, right?”
“It is.”
“It’s so unusual, I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”
“It’s a mishmash of Lucy’s father’s and mine, when we were married. We didn’t find anything especially elegant, and we went forward with this, with the thought that it would sound more natural if we got used to it. And it didn’t, especially, but I’m okay with that.”
“Except I had to confirm I spelled it right twice, when getting my first bank account,” Lucy muttered. “And when signing up for the Blue Heron. Not that I’m complaining, exactly.”
“It’s ours,” her mom said.
“Yeah. For sure.”
Lucy wasn’t even sure how to get into things, especially thinking about what the rest of the night had in store.
Her sweater nagged at her. “I’ve got to get ready. If we’re done? Is that okay, may I be excused?”
“Absolutely,” her mom said. “Talk to people. Triple check there’s no alternatives to you being involved. Please.”
“Please and thank you!” Lewdtube piped up, earning a head pat from Liberty.
“Let us at least check the coast is clear before you come, okay?” Lucy said.
“So long as you promise you won’t try to run off or avoid me. Don’t cheat.”
Lucy shook her head. “I won’t promise, but I won’t cheat.”
“These guys can watch her until we give the signal,” Liberty offered.
Lucy left, glancing back to see Liberty happily chatting away with her mom, pulling Flopsy into her lap to scratch his head with the fingernails of both hands.
Lucy went up to her room, fixing up her hair again, pulling loose, dense curls back into the ponytail where they’d escaped, before redoing the back and putting on a brass-toned hairband that matched her earring.
A bit of glamour adjusted the tone of the weapon ring. She fixed the chain with John’s dog tag and the black dog’s ring on it.
She sighed.
Spell cards, some of the dwindling supply of High Summer glamour. She didn’t even have Dark Fall glamour anymore, except from the remnants of past transformations – feathers that she’d used before that still had traces on them. Maybe good for one transformation in a pinch. Maybe. She could slip into the shapes of more aggressive birds and animals, but that was tricky, and a lot of the time she didn’t want to be aggressive. She wanted to become animals to get places or get away.
High Summer was just a bit worse for that.
In a month or two, the supplies would run out and she’d have to face the tougher stuff with Winter glamour, and Guilherme taking an even sterner approach.
She plucked at the collar of her sweater. It wasn’t bad. The black, dense knit suited her, even, maybe. But the shape of the collar and the blown-out sleeves and the way it felt so… lived in or maybe intentionally worn out, it just didn’t fit.
So she used glamour.
She’d worked with Chloe’s sweater and that had been different, but some principles were the same. She followed the weave.
Changing the collar. Adding a hood. Changing the color. Changing the texture.
She had bead-chain necklaces in case she broke the one with John’s tag and Yalda’s ring on it, and took some, working them into the glamour and fabric.
“Your daughter is really amazing, you know. Not as amazing as Avery, I’ll say that, but I’m a bit biased. Avery’s got an amazing ‘possum.”
“Uh huh. I’m not sure how to respond to that.”
“Liberty!” Lucy called down the stairs.
There were some running footsteps.
“What’s up!?” Liberty called up.
“Help me with some prep?”
“Coming!”
Lucy pulled off the sweater, leaving on a sleeveless top. She looked it over before hanging it up.
“Where are you?” Liberty asked.
“Here,” Lucy said, getting a notebook out and setting it aside. “Might as well layer defenses, right?”
“Oh, sure. On skin?”
“That’s the plan. Done it before. Unless it’s a problem.”
“Nope.”
Lucy handed Liberty the brassy-gold metallic marker.
Chainmail hooded sweater, runes on her neck and arms.
“Thank you for trusting me to do this,” Liberty said. “And for the nice dinner. It’s been a bit lonely.”
“That seems to be a common thing these days.”
Lucy shivered at the cold marker at the nape of her neck.
“This feels like overkill,” Liberty said.
“It might not be. Are you going to be okay if it’s not?”
“I don’t know.”
The drawing continued for a few minutes. Lucy heard her mom downstairs, trying to make conversation with the goblins, before they got down from their seats and went up.
“Incoming, in three, two…” Lucy said.
Liberty pulled the marker away before Flopsy could tackle-hug her leg, then resumed drawing.
Liberty’s phone rang.
“It’s my dad. I’m going to- I’ll step outside, I think. You mind not listening in? I’m not betraying you or anything. It’s just family stuff.”
“Sure.”
Liberty left, and Lucy’s mom came in.
“Is there enough done by Liberty, or is it clear enough for you to finish that up?” she asked her mom.
“What if I get it wrong?”
“Then that’s one protection that might not work. That I hopefully won’t need.”
“I’ll try. Maybe have Liberty check after.”
Lucy nodded.
It reminded her of her mom doing her hair. Except it was- what? Her mom putting armor on her daughter?
It felt somber, sad, cold instead of warm.
“Our conversation earlier. About Verona,” her mother said. “Times you stopped her from doing something?”
