Author: Wildbow

Crossed with Silver – 19.8 | Pale

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Lucy entered the classroom and crossed it, until she stood by Harri.  Grandfather was sitting on the unoccupied desk behind the girl, holding her wrists near her elbows, behind her back.  Students throughout the class grinned, shuddered, and giggled without sound.

“So you have different specialties, huh?  One for each of you?” Lucy asked.

The kid lifted her head to give Lucy her best ‘get real’ look.  At her elbow, Lucy could see her hand gripping skin.

Verona came in, having just talked to Angel and Horseman, and immediately went for Harri’s bag, sorting through the contents, putting them on the desk.

“You won’t find any clues in there,” Harri said.

“Yeah?  That saves me a lot of trouble, thanks.”  Verona put the things back and checked the outside of the bag before putting it down.  “Should I search your pockets, socks, shoes, or will you save me the trouble there too?”

“I don’t bring anything for the school day.”

“Did you bring anything for the school night or any other time, that you happen to have now?”

Harri rolled her eyes.  “No.”

“No need to roll your eyes at us.  You guys did bring stuff for the school night, right?  Dead body?” Lucy asked.

Harry looked like she wanted to slump in her seat, but Grandfather had her arms.

“So what’s going on?” Lucy asked.  “You guys sicced a video game monster on downtown?  You’re keeping secrets, you’re being weirdly disciplined, secretive… Was that part of the deal?  From your mentor or mentors?  Do you each have one, or is there only one who gave each of you a book or something?”

“Or are we off base?” Verona asked.  “Was that thing downtown for reasons other than an attack?”

“It sure seemed like an attack, Ronnie,” Lucy said.

“Sure, but I’m just asking, giving opportunities.  Harri, did you guys find a book and stick with it?  Didn’t sound like it from what your buddy said, but if you want to clear the record?”

“No.  Nothing much to say,” Harri told them.

“Because you won’t?” Verona asked.  “Or because you can’t?”

Harri looked up at Verona, then at Lucy.  “My arms are sore.  If I agree to put my hands on the desk, can I?”

“Say it?” Lucy asked.

“I’ll put my hands on the desk and I won’t try anything as long as I’m here doing that.”

Lucy gave Grandfather a nod.  He let go of Harri’s hands, and she rubbed her shoulders.

“Right away, please,” Lucy said.

Harri rolled her eyes, then put her hands on the desk.

“Did you make a deal that you wouldn’t tell anyone what you’re doing?  Won’t share your mentor or mentors, or plans?”

Harri looked at Verona, then Lucy.

“Did you make a deal that you wouldn’t even talk about the terms of that deal?  So you can’t even say?” Lucy asked.

Harri looked up at her, then looked away.

“How do you want to do this?” Verona asked.  She had a deck of cards and was shuffling through them.

“Are you asking me or her?” Lucy asked.

“I mean, if Harri here wants to give some input, I’m open to it, but I don’t think she will.”

Harri remained silent.

Lucy looked over at the deck.  Verona had consulted her when figuring out the suits.  “Any readings?”

“I’m not much of an augur.  Yet.  No real readings.  Wrong type of situation, compared to what I had in mind when the cards were made.”

Lucy nodded.

“So what do you want to do?” Verona asked.

“We can’t leave people Jabbered like this.  So why don’t we head out?  Take Harri, go to the others, and see what can be worked out?”

“Take Harri?” Harri asked.

“You sure?  We could keep searching.  We might not get another chance like this.”

“I don’t like straining Innocence.  Bird in the hand, right?”

“The cat in me wants all the birds.”

“What we want is answers.  And solutions.  They know what’s up, and we can get more answers this way.”

“Yeah?” Verona asked.  “Maybe, okay.”

Lucy looked past Harri to Grandfather.  “What do you think?”

“You’re on point.”

“Horseman?”

“We’re just the muscle.”

“You’re more than that,” Lucy said.

He shrugged.

“To Harri’s buddy, and anyone else listening?” Lucy asked.  “Come talk to us.  Or talk to your mentors and have them talk to us.  ”

“I’m grabbing her?” Grandfather asked.

Lucy nodded.

“I’ll call Matthew,” Verona said, getting her phone out.  “He has a ride.”

“Better than calling my mom, probably,” Lucy noted, wry.  A bit of dry humor to help herself feel better about what they were doing.

Harri screamed in much the same way someone who’d just been burned might scream, as Grandfather hoisted her and lifted her over one shoulder, arms wrapped around her body, pinning her arms to her sides.

They left the classroom, Lucy carrying Harri’s bag and coat.  She did a little hop to throw it over Harri so she wouldn’t be cold, going outdoors.  Horseman followed, bringing the case with Jabber inside, gas leaking out.

The screaming was loud and sustained enough to bring people from further down the school over.  But as they came into range of Jabber, they stopped.  It meant Angel had to move some people aside to make it easier to drag the case with.

Lucy listened carefully for any tells.  Even footsteps would matter.

“Ronnie,” Lucy murmured.  “Got any glamour?”

“Glamour?  I’ve got Winter.”

“I know we’re meant to be careful, but I see a chance here.  Any non-Winter?”

“Uhhh… maybe.  This counts?”

Lucy nodded.

“Shit.  Emergency animal transform,” Verona murmured.  She reached into a back pocket, pulling out some cards and a little envelope, bundled together with an elastic.  She pulled the envelope free, passing it over.

There was some dark fall glamour and a crow feather inside.  Not much.  Lucy passed the feather back to Verona, stroking it to get what glamour she could off it first, then passed over the bag.

Harri kept screaming that no-holds-barred, ragged, high-pitched scream reserved for people young enough their voices hadn’t changed.  She kicked and struggled, wriggling, but Grandfather was older, stronger, and muscular.

“Pipes might have a competitor when it comes to being loud,” Horseman said.

Harri squirmed, turning, twisting and doing a sit-up motion to get as good a view as she could of the people behind them.

“Who are you looking for?” Lucy asked.

Harri dropped, flopping down.

“Guys!” Harri shouted.  “They’re going to-”

Grandfather swung her down, in what must’ve felt like being thrown against the ground, but he caught her, holding her against his front, hand over her mouth.

There was fear in her eyes.

It felt bad, but… what else were they meant to do?

Lucy couldn’t think of a good thing to say that wouldn’t sound sinister with the necessary qualifiers.  We’re not going to hurt you if we can help it?