“Yeah. She’s really good at the magic stuff. Really, really good. I don’t think she even gets how good she is. But there are times she goes too far, or it- if I wasn’t there, to pull her back, she’d go past a point of no return. Avery helps sometimes, but… different personality, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“So if she leaves, what if there’s another moment like that, and I’m not there to tell her she can’t be a cat instead of a human? Or to not use the big red button in the lobby of the hospital? Or- I don’t know. It feels shitty and condescending that I’m saying this, even, but we have our strengths and weaknesses, you know? And Avery’s- she’s good out there. In the flanks, supporting from three hours away, staying in touch with us and key people. I don’t think Verona would be okay.”
Her mother finished, then smoothed out Lucy’s hair some, before fixing the hairband. “But is she okay like this?”
“I dunno. But I’d rather ‘dunno’ with her where I can do everything I can to back her up than not.”
“And- I have to ask. You don’t want me to come tonight?”
“Okay. I’m still coming.”
“Figured.”
“And I’m left wondering… you’re watching out for Verona, but who’s watching out for you? Because Miss has her own thing to focus on, right? Guilherme is in winter?”
“Yes. Fallen to winter.”
“Okay. And Toadswallow didn’t seem that supportive of Liberty and America, and I’m left wondering if he’ll leave you in the lurch.”
“He loves them. It’s complicated. It’s not like she thinks it is. Her dad threatened him, and Toadswallow didn’t want to tell her. Don’t tell her that.”
“Okay.”
Lucy’s earring was off, but she knew Liberty and the goblins were still downstairs.
“Who watches you, Lucy?”
“Me. I’ve always had to watch myself extra,” Lucy said. She pulled on the hidden chainmail glamoured sweater, letting it settle on her markered-up shoulders, with brassy-gold marker on black skin. “Because I know too many other people are watching me, waiting for me to slip up.”
“That’s not the world I wanted for you.”
Lucy reached with her right hand around to the left side of her neck, until she was touching the diagram work.
For Kennet.
It activated.
“No. Me either.”
“Yeah, and Avery’s been talking to a lot of people. Word on the street, according to her, is that my daddy’s on his way into Kennet tonight,” Liberty explained.
They were walking over toward the cabins now.
Lucy nodded. That had been the phone call Liberty had stepped outside to take.
“Okay, well, shit,” Verona replied. “So what do we do?”
“I want to try to convince America,” Liberty said. “If we can do that before he shows up, that’s great.”
“And if you can’t, I make my move?” Lucy asked. “Do what you can to stop the big guy?”
“Slaygarrrrrr Who Slavishly Slays. Don’t talk around his name or avoid saying it while talking about him, or you’ll get in trouble.”
“This is lame,” Lucy said.
“It’s great, Verona countered. “Lame-great. Imagine if someone had to call me Verona Hayward, third Witch, sorceress and hatcher of the moon-”
“Oh my god,” Lucy groaned, but it was a groan in good fun.
“-wielder of halflight and shadow, mutable of form, seller of strange texts…”
“You’re adding to it?”
“I’m totally adding to it, even if I can’t make it this ridiculous mouthful I can’t make others say. What’s the point if you can’t have a whole formalized thing?”
They arrived at the part of the street where they could look between hospital and school and see the cabins at the foot of the ski hill, nature behind them, crushed gravel lots in front of them.
Lucy’s earring caught the approaching Dog Tags, goblins, Rook, and Matthew.
Toadswallow wasn’t here, nor was Bubbleyum. Probably figured it’d upset Liberty.
“I’ll go?” Verona asked. “Stay ahead of things if they manage to get a signal across?”
“They’re heading downtown, Kennet above. Liberty’s in Kennet below,” Rook said. “They intend to take action in about an hour.”
Verona nodded. The group split along prearranged lines, but didn’t separate. The Dog Tags were with Verona.
“Can Grandfather come with me?” Lucy asked.
“Why?” Grandfather asked. “Not saying no, but why?”
“Because I like you and trust you? And it sure would be nice to have people I like and trust at my back for this?”
“Okay,” Grandfather said. “While you’re wearing the tag and ring you’re wearing, you can get away with asking pretty much anything. You don’t have to explain, but-”
“You’re a person. You deserve explanations. I’m afraid I don’t have a good one. I just…”
She trailed off, aware of the number of eyes on her.
You’re the closest thing I have to John.
He moved over, into Lucy’s smaller group.
“Thank you,” Lucy said, quiet.
“What do you need me to do?”
“Her mom’s coming,” Liberty said. “I’m going to have my guys protecting her, but she might want someone else.”
He nodded.
“What purpose does it serve?” Rook asked.
“Makes her feel better, I dunno,” Lucy said. “She wants to see. And I don’t know if I want her to see, but… I dunno. Either this goes horribly and it sure would be nice to have my mom and some people I trust around, or it goes great and maybe my mom feels better about what I’m doing.”
“Or both,” Verona threw in.
“Really adding to the stress here, Ronnie.”
“Just saying.”
Lucy sighed.
“I hope you don’t need to,” Liberty said. “I’ll talk to her, okay? Then I’ll talk to my dad when he comes. That’s two shots we get at fixing this.”
Lucy had her suspicions, but she didn’t really want to put the suspicions to words. She was afraid she could understand where America was at.
If losing Alexander was some loose parallel to Lucy losing someone… if that happened, and then if she’d been in the midst of it all, of the hurt and anger, and then someone she really trusted like Booker or Avery or Verona turned their backs on her?
Even if it was for a good reason, she didn’t think she’d turn around and offer a listening ear.