Okay.  Dark Fall glamour.  She looked, saw how the light shone through the windows, diffuse, and adjusted her stance, weaving the glamour, matching the vague lines painted on the wall, where light shone in through classroom windows, past bars that sectioned off each window, through the doors, and out into the hallways.

She used the stuff Guilherme had taught her to help it happen.  She knew she wasn’t doing it perfectly, but she was painting with glamour to match the flow of the shadows, and she let her body match that flow as well.

Until she was a shadow on the wall, with nobody to cast it.  Her eyes remained almond-shaped slices of sunlight against the wall, in the midst of the shadow.

She chose a spot close to the classroom, where only the most savvy person looking specifically for weird shadows might see her, lingering behind.  It was important in a lot of practices, from glamour like this to binding to have an outlet, a way for excess and pressure to leak out.  Glamour with a tell, even an obscure one, was far sturdier than glamour without.  A ‘perfect’ binding that allowed absolutely nothing out, similarly, could be surprisingly fragile as a result.

And if they could actually detect her or knew to look for her like this, it would say a lot.

Like, she was pretty sure she, Verona, and Avery wouldn’t notice a shadow like this.  Even after a scary moment.  Provided she was careful to hide her eyes.

The others left out the front of the school, taking Harri with.

Lucy waited patiently, watching as the people who’d been Jabbered came to, stirring.

“Get to class,” a teacher in the hallway said.  She’d come to respond to the screaming, as had others, but now that they were all simultaneously stirring awake, she was asserting authority.

“We heard screaming.”

“I know.  Get to class.  The faculty will handle it.”

People dispersed, talking in low voices.

“What do you think happened?”

“My face hurts.  Can you sprain your jaw?”

“How would you sprain your jaw?  Actually, don’t answer that question.”

“Eating?  How else?”

“Don’t ask that question either.”

In the classroom, others were talking.

“I’m drooling.  What’s wrong with me?”

“I think I dozed off too.  School shouldn’t start before noon.”

“I think Mr. Gilbert dozed off too.  Perfect room temperature for a nap.”

“Hey dude, you okay?”

“What?  I’m fine.”

“You look freaked.”

Lucy walked over, keeping to the wall, looking.  She didn’t see who’d spoken.

The teacher who’d been in the hallway went to the first classroom door.  “Everything alright?”

“A slow morning, but nothing much, why?”

“Multiple reports of screaming.  I heard it myself.”

“Rowdiness?  I don’t think I noticed.”

“Are you sure?”

He said something indistinct- not inaudible, but something mumbly that didn’t really qualify as a word, finishing with a cough of a sound that might have been a confused ‘pshh’.

She didn’t have an angle to see, and she wanted to limit how much she moved, so she wouldn’t be too obvious where she was.

The teacher went to two more classrooms, asking similar questions.  Students murmured among themselves.

“Which paragraph did Michael read?  I’m trying to count ahead to my turn.”

“There.  He stopped partway, I don’t think the teacher noticed.”

“Do you want to go skating after?  There’s the rink behind the Arena.”

“What happened?”

“Harri.  She screwed up, I think.”

“Who’s in Harri’s class right now?”

“Shh.  Stefan.”

“So they did something to Harri, we don’t know what’s up with Stefan, Joshua ran…?”

“Shh.  After.  Come to the boy’s bathroom in a few min.”

Lucy glanced around.

Surreptitiously, she moved down the hallway until she spotted the boy’s bathroom.

“You look really nice today, Mrs. Caillier.”

“Thank you, but you’re not in my class, Teddy.”

Lucy watched this Teddy smile, and pull back.  The bathroom pass was in his hand, which was at the doorframe, dangling.

Lucy slipped inside the bathroom so she could be the first one inside.  She saw that sunlight came in at an angle, through snow-laden trees just outside, and moved into the midst of that dappled light, body-line and head masked by the trunk and branch, head turned with curly hair masked by twigs and foliage.

It took only a bit for the first to arrive.  Teddy came in, a year or so older than her, with long arms, long legs, long neck, but not tall, just proportioned like that.  The long neck in particular stood out with the collar of his uniform, which he’d buttoned right up to the top.  Brown hair a uniform, even length, top, back, sides.  His face was very normal, too, brown eyed, with little that was remarkable about it, except for a smirk, and he could stand to get out in the sun more.

He used the urinal, leaning into it, and Lucy turned her attention away.  She saw the door open, as a girl came in.

“Oh gross,” the girl said, shielding her eyes.  “There’s something wrong with you.”

“What did you expect in the boy’s bathroom, Nomi?”

“Shut up.  You signaled, right?”

“Yeah.  Give it a few.”

Nomi shook her head, shielding her eyes from seeing him.  “If I get caught in here…”

“Well, don’t,” he said.  “Try doing something about it.”

Nomi was shorter than Lucy, with brown hair parted down the middle, and a smattering of freckles.  She wore a choker and a necklace, and had two overlapping bracelets at her wrist, hidden but only barely, in the sleeve of her school uniform.

She used lipstick to draw a connection block on the wall.

“You’re not supposed to have that in school,” Teddy said, as he zipped up.

She snorted with a half-laugh.

The rest came, one by one.

One of the boys from the class, who’d been sitting near Harri.  Stefan.  His hair curled in toward the forehead from both sides, which drew attention to his wide, tall forehead.

Three more boys in a group, with a girl trailing behind.  Lucy caught the names as they got the update on what people theorized had happened with Harri.  Adrian, Travis, and Dony.  The girl was Kira-Lynn.

Joshua, went to the roof, Harri we got.  Now here we have Stefan, Dony, Travis, Adrian, Teddy, and the two other girls, Kira-Lynn and Nomi.

“It’s dark in here,” Kira-Lynn said.  She had a limp black ponytail that pointed straight down and free locks of hair framing the sides of her face.  She hit the light switch.

Lucy adjusted, hands turning to lighten the shadow that made up this body.  Her timing wasn’t perfect, but nobody was looking.

“We’re missing two,” Kira-Lynn said.  “What were the screams?”

“Joshua lost his nerve and bolted,” Teddy explained.  “Harri got took.”

“Took?”

“I know as much as you do.”

“Joshua told them stuff,” Stefan said.  The boy who’d been with Harri.

“What stuff?”

“Stuff.  That we have specialties, I guess.”

“Did they take him?”

“The ones who went after him didn’t come back with him.  I think he got away.  Or they let him get away, for information.”

“Oh my God,” Nomi muttered.  “Well, today was a fuck.”

“Stefan?” Kira-Lynn asked.  “How did they get Harri?  She had the charm?”

Stefan nodded.  He hesitated.  “But she made a sound.”

She made a sound because you talked, you weasel, Lucy thought.

“I thought she was better than that,” Kira-Lynn muttered.

Stefan shrugged at the same time he shrank into himself a fraction.  Lucy saw it, and she saw a momentary change in Kira-Lynn’s expression as the girl turned away from Stefan.

“I didn’t want to text, but how many of you noticed weirdness this morning?”

“Weirdness?  Besides laughy chucklefuck, the soldiers, and two scary-ass witches stomping through in the middle of the school day?” Teddy asked.

“Yeah.  Besides that.  I had a white crow on my windowsill this morning.”

There were heads shaking throughout the group.

“Other stuff too.  Weird figures in the snow flurries.  You guys really didn’t see this?”

“A little distracted by other shit,” Teddy said.

“Figures?” Nomi asked.

Kira-Lynn shrugged.  “People.  Moved funny.  Some big, some small.  One on a horse.”

“A horse?  On the street or on the field?”

Nomi paced.  She came very close to Lucy and then seemed to realize she’d walked up to the urinals, and made a face.  She walked away.  “Today’s such a fuck.  God.”

“Stop taking the Lord’s name in vain,” Teddy said, smirk dropping from his face.

Nomi snorted again.

“What?” Teddy asked.

“The time for worrying about that was months ago,” Nomi said.

Nomi was shaking her head.  “I can’t believe they got Harri.”

“Are you okay, Adrian?” Kira-Lynn asked.

One of the three boys.  Blond, straight hair, glasses.

“I’m fine.”

“She’s your cousin, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t love her, or you don’t care, or…?”

“I love her fine, I guess.  But it doesn’t feel real.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s real, guy,” Nomi said.

“So what do we do?” Stefan asked.  Harri’s classmate, weasel, one of the youngest here.  “For Harri, for later, for tomorrow, plans?  What do we do?”

Teddy said, “I want to bring practice stuff to school.  Just in case we need to defend ourselves.  If the innocence charm failed for more of us-”

“If you bring practice stuff to school the charm won’t work,” one of the three other boys said.  Lucy hadn’t put names to faces, but it was either Travis, or Dony.  “If the charm hadn’t worked, we couldn’t’ve played along like we needed to.”

“What happens if we need to defend ourselves?” Teddy asked.

“Know the right names to call,” Nomi replied, shrugging.  “Prepare in advance.”

“My thing’s not calling names,” Kira-Lynn said.

“Then stick close to me, I guess.  I mean, if they really come at us, the way they’ve been talked about, I’m not sure what we can do.”

“Scatter,” Teddy said.

“Prepare in advance,” Nomi said, again.  “Prepare, prepare, prepare.”

“Traps?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“Maybe.  That’s one direction we could take,” Nomi said.  She looked over at Teddy.  “Right?”

“Yeah.  Sure.  Or, I know not all of you like the idea, but we could ask for help.”

“Who?  Because there’s a lot of people we could ask.”

A lot of people, Lucy noted.

“Teachers,” Teddy said.

“We’re already in trouble, we’re already in the middle of an avalanche of fuckups,” Nomi said.  “Calling them outside the usual meeting times is supposed to be emergencies only.  Fuck, meeting like we’re doing right now is supposed to be way more controlled and organized than this.”

“One of us got kidnapped,” Kira-Lynn said.  “That’s not an emergency?  We shouldn’t be meeting?”

“A big-ass alien Other slipped our binding and went on a rampage, and we didn’t call for help then.”

“One of us got kidnapped.  Adrian, seriously?”

Adrian looked at Kira-Lynn.  “I mean, yeah, I want to help her, for sure.”

“I’m on your side,” Teddy told her.  “Serious situation, let’s call the teachers for help.”

“My teacher looked down my shirt, I don’t want to call him,” Kira-Lynn said.

Teddy protested, “Guys do that automatically!  It’s hardwired!”

“Decent guys don’t,” Kira-Lynn said.

“Decent guys hide it better.  Right?  Stefan?  Adrian?  Travis?  Dony?  Back me up here.  Someone.”

“I looked down my mom’s shirt once, automatically,” Stefan said.  “I wish I hadn’t.  Scarred me.”

“That is really fucked up,” Teddy told him.  “You’re fucked up, kid.”

“I’m backing you up!  Why are you getting on my case when I’m backing you up?”

“That’s your mom.  She’s off limits.”

“Okay, first of all,” Kira-Lynn interjected.  “Why can’t all girls be off-limits like that until you marry them?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Teddy asserted.

“And second-”

“It’s really ridiculous, by the way.”

“-What if we called two or three teachers?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“You want to piss off your teacher?” Nomi replied.

“I really don’t care how pissed off he is.  I’ll be around him for the meet-ups and lessons, but I don’t want to be around him otherwise.  He’s a creep.”

“Careful,” Teddy said.  “Slinging stuff like that around, you could get hit for lying.”

“He’s a creep, he’s a creep, he’s a creep.  Joshua’s is scary, Nomi’s is crazy.  Blame me for it after if you want.  Let’s call three.”

“If we call all the teachers, won’t that help average it out?” Teddy asked.

“How are you going to average out creepiness, abusiveness, and craziness, huh?”

Nomi clapped her hands, hard.

Lucy felt the shadow waver.  She shifted her footing and stance slightly, keeping her eyes mostly closed.  The glamour settled.

“What was that about?” Teddy asked.

“You’re messing up my connection block.”

The lipstick on the wall had chapped.

Nomi shook her head.  “This whole situation is such a fuck.  Don’t fuck it more by fighting.  Now, reasonably, one at a time…”

“If they’re all together, it means both Joshua’s teacher and Kira-Lynn’s teacher have to behave.  I don’t know the deal with yours, Nomi.”

“He’s sad.  There’s something really wrong with him, but mostly he’s sad.  I pity him.”

“But can you trust him?  Can we get help from him?” Kira-Lynn asked.

“Yeah.  I think.”

“So why can’t we ask him, say, Teddy’s, Adrian’s…?  Even Harri’s teacher.  If we say she’s in trouble, maybe she’ll want to help Harri?”

“I think it’s way more fucking dangerous to insult them by not calling them, than it is to call them like we’re meant to-” Teddy stressed the last few words, then went on, “-and deal with them being around.”