Liberty announced, “I’m going to go. We’ll check the way is clear, call your mom. I’ll try with America.”
Lucy nodded.
She and her group followed Liberty as Liberty walked across the field between the school and hospital. Verona’s group headed toward downtown.
Liberty put her fingers to her lips, and then she whistled, an enhanced sound, loud and piercing enough Lucy imagined it could be heard across Kennet.
The goblins came out of every gap, every trash can, every dark shadow under a bush that had captured some plastic bags blown by the wind.
“Should we draw a portal?” Lucy asked. “I guess we can do that more, right, because the reason we weren’t drawing them was because they upset the imbalance, and we’re balanced now?”
“Or we could use the Warrens.”
“You could.” Rook pointed out, “There’s also a way from Kennet above to Kennet below over there, near the south end of the valley, it’s one of the big routes they found they’ve been using.”
“Let’s do that,” Liberty said.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. Show we aren’t afraid. Let her hear we’re coming and then we meet on sorta neutral terms.”
Lucy wasn’t sure she agreed, but this was Liberty’s part of this.
They didn’t really have to work very hard to find the spot. Practitioners were already there, along with two Others who were keeping to the shadows, staying out of sight when civilians passed by.
They adjusted to full alert as Liberty approached, backed by Lucy and the rest of the Kennet group.
“Little Tedd,” Hadley called out.
Lucy caught Liberty’s ‘ugh’ with the earring. She wouldn’t have noticed it without.
“I’m passing through for my sister. Let me through? Family matter.”
“Is the army of goblins and the group behind you part of the family?”
“I consider my raiders and helpers to be part of the extended family. Right now they’re emotional support.”
“Is the emotion they’re supporting going to be violent rage?”
“Depends on a lot. Hopefully and probably not. Let us through. We want to deal with her.”
“Can be taken two ways, you know. Deal like negotiate, or deal like… pounding face?”
“Get out of the way, Hadley.”
“Only because Anthem’s your daddy, and he’s cozy with Musser. You know he’s coming, right?”
“Part of why I’m going.”
Hadley motioned, and the group of practitioners went through the portal.
Liberty waited a minute, then walked through, goblins bounding forward to go through a few steps ahead, or behind, and then flooded through, into a dark bend in the path through trees.
Lucy could taste the difference in the air as she followed. Black smoke thick in the air.
Hadley’s group was a distance up the way, walking over toward the cabins. Their breath fogged in the cool fall air.
As they approached the cabins, America stepped outside. Others were already outside, in neighboring cabins, or right behind her.
Liberty reached the edge of where the grass started becoming crushed gravel as America reached the halfway point. America had the sides of her head shaved, hair in almost a mullet, and was sucking purple fluid out of a 2-gallon jug of syrup and crushed ice.
“We made a deal, ‘Meri,” Liberty called out. “Not to let our sisterhood slip away.”
“Yup!”
“You’re really being a whole cunt over that, you know? All this while, dragging me around, bringing it up to get your way.”
“Our way.”
“Your way. There’s been enough times I didn’t want to go with it and I did. I’m asking you to come with me. You’re pissed now because you were pissed before and tomorrow you’ll be pissed off because you can’t get over how pissed you were today. Chill out. Let’s tell dad to chill, let’s go home, let’s wake up the neighborhood with loud goblin weapons. We’ll make wild plans for Halloween with the goblins. Let’s stay up talking until we fall asleep, then do it the next night, until shit starts making sense… or it’s nonsense we can face together.”
“Baby Bitch,” America said. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“Tell me.”
“It’s all gone to shit. You’re pretending like we can go back to where things were and we can’t. It’s bad out there. We’re losing Lords, we’re losing friends- I don’t know if we have a home, anymore. Not in this region.”
“Then we go somewhere else. Wisconsin.”
America shook her head. “Everything daddy’s been building. Everything he was going to hand off to us. The contact networks, libraries, troves- whatever’s still there, it’s going to get harder and harder to get to. We don’t have halloween, we don’t have an easy place to rest or sleep. A bunch of people left earlier, helped by the Others and nitwits behind you, and we can’t get in contact with them. This isn’t just about the sister thing. Remember when we spent three months preparing for zombie apocalypse?”
“Fuck you, of course I do.”
“And the zombie bible?”
“Memorized.”
“Chapter three, part-”
“-three,” Liberty finished. “Fuck you. Doesn’t apply.”
“Damn well does and fuck you too, this is exactly the situation the chapter was written for. It’s all gone to shit, the world’s a mess, you need to stand with the tribe. You’re furthest from center.”
“You’re the one that’s straying. Wasting resources-”
“You really think Daddy’s going to agree with you? When he shows? Won’t be long. The Carmine Exile is against us, if you were able to get here, it’s probably because he let you. And why did he let you? Because you’re against us. Chapter three, part three. Until we have basic needs met and a solid home base to fall back to, you gotta suck it up, put everything aside, work with the tribe. Don’t let emotions or individual goals get in the way. Tribe first.”
“They could give us a home base.”
“At the heart of Carmine territory?”
“Yes!”
“Fuck you. No way we can make the moves we need to make from here. The closest port of call three hours away? Under the Carmine’s watchful eye? No way that works. Gainsay me. Tell me one good move you can make.”