Lucy turned her attention to the ones in the background.  Adrian was Harri’s cousin, then there was Travis and Dony.  Stefan had talked more, but didn’t seem to be steering the conversation like the oldest three were.

It was like they were just waiting to be told what to do.

“Adrian!” Nomi raised her voice.  It startled Lucy a bit too.

“What?”

“Pay attention,” Teddy told him.

“Sorry.  What?”

“Do you think Harri’s going to talk?”

Adrian shook his head.

“She hasn’t said anything, done anything?”

“We don’t talk.”

“Based on what you know about her, then?”

“I barely know her.  Her mom’s cuckoo and her dad’s… intense.”

“Intense how?”

“Intense like… we had a big camping trip, four years ago-”

“Give us something more relevant, recent,” Teddy said.

“Shut up and let Adrian talk.”

“Coyotes showed up.  We were kids, we didn’t put food away, they were interested.  They weren’t quitting, there was a whole pack, like gangly wolves, I guess.  He was the only one who wasn’t losing his mind.  Grabbed a stick, poked one, when they got provoked, he swatted two or three of them at once.  Barely blinked, didn’t flinch.  And it’s like… she’s like that, kind of.”

“As family holiday stories go, that’s one of the more reassuring ones you could’ve told,” Teddy admitted.

“Yeah, probably.”

“She said during the Awakening ritual, she didn’t want to be her mom, right?” Kira-Lynn asked, unsure.  “She said she hates her.”

“I don’t know what’s up,” Adrian said.  “Except there hasn’t been a single family holiday she showed up to that she didn’t go ballistic.  It’s like a kid throwing a tantrum, but she’s a grown-up.”

“You’re more than halfway to being grown-up,” Teddy said.  Don’t call them grown-ups.”

Adrian looked off to the side-perilously close to Lucy.  “She’s like a toddler, but she knows secrets, swear words like you’ve never heard before, she can reach and throw bottles.  She’s not normal when she’s, like, usual.  Like she’s always a bit drunk.  But something, the stupidest shit, it sets her off.  I hate her too.  Makes our grandma cry.”

“You show more emotion about that than you have about her being kidnapped.”

“It doesn’t feel real,” Adrian said, quiet.

“But she takes after her dad?  She won’t crack?”

“Mostly, except her dad loves her mom.  He’s like the rock, and her mom’s like… napalm.  And Harri’s a rock.  No heat, nothing like her mom.  Hates her mom.”

Lucy badly wanted to ask what else was going on here.  If there was something tying these people together.

She had only suspicions.

“Adrian,” Teddy said.

“Yeah?”

“Can you make a call out?  To the teachers?  In a way that won’t be traced back to us?  With technomancy.”

Adrian nodded.

And there’s our technomancer.

“I still think it’s a mistake to not call all of them,” Teddy said.

“I’ll take the blame,” Kira replied.

“It doesn’t work that way in actuality,” Teddy said.  He turned to Adrian.  “Mine, yours, Kira-Lynn’s and Harri’s teachers.”

Adrian nodded.  He got out his phone.

“You’re not supposed to have that in school,” Teddy told him, wagging a finger.

Adrian ignored him, putting the phone on the flat part of one of the sinks, then drawing on the back.  “Spirits of place, obfuscate, spirits of vox, do outfox, and spirits of tech, shuffle the deck.  Mask my trail and shake any tail.  I’m forgetting a verse.”

“Well, remember,” Teddy told him.

“Try, Adrian,” Nomi said, gentler.

They were such a mess.  The infighting, the casual disrespect, the power imbalance.  The only problem was that they were here, they were equipped with some really effective tools for staying out of sight and going undetected, and they had some powerful practices.

It made Lucy think of the worst she, Verona, and Avery had been, but that was their baseline.

She just had to figure out-

“I can use power to push through.”

“Then do that, then.”

Lucy watched from the literal shadows with eyes narrowed to slits, as he put down a number.  Three digits, arranged vertically, a dash, and then four more digits.  Like a quarter of a frame around the simple diagram in the center.

He formed an L with finger and thumb, framing those numbers, then began to recite numbers.

Lifting his fingers away from the sink and the phone he’d placed on sink’s edge, he levitated the phone up.  With his other hand, chalk still resting between index and middle fingers, he typed on the underside.  “Don’t distract me.  This is hard and precise.”

“What is?” Teddy asked.

Nomi punched Teddy in the arm.

“We’re supposed to teach each other as we learn.”

Adrian explained, “Technomancy simplifies.  Usually at a cost to establishment.  Because tech is new, the patterns and grooves for the practice aren’t worn in.  So you can do stuff fast and easy, but also… it can break easy, or doesn’t last long, or you don’t get much power out.”

He finished punching in whatever he was punching in on the underside of the levitating phone.

The numbers that he’d put down in chalk were changing every second.  Sometimes they looked like wingdings.

“Then you can do a lot of what other practices do, especially with realms.  Or in this case… reaching out to another realm.”

Black wires began to pour out of the downturned screen, onto sink, onto floor.  The mirrors grew bright, reflecting a light that wasn’t there, and then the brightness became television static.

Lucy’s earring picked up the first two rings of very distant phones, that swiftly drew closer.  On the third rings, the others turned their heads.

Lucy moved carefully to avoid being ensnared or being obvious as the shadows changed, and the bathroom was swallowed up.

The bathroom stall doors slammed shut.  Jangling ringing phones could be heard from each.

The kids looked surprisingly at ease with all of this going on.  Lucy moved carefully and gently, retreating as the wires covered the walls.  The only thing that saved her was that she was shadow and the wires were black, but they wormed between her and glamour.

She had to back out.  She couldn’t be shadow anymore.  She ducked low, and moved off the wall, hands tracing the lines of wires and matching the way they flowed out of the wall and spooled out.

She thought of Alpeana, and her fingers went to hair.

She used her own hair, tracing out black spiraling cords, quickly pleating them into braids, as she crouched behind Teddy.

The phones jangled louder and louder, making the work tougher.

“As the diagram suggests, I’d like your help in obscuring a call,” Adrian said.

The jangling of the phones stopped.  Lucy froze.

As a mass of braided black hair and shadowy body, she slipped into the stall.

Three broken bodies framed a pay phone.

Beeps sounded, like those for an old answering machine in the movies.

“Calling my master and mentor,” Adrian said.