Liberty shook her head. She looked over her shoulder at Lucy.
“What good move can you make from here?” Lucy called out. “Not such a good point if you’re all stuck.”
“Don’t butt in, kid!” America called out.
“‘Meri!” Liberty called out. “This isn’t zombies!”
“That’s bullshit and you know it! Chapter zero! Alien invasions, war, breaking of the Seal, Primevals, we had a whole list!”
“Yeah,” Liberty answered, quieter.
“What’s this?” Lucy asked.
“We were going to have books for each possible endgame. But same core ideas for each. Planning for the big disasters. Bibles to obey for each one. We gave each one a different color.”
“But we got bored, didn’t we? Because it was so repetitive? So we agreed? A lot of it is the same! And chapter three was one of those things!”
“This is a thing you did when you were kids?”
“It’s still important,” Liberty said, looking a little defeated.
“Important enough for you to…” Lucy trailed off, not wanting to put words to it.
“Nah. Because ‘Meri is being a butt, and it doesn’t feel right. Hey, Bitch!”
America, sucking on her drink, lowered the drink and stood straighter, looking about as intense as someone could look with purple stained lips and tongue.
“Promise we made to stay sisters takes priority over the Zombie Bible! And you know you owe me at this point.”
“A handful of little things does not add up to a Zombie Bible level event, Liberty!”
“You attacked the person I like! A bunch! That’s a violation of the ethos, fuck it!”
“Maybe.”
“Fuck you! You know it is! So fuck off, stop being butthurt, and be my sister again!”
“And if I say no?” America asked. “If this is too important?”
Liberty visibly shrank down into herself and back, fists clenched.
“If you want to declare the sisterly bond broken, we’re both forsworn,” America said.
There was no light in her eyes, Lucy saw.
Lucy looked over at Liberty- and there was a lot of light there. Reflections of the lights from the cabin and the upper edge of downtown, the gas station up the mountain. Captured in tears that sat at the edge of lower eyelids, that hadn’t yet escaped to her cheeks.
“Don’t,” Lucy said, quiet.
“Okay,” Liberty replied, just as quiet. “Thanks for telling me not to.”
“Get your ass over here, Liberty. Daddy’s coming, then we leave, and this whole situation’ll look way different in the rear view mirror.”
“This isn’t like the shit you pull to get the TV remote all the time,” Liberty said. “If you want to play chicken, using the bond like that… you might get me to come over there, but you’ll never get me to forgive you. Not completely.”
America didn’t answer right away. She just stood there, stance askew, leaning a bit, condensation dripping off the paper cup with its plastic cover over the top, straw sticking out, expression neutral, eyes as lifeless as Liberty’s were wet.
“This is a once in a lifetime crisis.”
“And you’re being a thug, like Uncle Toadswallow warned us about. He saw potential in us, he wanted us to make up new things to call ourselves, to be people who took cool practice and then did cool things.”
“That’s just shit they tell a lot of kids, Libs. They tell you you have potential so you’ll try harder and maybe meet that potential. But I don’t think they ever really believe it.”
“I believe it. For you and for me. And for the kids I was hanging with, and for a lot of these goblins.”
“You’ll change your mind. Let life disappoint you a few more times. Let them disappoint you. You’ll change your mind, Libs.”
“I don’t want to.”
America shrugged. “That’s… frustrating.”
“Why!? Are you happy doing this!? Because I get this sick feeling in my stomach on your behalf, and that’s secondhand! I can’t imagine what you feel like right now! Why would you want to be like this?”
“I don’t. But if you were at least on the same page as me on this… we could talk. It wouldn’t be like it was before, but we could talk.”
Liberty shook her head.
America added, “I’ve been waiting for months for you. I thought, everything going to shit like this, people dying, you’d show up, and we could talk. Then you went straight to them, instead.”
“I won’t apologize. You’re not being fair, ‘Meri. I deserve for you to put in the effort, at least once, follow me instead of me following you.
America stood there, heaving in a deep breath, then heaving it out. A disgusted look crossed her face as she looked away.
“‘Meri?”
“Let’s agree…” America ventured. “The bond’s still there. And that makes this all hurts a lot more. Neither of us follows the other and it just hurts a fuckton.”
Liberty nodded.
“When we were making the Zombie Bible, it was fun, wasn’t it?” America asked.
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t cross my mind, even the slightest bit, how bad it would feel when things got this bad. Or that you and I wouldn’t be together.”
“Same here.”
America nodded. She turned her gaze to Lucy. “You got something to say?”
“You know why I’m here,” Lucy replied.
“Okay. Libs? Don’t interfere.”
“There’s a woman in the crowd back there. I hereby swear to protect her.”
Lucy turned. Her mom was back there. Grandfather and the goblins had guided her through.
“That’s interfering, Libs. I think somehow you missed the concept.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” Lucy said, quiet.
Liberty shrugged.
“Well that’s annoying. But okay,” America said. “Let me pass that on.”
Liberty nodded. Her eyes were still wet.
America turned her back, walking a short distance to the cabins. Lucy’s earring caught the faint whistle, and she saw the goblins escape out from the space beneath the cabin, and leave the woods.