Lucy peered through the gap between the stall door and the frame to see Adrian put the phone to his ear.  Black wires crawled down his arm and leg as he did so, pouring out and multiplying like warm molasses.

“They showed up at the school,” Adrian said.

“The Others or the practitioners?”

“The cat and the fox, three soldiers, the alchemical doll.  Came through while everyone was gassed, I guess.  Started seeing who wasn’t affected.  Harri screwed up or something.  They-”

“Don’t use names.”

“My cousin, they took her away.”

“Don’t use identifying details either.”

“And we don’t know what happened to- we think his mentor is going to be pretty mad.”

“I know who you mean.  I’ll talk to him.”

“We were hoping to keep this semi-contained.  Without involving him.  Or, uh, the young mentor.”

“They know already.”

“They know already,” Adrian repeated.

“Damn it to hell,” Teddy whispered.

“I’ll tell them we can handle this.  But you guys need to do your share.”

“What’s our share?”

“The Dropped Call will renew the contract at the end of the month, but you need to set up a ward.  So people can’t pass through as easily.  You should know what you need to do to set that up.  Teach the others while you do it.”

“Set up a ward for the Dropped Call?” Adrian asked, apparently for the benefit of the others listening in.

Kira-Lynn was nodding.

“Second, the White Rot.  Stop in at their second branch, pick up the package, drop it off at what will be their fourth branch.”

“Spreading the White Rot, sure.  Uh, I guess.  We don’t know where the branches are.”

“I’ll send you.  But you’ll have to get from the second branch to the fourth on your own.  Can any of you drive?”

“I’ll send a vehicle.  It’ll either be a limo, a cab, or a white van with writing on the side.  Don’t look for or talk to the driver.  Just get in, trust.”

“Don’t look at or talk to the driver, got it.”

“Third, because these things work best in threes.  The Ordinary Family.”

“That’s not Technomancy, is it?  The Ordinary Family.”

“Kira-Lynn will be on point.  She should talk to her mentor.  He’s waiting for the call.  He’ll tell her what needs doing.  Probably something to do with the people who are poking around the Lordship, trying to decipher what’s happening.”

“Kira-Lynn?  Ordinary family, you have to talk to your master.”

“This would be easier if we were on speaker,” Teddy said.

Adrian shook his head.  “Doesn’t work.”

“Hm?  She’s not cooperating?”

“No, someone asked a question.  It’s fine.  I think she’ll do as you ask.”

“Three more things.”

“I thought three was the magic number.”

“Those are responsibilities for forces we’ve contracted for power.  These three things are responsibilities to us.  First, one more.  Have you researched, found someone?”

“Yeah.  We think so.”

“Bring the name and information for me when you come.  I’ll check with everyone involved, make sure they work.”

“Yeah.  And we get one new member.  And hopefully they’re not a replacement for Harri or Joshua.”

“Joshua’s fine, he’s just in a bad place.  We’ll reunite you before you’re done your first errand with the Dropped Call.”

“Joshua’s fine.  We’ll see him soon.  And Harri?”

“She should be fine.  Don’t worry.  Second thing.  Tell me now, can you come immediately?”

“Can we come immediately?”

“I’m pretty sure my connection blocker is fucked,” Nomi said.  “People are probably wondering why we’re taking so long.  If we leave, people are going to wonder where we ran off to.”

“I don’t think we can come immediately.”

“It’s best if you do.  I can handle the calls to your homes, I can make sure there’s no consequences.  You may be late for dinner.”

“He says it’s best if we go, he can handle the school side of it.”

“Then let’s,” Teddy said.  Lucy moved her head to view Teddy through the gap.  He wasn’t smirking.

“Yes, then.  The group agrees.”

“Third?  A message to give to them, I’m told to say this precisely.”

“Okay?  Message seems easy.”

“I quote, push things further, and that will have to be it, move very carefully from now on.”

Adrian didn’t respond right away.

“What?” Stefan asked.

“Tell them.”

“Did we screw up that badly?”

“What did he say?” Teddy asked.

“Uh, repeat that for me?  Maybe I didn’t hear it right.”

“I quote, again, push things further, and that will have to be it.  Move very carefully from now on.”

Adrian repeated it, then repeated his question.  “Did we screw up that badly?”

“I didn’t think so, but I was told it was important.”

“You were told that by who?” Adrian asked.

“No names.  No identifying details.  We’ll discuss when you come.  Inscribe the mark of the bái làn on your phone.”

“On it.”

“What the hell?” Nomi asked.

“I don’t know.  He doesn’t know either,” Adrian said.  “He says we’ll discuss when we come.  We good to go?”

“I guess,” Teddy said.  “A really fucking ominous way to start today’s little series of adventures, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Stefan agreed.

A few seconds passed in silence.

Then the walls bulged inward.

Lucy leaned over, pressing against one wall of the stall.

Faces.  Distorted, with eyes cataract white, each eye oozing white pus that streaked down like tears.  They pressed against the wires from the outside, some opened mouths that produced more faces, that split off on their own.  Each was surrounded by flickers of what looked like the kind of squares that appeared on any corrupted image or video file.

Wires snapped and tore, sinks and mirrors broke, and a giant face consumed the bathroom from the one side, baring off-color teeth and a tongue that looked like fungus was growing on it, with more of that image corruption effect around it.

It snapped, consuming the seven kids, biting into wires, and then retreating to a place that Lucy couldn’t see.

Her glamour was in tatters, but as the thing pulled away, it pulled at wires, and it was like it pulled the curtain back.

Leaving reality.  Sinks intact, mirrors unbroken.  No group of St. Victors students.

Only a broken, mangled, and sputtering phone in the sink.

Lucy felt a bit gross, having been on the bathroom wall, and then in proximity to the Dropped Call’s black wires and the White Rot’s faces.  She went to the sink and washed all the skin she could easily get to, eyeing the broken phone in the sink to her right.

Looking past it, she saw the window fogging up, as if adjusting to the recent environmental disturbance, and she saw frost creeping across that fog, the cold reclaiming things.

Frost with patterns, and frost that didn’t fill in certain spots.

At the same time, snow blew in fat flakes, and those flakes traveled curious paths.  Avoiding certain spots.

She took her time to fix her hair, since she’d twirled and braided parts.  Putting things in order.  Getting back to being bulletproof.  Working at doing it with an audience that probably cared more than she did about that ‘bulletproof’ sense of personal aesthetic.

Like she’d been preparing herself for years and this was one of the tests.

And maybe, just maybe, if she got it right…

She picked lint off her shoulder, and washed it away.  Then she finally allowed herself to test her theory.  She unfocused her eyes-

And it brought the two Fae at the window into sharp focus, comparatively.

She walked to the window, reaching for the clasp she needed to undo to open it up, and the Fae departed, picked up by the wind like they were nothing.  Like they’d never been there in the first place.

Lucy had hoped to earn the chance to talk to them.  Exchange words.

It felt lonely, and problematic, and it was only going to feel worse.

She fast-walked out of St. Victor’s, bag over her shoulder, and heard a teacher shout after her, asking what she was doing in the building.

Didn’t matter.

She got her phone out, then picked Verona’s number, tapping it.  She held her phone to her ear with a gloved hand.

“You’re okay?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Think so.  Where are you?”

Verona told her.

Kennet below was good.  Lucy took a detour, past the school, past the students who were milling around.  Apparently it was lunch already.  St. Victors had their lunch a little later, which made life easier for anyone trying to quickly rush up to downtown to get a bite and then come back.

Behind a house that bordered the woods to the east of Kennet, south of the valley by the ski hill, she found the thicket of trees.  She climbed the rise of the thicket, up into the densest part, circled around a dead tree, and then stepped down onto another side of the sloping bit of hill.  It was icy and muddy, and she controlled her slide down it, jogging the few steps after she hit the bottom.

Through more dark trees, and into another version of Kennet.

There were similar routes by which a black sheep could find their way down here.  This was one route that had been found and opened up by the invading practitioners at the cabins, back in the fall.

Hands in her pockets, Lucy passed through the upper end of Kennet’s residential east side, past the cabins where it was shockingly cheap to stay but there was a chance of being axe murdered, and glanced at the ski hills, where things had been laid out and cultivated in advance of winter, to have hills with large rocks, steep drops, and one difficult jump that had to be made.

A Fae stood on a rocky outcropping, dressed in flowing white, with folds draping down about twenty feet down the rocks.  They looked annoyed as a denizen of Kennet below zipped past them, coming close to riding over the draping cloth.

They looked annoyed in general, even.

Lucy wondered what they’d say if she asked.  Did they hate Kennet below?  She wasn’t sure, because Guilherme didn’t.  It wasn’t his favorite place, but no place outside his cave seemed to be his favorite place.  But he respected part of the logic of Kennet below, she figured.  That the law was as absolute as it was.

Nostalgic, he’d called it.

Maybe the Fae up on the rocks hated that this place smelled like goblin.

That had probably been what Verona had hinted at.  That if they could get the market going, expand the market, and expand that influence, it would potentially be cover.  A place they could retreat to, that the Wild Hunt would be more reluctant to pursue them into.

Verona met Lucy at the edge of downtown.

“So?” Verona asked.

Lucy widened her eyes.  She met Verona’s, and did all she could to communicate with a glance.  And she was glad, so glad, that Winter’s Wild Hunt weren’t here in any major numbers, because she didn’t feel confident, and she needed to be weak for a moment, and she couldn’t afford to be weak in front of them.

“That bad?”

“They’re very intentionally us.  Like Avery, Verona, and me.  Magnified in number, in the power they’re tapping into that gives them easy shortcuts, in the mentors they’ve picked up.  They’re elusive, they’re surrounded by layers of tricks, that insulate them.  They’ve marked out a little territory that’s theirs, but they’ve also established connections to the wider region.  They’ve been active for months, and we didn’t even know.”

“And what do they lack?” Guilherme asked.

“Bonds to one another.  But that feels like a cutesy answer.  Like a Saturday morning cartoon, with kids in squeaky voices talking about the power of love.  Where’s the tangibility in that?”

Guilherme’s answer was only a glance- one that conveyed whole verses of text about what he thought of her bringing Saturday morning cartoons into the conversation.

“And they got a warning today.  They didn’t understand, they didn’t think they deserved to be put on notice.  Which was right, because that warning was meant for us.”

“And you know the power that was able to give them that warning and know you’d receive it?”

Lucy nodded.  “But-”

He raised a hand, stopping her.

She nodded.

She’d had to do the glance at Verona, to make sure Verona got it.  She’d had to convey it to Avery in the call she made.

She was about seventy percent sure she knew who had orchestrated this school thing.  Well, sixty percent.  There was a chance the conspirators weren’t perfectly aligned.

But whatever that alignment was, whoever it was, exactly, the warning made one thing clear.  It was something she’d already been worrying about.

The conspirators were drawing their line in the sand.  Every group that had been active over the last few months had been acting on a sort of loose truce.  Musser holding off and postponing his moves on Kennet, Charles holding back and rallying his forces, holding the Lordships, amassing or regenerating power, depending on whatever it was he was doing now.  Kennet was building itself up.

Each group doing their best to expand, grow, and find a position to hold within this chaos.

Whoever had set this up had decided this was a position they wanted or needed to hold.  And if they were interfered with, or if Lucy, Verona, and Avery kept investigating and trying to find the chinks in the armor… they’d act.

And that will have to be it.

She imagined Charles’ voice saying it, and she couldn’t help but give it meaning.

He – or one of the other conspirators, she supposed she could imagine Maricica doing this, or Lis – had drawn their battle line.  And if that line was crossed, they would destroy her or destroy Kennet, to protect what they were doing.  Or she and Kennet would have to destroy them.

Musser was coming soon.

Charles had set up this- this malignance in Kennet.  Like cancer was healthy cells turned ugly and all-consuming, these kids weren’t in a good place, were a broken reflection of Lucy and her friends.  The Others and powers they were using, they felt similar.  Lucy could only think of Father Gobar and the Dropped Call, the White Rot, and imagine cancer spreading.

Bracken stretched until his shoulder and arm popped in different places, stirring Lucy’s attention.  She’d been in the middle of talking to Guilherme, and she’d gotten lost in thought.  But she was here, in the cave, for a training session.  Bracken and Melissa were here, listening and getting caught up.  Both knew enough to not stick their nose in something this bad, right?

“Don’t get involved, don’t do anything on your own,” she told them.

“Nah,” Melissa replied, quiet.  “I’m your blackguard.  Point me in the direction you need, if you need me.”

Even Melissa was subdued.

“We’ll start our lesson,” Guilherme declared.  “Lucille?  This is an important one for you.”