“Don’t attack the crowd, it’ll get my little sister forsworn. She’s a tit, but if you do that to her, you’d better do it to me too, because I’ll make it a lifelong vendetta to destroy you. Pass that on.”
“What’s next?”
“Next? Slaygarrrrrr Who Slavishly Slays. Time to kick some skinny black ass.”
Lucy watched as the pool of goblins surrounding America scrambled out of the way, cheering as Slaygarrrrr Who Slavishly Slays left the cabin, ducking his head to get through the door.
America talked to him as he squeezed through. He had to turn sideways to get through the door, and even then, wood creaked as he pulled through.
“Don’t attack the crowd at the back. And stick to the rules of the binding.”
He had legs like a rhino’s, covered in patchwork armor- some spiked, some decorated with strings of skulls, some just cast iron with various degrees of rust. There might’ve been two cast iron frying pans, sans handle, each mounted on one side of the belt buckle, which was about a foot and a half across, depicting the same image that was on his helmet.
His right arm was similarly armored, but with more spikes, and a hand stuck out that was clawed, with dead gray skin stretched so thinly over the big hand that it had torn, exposing red, raw flesh. Every unarmored part was like that- which included more than half his upper body and his left arm, where the flesh was stretched so thin it had split and looked like grayish ribbon. Even with armored rhino legs, he was top heavy misproportioned, his arm and chest so swollen and big that they barely held the shape of a chest or arm. At the inside of his elbow was a bulge of muscle or raw red fat -it was hard to tell- that was almost as big as Lucy would be if she curled up into a fetal position.
He had no neck- only a heaping bulge similar to the ones on his chest and arm, that gave loose shape and nothing more, with a cast iron helmet mounted diagonally on the side of it, beard draping down from the base of the helmet, matted, scraggly, and bloodstained. Breath hissed out of the open part where his mouth was, a mess of random teeth, and the eyes seemed far too small, peering out of holes in the front of the helmet, that looked like they’d been made with weapons damaging the metal, instead of any actual design.
“Do I have permission to kick your sister’s ass?”
“Yeah. Wake her up from whatever the fuck the miserable dream she’s dreaming.”
“You better know my name!” he roared.
Goblins, friendly and enemy, and America, and Liberty, and various practitioners included, all answered. “Slaygarrrrr Who Slavishly Slays!”
Lucy added her voice to the cry, to be safe.
“Didn’t sound like some of you knew it!” he roared, marching forward.
He got larger on the approach, swelling more.
“And it didn’t sound like some of you said it right!”
Lucy looked back at the crowd. Her mom was shrinking back.
Sorry mom.
She stepped forward.
“You!” Slaygarrr Who Slavishly Slays roared. He pointed a finger. “You, I want you to say it, and say it right!”
Doglick answered, “Arf!”
“Say it!”
“Slaygarrrrrrrr-arf!”
Slaygar reached behind his back, and pulled out a weapon that had about thirty spikes sticking out of the handle, and a massive stone stalactite mounted on the top, braced in place with metal bands.
Lucy kept moving forward, past Slaygarrrrr Who Slavishly Slays, turning to keep him firmly in her sight.
“Try it again!”
Lucy saw Doglick concentrating. “Slarf-arf-grrrrrrr-”
Lucy threw a spell card at America. Slaygarrr Who Slavishly Slays heaved his weapon, throwing it so it spun end over end, while simultaneously turning around.
Doglick scrambled, the goblins and Others around him parting.
The weapon turned in mid-air, to track Doglick as he ran. And Slaygarrrr Who Slavishly Slays, meanwhile, kicked up a massive plume of dirt as he lunged, hurling himself toward America.
He went from being four or five paces behind Lucy to being about ten paces ahead, arm out to one side, where he caught the spell card. It detonated in his hand.
He didn’t seem to care. It barely did any damage.
Yep. He was bound to protect America Tedd.
Lucy tossed down another spell card as he stomped toward her.
Light and smoke. Bit of glamour- High Summer. Not the best for smoke, but not the absolute worst either. She traced the lines of the smoke, moving with it. She shaped it, and encouraged the smoke to follow suit.
Every bit of the smoke began to resemble foxes, overlapping, dissipating, weaving into one another.
She let them scatter, rose as one-
Slaygarrrrrr who Slavishly Slays stomped, hard.
Glamour shattered, starting at the ground and rising.
Fuck, jesus.
Lucy reached for her pocket, and as the glamour around her shattered, pulled out the glamour packet, feathers still stuck in it.
Fifty-fifty on whether this would work, but she still had options and she’d much rather do this while she had options.
She became a bird. And it wasn’t a perfect bird- she started out with one wing more formed than the other, flapped, and then glamour redistributed.
The hammer with a big spike for the head and thirty spikes along the handle zipped through the air, smacking into his hand, where it pierced through the palm and out the back of the hand in four different places. In the process, it smashed right past Grandfather, who fell.
It returns to him.
He reared back, ready to throw at her.
“Doglick’s still alive!” Liberty shouted.
“Don’t fucking interfere, Libs!” America hollered.
“Doesn’t matter!” Slaygarrrr who Slavishly Slays answered. He pointed at Lucy. “The Doglick won’t live if I can’t help it, and the glamour-swaddled cunt is to say my name!”
She was a bird. She wasn’t equipped to speak with this shitty secondhand glamour around her.