Lucy shifted her stance.  She only had a few days of practice, but there were ways she could move and hold herself that made sense now, in line with the environment, the various kinds of situations this could devolve into.  Ways where she could intuit and respond to a knife thrown at her back, or shift slightly to sidestep the worst of the cold if the cold wind blew directly in through the entrance.

“Fight me,” Guilherme told them.  “And do not dare spar with me, for if you hold back in the slightest, you’re likely to be eviscerated, and you’d best hope you can be swiftly delivered to the local God-Begotten for a healing after.”

Fight you, Lucy thought.

Yeah.  His choice of training mission said a lot.

Fighting something impossible.  Something bigger than she was.

She had to do it with Musser.

She had to do it with Charles and his cancerous group now, who were helping support his Lords and doing it from Kennet, under Kennet’s nose.

Sixteen Wild Hunt Fae stood around the edges of the room.  Each was distinct and interesting enough that they threatened to catch her eye, and she couldn’t let them.  Because if she did, Guilherme would make sure to impart a bloody lesson, and it would probably be her last.

Not in the sense that she’d die.  But in the sense that he’d have her barely survive, the wound severe enough she’d get to Tashlit in just enough time.  And then he’d never teach her again.

Whether because she’d failed when it counted, or because the Wild Hunt would do away with him.  Or her.  Or both.

Again, not in the sense that they’d die.  Worse.

“Empty your mind.  Whatever you face in the future, knowing you can hold yourself in a match like today’s will help.  Focus on this match.”

The Wild Hunt were watching.  They were another threat too big to take on in direct confrontation.

But just like Musser and Charles, they were threatening to be forces she had to take on anyway.

She allowed herself that thought, and then she moved, indicating with the movement of her rapier-tip, out of Guilherme’s sight, that Melissa should go one way.  Bracken another.

Guilherme was bigger, faster, had more reach, more skill.

And the three of them together, their reach put together didn’t equal Guilherme’s with his spear.  Their speed put together didn’t equal his.  Their size, their skill, none of it equaled him.  Even if they could somehow combine together.

So she had to find a way.  In the fraction-of-a-split-second moment that it took a veteran warrior like Guilherme to adapt from dealing with one target to dealing with another.  She had to add that delay to their combined speed.  The shift on positioning that he had to make to keep the three of them in view-

She barely even saw him move as the spear came at her.  Her rapier flicked out, and then, as she turned her body to keep Melissa from seeing the particulars, briefly made it a heavy iron club, for the added weight and momentum, to give her what she lacked in strength, to push the spear further aside.

Fractions.  Slivers of slivers of advantage.

She turned, the club becoming a rapier again, scraping the floor in a three-quarter circle as she turned, kicking up glamour.

A flick of the rapier, helped by an adjustment in its form, shortening it halfway through.  To color and shape that glamour as it puffed up and out.  A twist of the rapier at the same time, to create a flash of light, to hide things further from Melissa.

A slice of silver-gray and white, from a turn in the glamour that was one of the first lessons they’d had in shaping it.

“Catch!” she told Melissa.

Melissa, still partially blind, grabbed it out of the air, but it was an awkward grab.  Her ankle wasn’t strong, she’d stepped too far.

“There was a blade under that dust!?”

Lucy would’ve liked to do better, but using a rapier to draw out another blade in glamour on the fly was still pretty good, she felt.

She emptied her mind of the presence of those Fae who watched, judging.

She had to do this.  Guilherme stabbed out, taking advantage of Melissa’s stumble.  Bracken kicked the shaft of the spear as it passed him.

The point cut Melissa’s clothing, and scraped the ground beside Melissa.

According to Guilherme, It was an art form in the courts to take a non-Fae and introduce them to something in a way that made them seem like they were experts.  To hold a conversation with fellow Fae, and not only navigate the dynamics of that conversation with the Fae, but also have a human compatriot present, and make them look distinguished and witty.  To dance with someone who had no idea how to put one foot beside the other, and make them look beautiful.

Bracken wasn’t even trying to do that.  He was a good fighter, but he had rough edges.  Lucy had to not only deal with Guilherme, but account for the rough edges.

Melissa wasn’t even a good fighter.

She turned, adjusting her footing and posture, to account for different flows in the room.  Of Bracken and Melissa both.

And the spear Guilherme wielded.

And Guilherme himself-

She only barely noticed the movement in shadow.

A second spear, thrown, while he maneuvered the first.

She moved, sidestepping it in the moment it plunged home.  It punched into the slate floor, burying itself to the halfway point.

Lucy, dressed in clothes she’d wear in gym class for a thirty degree day in spring, wasn’t able to get out of the way and navigate the flows of cold air into the cave.  She stumbled a bit, and stumbled straight into the cold air.  Skin prickled painfully, like a quiet, unnecessary rebuke, and the air she took into her lungs was cold.  When she exhaled, it fogged, where it hadn’t before.  Snowflakes chased their way in around her.

She fixed her posture.

They were watching.  She was being tested.

Any and every mistake could be their excuse to lay waste to everything Lucy wanted to hold onto.  With Wild Hunt, with Charles, with Musser.

“And your final exams?  For the semester’s end?  You can’t afford to miss class!”

“I can’t afford to not handle the stuff that needs handling,” Lucy replied.

“And what happens with school, then?  Do you have a clear vision?”

“I’m fourteen.  Does any fourteen year old have a clear vision?”

“Most fourteen year olds aren’t skipping class to kidnap a child in another school.”

“We turned her loose.  We had to.  We talked about it, we couldn’t hold onto her.  They would’ve organized a retaliation.  Because they had to.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” her mom asked her.  “If you told me you had goals and you were chasing them, I think I could do this.  I could support that, in some capacity, my heart would rest easy.  Please just give me something, Lucy.”

“Can’t home be the one place I don’t need to give something?” Lucy asked.  She felt like she’d break into tears.  “Because every day, all day, it feels like I have to hold myself to special standards.  With classmates, with teachers like Mr. Sitton and Mr. Bader.  I feel- I feel fucking scrutinized, every day, all day.”

“We’re not talking about that.  We’re-”

“I’m talking about it!” Lucy raised her voice.  “I’m talking about it being on me to manage things, to keep my friends safe, to save local Others, to represent us with visitors.  I’ve gotta give everything at school, and I’m going back to that but it’s a lot.  I have to watch things with Mia because she’s a friend and I have to maintain that and I also have to be careful because that’s a whole group where if I screw up, I might get frozen out.  And I don’t want to get frozen out.  I need to be sure I give to Wallace, and- and- his mom’s on the other side of anything I do, and if I forget his birthday or give him a crummy Christmas present, I feel like she’s going to judge me from the other side of it.”