She flapped a few times, breaking the glamour, and reached for the air. Guilherme had taught her this. If she could slow her fall while she shouted- “Slaygarrrr-”
“Too late! A name this great deserves a prompt response!” Slaygarrrr Who Slavishly Slays interrupted.
He swelled even as he threw at Lucy.
She went for a spell card. Two thirds of the way down, specifics didn’t matter much.
She threw it at the incoming hammer.
Water. It produced a quantity of water that was instantly obliterated. Droplets stung as they pelted her-
And the fogged watch at her ankle slowed time.
She tried to step on the hammer as it came at her, but it was wet, and her shoe skidded along the wet stone of the head.
But it did let her reorient-twisting her body through the air, so the smooth side of the head -still with a metal band fixing it to the haft- could slide down leg, banging knee slightly, up hip, up the side of her body, skidding against faux chainmail- she brought one arm as far left as it would go to offer a smooth plane for the hammer to slide along as it clipped shoulderblade- hard enough to make her right arm go numb, her thoughts momentarily dashed out of her head.
Hammer moved on, arcing to head for Doglick again- she fell, now backflipping through the air by the momentum just from those grazing hits.
The plan. Glamour-
No, she’d used the glamour.
She’d had a plan and she couldn’t organize her thoughts enough to remember it, and she had seconds.
A fragment of a remembered conversation with Verona-
Bearer of fang and smoke.
She had her own title.
Smoke was a safe bet. She had a whole pocket full, that she didn’t need to sort out.
She threw them all.
A cloud of smoke that she fell straight into- with light shining through it, to help with connecting to High Summer. A few careful movements-
She became smoke, part of that explosion.
She became big. Part of the explosion of smoke, some of it, and none of it.
But she’d stopped falling.
She saw America preparing something. Putting some green rock close to paper- paper with runes on it.
Elemental runes.
Lucy maneuvered, gathering herself, moving, and finding her body and her senses again.
At least this was a medium she was comfortable in, with a stock of glamour.
She could speak. It helped that she had the earring. For that connection to sound and communication.
“America Tedd. You shattered the innocence of my mother and my friend’s parents.”
“You did most of it,” America called up.
America unleashed the spell card. Wind, to dissipate the smoke in a violent way.
But Lucy was already breaking the glamour. Ready to drop the twenty or so feet down to America Tedd. Already with a sign prepared on one hand.
Arena. You and me. One on one.
She created the sphere of the Arena while still airborne. Colors changed. Swords plunged down faster than Lucy could.
My battlefield.
She landed hard, hair billowing out, many times its usual size, pink. It being her arena made the landing easier.
“With ninety nine fucks given and taken from ninety-nine goblins of note, I say fuck that!” America shouted.
Shattering the Arena.
“I fucking know how you fight, I’m prepared.”
Lucy slipped on the weapon ring, and pulled her cloak out.
Turning it into a cloak with knives at the edges, the ‘fabric’ an arrangement of metal slats linked together.
“Every bit of fear she’s felt, you owe threefold! You broke that innocence!” Lucy shouted.
“You’re trying to curse me? Using Karmic law?” America asked, laughing. “You shot for the moon and you left them vulnerable while you did it!”
Lucy’s cape of knives raked America’s forearms as America reached to her mouth. Lucy scrambled out of the way, in case it was some acid vomit or something.
But America was pulling out a staff. Lucy turned, hard, and the cape unfurled, extending, and the knives cut the back of America’s legs.
Didn’t matter. Like Liberty, she had protection against minor inconveniences like half-inch cuts in the back of her calves. and knees.
The staff was shedding what looked like spores or pollen.
My mom’s watching. I can’t fuck this up.
I told Verona I could do this, and I feel like I really need her trust.
Lucy pulled out spell cards, clumsily, with one of her arms still flooded with pins and needles from her brief contact with the hammer in the sky.
And one of America’s goblins jumped out of nowhere, grabbing them out of Lucy’s hand.
Another caught her cape.
“I have help? Remember?” America asked. Her grin was impossibly wide- some more goblin magic primed. And her eyes were still lifeless. “Big help.”
Slaygarrrrr Who Slavishly Slays lunged out of the shadows.
Without the name thing to forge connections and give him a special permission to punish, he was just a thousand pounds of bulk, muscle, spikes, and raw power.
Lucy had a bit of training with Guilherme, and a significant share had been training against those bigger than her.
“Say my name!” he bellowed.
“Slaygarrrrrr Who Sl-”
Lucy’s breath caught in her throat.
The spores.
Her finger traced a line from earring to mouth. Let me be heard. “-avishly Slays!”
She dodged his follow-up. He punched into the ground hard enough to kick up another plume of gravel, dry dirt, and damp dirt from a lower layer.
Damp dirt. She stuck her foot out, sweeping it around- partially for balance, to pivot. Partially to let that watch catch the damp.
It wasn’t perfect, but it did something.
She glimpsed America, thrusting the spiky end of the crooked wooden staff toward her head.
“Got-” America’s voice was slightly distorted. “-you.”
Lucy ducked past it.
“That’s a miss, actually,” she told America. “And you wronged my family, you broke innocence, against the ideas of the Seal of Solomon-”
“Get the fuck over it. And I’ve got you in the broader sense, so don’t think that’s a gainsay.”
“It’s only not a gainsay if you-”
America had reared her head back. Lucy ducked low, avoiding the spray of goblin vomit- tiny goblins among the chunks of the green geyser. “-win. Miss again.”
She clapped her hands together.
Forming another arena. Just in time, as Slaygar came crashing through the geyser. He stopped short at the barrier. Lucy hurried, ducking low, hand on the ground, fingers in dirt- a crude expression of a symbol-
“Say-”
-that twisted into a rune for sound. She drew a hard line, fingers scraping through gravel.
Muting him.
“You’re not part of this. This is me and America,” she said, turning.
He punched the side of the Arena.
And the barrier actually cracked.
She hadn’t expected that.
A second punch put a hole in it that he could reach through. Cracks spread further.
America laughed. She was holding Lucy’s spell cards.
She whipped them at Lucy.
Lucy reached for her cloak, weapon ring working, and turned it into a fan. Blowing wind at the cards. Her cards. Maybe that counted for a little. Runes drawn on her shoulder got hot, and provided more resistance, to count for a little more. None hit her.
They exploded against the edges of the arena. Water, fire, smoke-
“And Miss,” Lucy said, banishing the Arena by opening her hand with the arena mark on it. “Three times-”
“Three times you’ve said my name,” Miss answered. “I said I’d answer when you did.”
America turned, and saw Miss standing behind her.
“Karmic jurisprudence and all that shit,” Lucy said. “Break innocence, there’s a consequence. Here you go.”
“Bullshit,” America said.
But the wind picked up. Miss reached out, adjusting in perspective and scale- hair and sleeve sweeping past America.
America fought back- tearing at the hair and sleeve- keeping from being completely covered by either.
And Lucy kicked her in the butt, knocking her off balance.
America plummeted all the way to Kennet found, helped by Miss.
“Arena’s my turf, but so is Kennet,” Lucy said, to the space where America had been.
“You!” Slaygarrrr Who Slavishly Slays bellowed.
“You didn’t protect her, Slaygarrrrr Who Slavishly Slays. Let the binding be undone, go where you came from,” Lucy told him.
He huffed out an annoyed sound, then stepped back.
The shadows that passed over him were exaggerated, the desaturation from being in the dark affected the colorful, mostly bloody parts of him more than they should have, and he became a blur in the dark, then became nothing. Gone.
Leaving Lucy in the middle of a bunch of hostile practitioners, still.
Might need an escape route, Miss, she thought, eyeing her surroundings.
Nobody seized on the moment to attack her.
Because Anthem Tedd was standing by his car, and his presence alone was almost more of a thing than Lucy kicking America’s ass and dealing with the big goblin in the process.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“There’s a big penalty on the books for aggravated harm to Kennet and its innocents,” Lucy said. “She’ll be in Kennet found for a long while. Karmically secured too.”
“That’s fine,” Anthem said. “She can send for me when she’s out.”
Lucy paced to one side, keeping the surrounding practitioners in view.
“Daddy,” Liberty said. “We’re going about this the wrong way. A lot of these people will listen to you, and I know you’ll listen to me. America’s not wrong that everything’s screwed up. Let’s at least sit down with people outside of our bubble, talk. Work out solutions. I’ll call in favors, I’ll do the war mage tutoring you wanted. I think you could even negotiate to get America out, if you really need her.”
He pulled out his phone.
“Daddy?”
Lucy walked over to her group. Nobody stopped her. It wasn’t like they were giving her any special respect, but they weren’t disrespecting her either. She breathed hard, knee hurting, shoulder hurting. She rolled it experimentally, and felt a sharp pang that interrupted her breathing, along with a weird click.
If she had to have her arm in another fucking sling again…
The silence from Anthem persisted for the entirety of that. His eyes on his phone. Nobody from the practitioner group spoke up.
Lucy couldn’t really stop breathing hard, and it burned a bit in her throat. She wondered if the spores from the staff had any lingering side effects. Goblin stuff often did. Infections. Weird illnesses.
Have to see Tashlit, get cleared up.
“When you come around,” Anthem said, “go straight to any of the main houses. I’ll let the staff know to receive you, and each of them will have instructions for you. Drudge work, for a little while, until you make up for the inconveniences you’ve caused. Three months, six months. We’ll see how you do. It’s hard to travel, situation being what it is, but I trust you’ll find a way.”
“Daddy-”
“And until you come around, you aren’t allowed onto the properties, I’ll tell the staff to adjust the wards. No access to the bank account, I’ve just shut it off. Same with the phone. Don’t call in favors or assume anything of Tedd family allies. I won’t broadcast your lapses to those people, to avoid the embarrassment and distraction in hard times, but if you do try to use the Tedd family name with them, there will be consequences down the road.”
“No, don’t. Daddy- talk to me! Have a conversation!”
“I gave you a lot, Liberty. I sacrificed a lot, I put a lot of stock into you. I went out of my way to hand you opportunities. I’m not going to say you owe me something for that. But if you’re going to take things in this direction… I’ll stop giving, I’ll stop sacrificing, I’ll stop putting stock in you. I don’t…” he paused.
“Don’t do this,” Liberty said.
Lucy swallowed past a lump in her throat.
“I don’t wish for anything bad to happen to you. I love you still. I’m just-” he paused. “-painfully disappointed. Please come around. Then come home.”
Lucy caught Liberty as she dropped to her knees, head bowed, keeping it from being too rough a drop onto rocky ground. Even if Liberty didn’t feel the small hurts, she didn’t deserve skinned knees on top of- of this.
“You’re disappointed!?” Lucy shouted. “She’s old enough to have a voice! Let her speak! Have that fucking conversation she’s asking for! Or aren’t you man enough!?”
Liberty reached up and scraped fingers against Lucy’s chainmail sweater. Her hand trailed down until she had a grip on the end of the sleeve, pulling down on it.
Like a silent ‘stop’.
“Cyn? Martin?” Anthem asked. “I was going to take you two and my two daughters out, but my daughters won’t be coming. Two more can come. Who knows their way around magical items? We might get gainsaid along the way. Raise your hands.”
A few hands were raised.
Lucy’s mom had ventured closer. Lucy motioned for her to stay back, while she was still huddled down beside Liberty, arms braced around her, as if to keep her from falling further toward the ground. Various goblins milled around, trying to reach for Liberty, to pat her leg, or hug her. Some hugged at Lucy, as if to support her so she could support Liberty.
Lucy looked up and saw Grandfather and Rook.
“She came to help us manage a tough situation. She doesn’t deserve for this to happen because she helped us,” Lucy told them.
“There’s nothing we can do except make accommodations and support her,” Rook said.
“Seriously?” Lucy asked.
“A man like that won’t bend. You’ll break yourself against his inflexibility if you try to make him bow.”
“He’s an ass,” Grandfather added.
Anthem found the people he wanted to come with him. Practitioners kept a wary eye on Lucy’s group as they gathered around the side of the car, talking in low voices to Anthem. The voices blurred in together. Lucy could have listened for a proper update on where that group was at, but… that really wasn’t what was important.
“Someone tell me it’s okay for me to do something about this,” Lucy said, quiet.
The answer was a croak of a voice. With her arms around Liberty, steadying the girl, Lucy felt the flinch that came from that particular voice. As if it was an insult added to injury. “Can you?”
Lucy’s eyes wandered. Liberty was barely moving, except to cry silently.
“Oh my dear,” Toadswallow said, as he approached. “I never wanted you to know he was capable of this cruelty. It’s why I left.”
Liberty didn’t react. Toadswallow came up to the other side of her, and put a hand at her back, another hand at her leg. “Bubbleyum’s around. You haven’t seen her since you were very small. Come stay with us. Come. Up.”
He coaxed her. Every word became an individual instruction that Liberty mechanically followed.
Liberty had talked about feeling some of America’s emotion, a gut feeling that was only part of what America was feeling.
And Lucy now felt some of what Liberty was feeling. It hurt enough to choke her. More than her shoulder or knee hurt, and her knee hurt a ton, from being crouched down after banging it like she had.
“Someone please tell me I can do something about this,” Lucy said, quiet. “And that the council won’t get mad at me, or that people won’t try to stop me.”
“Lucy,” her mom said.
“If you can,” Toadswallow croaked, as he led Liberty toward a side street. “If you can’t, that’s fine too.”
It hurt too much.
“Lucy, you really shouldn’t-” her mom started.
She’d stopped when Lucy turned to face her. Sight on, eyes red, but they would’ve been red anyways, from hurt. Tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. Tension, anger, hurt of her own, that went back years and years.
High Summer glamour to become light. The inconsistent streetlights- It took a second to draw the lines. Anthem was already driving away, his car full of practitioners.
Lucy became the light, flickering and patchy in Kennet below in the early evening. Here and there she became Lucy again, running, that light glinting off of her.
Her anklet clicked as Anthem saw her in his rear view mirror.
Then she darted forward again. Over, up- light from a broken streetlight shone red on the top of a light post. She twisted the glamour still on her hands, tinting it red, becoming red light, became Lucy, and leaped for the roof of the car.
A ward flared into existence- set a while ago, hidden, and she was pushed away as if by magnetic force, invisible but intense, stronger as she got closer. She hit the road, rolling.
Huffing for breath, mad now, she fixed the glamour, then gave chase again. Down the street, past the car this time- passing in front of it.
The car itself was warded, but she plunged her spear into the pavement. Made the shaft spiked like the goblin’s had been, and maintained contact until the very last second, when she spun aside.
The wheel was warded too, protecting it against punctures. But the car rode up the shaft.
Enough that the car veered a few feet right before it could be corrected. Anthem, behind the wheel, braked hard.
The impact with the telephone pole, by and large, was light, and every ward on the car flared in reaction. Every window and panel had a protection. It came to a stop, headlight smashed, bit of a crumple at the one corner.
The driver’s side door opened. Anthem got out.
“You really want to do this?” he asked.
She pulled a pen out of her pocket and turned it into a blade. She scratched a triangle onto the telephone pole, and underlined it.
It ignited. Right near the front corner of the car.
Anthem let her. He stood by and watched.
“Your daughter is crying. Turn back, go back, apologize. Beg for her forgiveness and then earn it, however many years it takes. Be a man.”
“So you want to do this. Alright.”
Next Chapter