“This is stuff Dr. Mona’s meant to help with.”

“I have to give her stuff too.  I have to share, but it has to be the right stuff, and if there’s something practice-related I have to frame it right, in half-truths, and work really hard to avoid conveying the wrong ideas to her, because I know she’s putting pieces together in the back of her mind, and figuring out what adds up and what doesn’t add up.  Dr. Mona doesn’t fix anything.  She just helps me handle stuff.”

“It doesn’t sound like you’re handling stuff.”

“I just need- I need home to be a place where there aren’t so many more expectations.  More all-or-nothings.”

“I want that for you too, but I also- I hate being the bad mom, Lucy.”

“You’re not a bad mom,” Lucy replied, looking at her mom and then looking away.

“I feel like I’m being put in a position where I’m the bad guy, over and over.  I don’t know if I’m holding onto the wrong things, or if I’m going to regret not holding on tighter, ten years from now.  Verona certainly made me feel like I put my foot in it.”

“About?”

“Boys.  Dating.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows, nodding.  She wanted to say more, but the feeling of hurt combined with the weight of everything else kind of took the levity out of it.  “That’d do it.”

“Is it the right thing to say you don’t need to worry about school?  Because if you repeat a grade, in the end-”

“I don’t think I’m there yet.”

“Not this semester, but next?  Over and over again, I hear that if a student falls behind in school, they don’t catch back up.  You’re supposed to be learning the tools you need next year, and I’m already- am I doing this wrong?  You’re so focused on avoiding the worst case scenarios, I’m not sure there’s a best case anymore.  What happens if you keep doing this, and you can’t keep up in school?  Do you lose Mia and Wallace when you’re a grade behind and you can’t tell them why?  Do you lose life opportunities?”

Lucy shrugged.

“Is it a one time thing?” her mom asked.  “Missing school?”

“Probably not.  We missed classes when we were fighting off the seventy invading practitioners.  This is going to be worse.”

Her mom sighed.

Lucy hated seeing her mom like this, but she wasn’t sure what to say or do.

“School is salvageable?” her mom asked.

“I’ll pass even if I bomb everything.  I don’t think I’ll bomb everything.  Just a couple exams in the next couple days, then I’m clear until next semester.”

“If I agree to let up on school, take that off your plate, can I put something smaller on it, in its place?” her mom asked.

“Maybe, yeah.”

“Talk to Avery and Verona.  I think Verona’s in a good place.  She might relish the chance to be your backup, for once, instead of you being hers.  Avery- I don’t know as much about how she’s doing, but… ask.  Share.  If you’re strained and they’re equipped to ease that strain, take advantage of that.”

“I think they’re strained too, or they’re going to be.”

“Ask.  Share.”

Lucy nodded.

“Connor told me he feels like he’s doing half a job, with Avery, because he’s dividing it with his wife.  He’s going to talk to Verona.  I think he’d be eager to talk to you.”

Lucy nodded again.  “Okay.  That’d feel weird, but okay.”

“Second thing?  Besides asking for support?  I need a goal.  Something you’re after, for five or ten years from now.  A dream.  A vision.  Verona’s pretty good at that.  What do you want and what are you after?”

Lucy nodded.

“Hug?  Or are you mad at me?”

Lucy accepted the hug.  “Not mad.”

“Oh good.  Did better than I did with Verona, I guess.  She was needling and hounding me because I said the wrong things about dating.”

“She’ll do that.”

Lucy squeezed her mom.

“I remember when your dad died.”

“Mom-”

“And it was really hard.  Really dark.  And there were expectations on me.  You guys, of course.  Not all expectations are bad, you’ll always be my priorities.  Work.  Family- your dad’s family.  Who were- they had been my family.  A found one, because I barely interacted with your grandparents.  I don’t interact with your grandfather, outside of the occasional call.  Friends had their opinions about what I should do, and how I should grieve.”

Lucy nodded.

“All of that.  It feels like drowning, and all of it pushes you deeper.  It seems like it’s all you can do to get up there, and get a gulp of air into your lungs.  But it’s tiring, fighting.  You make sacrifices.  You let things drop.  I let work drop.  The repercussions of that weren’t immediate, but they caught up with me.  It wasn’t until Connor gave me a helping hand that I got back where I wanted to be.  As embarrassing and frustrating as that was.  I don’t know if that makes sense.  The feelings tied to that.”

“It makes sense,” Lucy said.

“It was a long, hard few years between losing my job and getting another.”

“I noticed.”

“I know you notice.”  Her mom kissed the earring.  “I don’t want you to be in that situation.  I had to realize it’s not just about staying afloat.  It’s about paying enough attention to see a light on the shore, and realize you can’t just thrash and get through things day by day.  You need to swim for shore.  To have something waiting for you there.”

“Yeah?  What was it?”

“Paul.”

“That worked out, huh?”

“Did and didn’t.  Maybe he was what I needed right then, to feel wanted and loved outside of the want and love you get from being a parent of a five and nine year old.  We bought a house, and I wouldn’t ever have done that on my own, I don’t think.  And it’s tough to pay for alone, but it’s a home for all of us.  I’m willing to put in the work to have this on my shore.”

“Yeah.”

“I told Booker a lot of that.  Bits and pieces along the way.  I don’t want to dump things on you, but I want you to know I’ve been where you are.  And you are my daughter.  You’re similar.”

Lucy nodded.

“Now what do you need?” her mom asked.

“I stayed up late with the market.”

“I know you did.”

“And I’m pretty wiped.  Surveillance, running around trying to make sure everyone knows what’s going on, without stepping on the wrong toes.  Training with Guilherme.  Talking to you.”

“Nap?”

“Is that okay?”

“Go.  Do you want me to wake you for dinner?”

“Ummm…”

“I’ll put it in the oven to stay warm if you’re not up.  But I’ll go to work, so you know where to find it if it’s not in the oven.”

“Okay.  Thanks.”

She went upstairs, changing into pyjama pants, and lay down in bed.  Between the fatigue and the soreness from fighting, she was out before she’d fully pulled the covers around herself.

A bit of peace and quiet.

She used a pick with the guitar, sitting with the sunlight shining in over the backyard bright and warm against her front.

She tried to find the sequence of notes, working with her fingers, murmuring the tune, restarting when she tripped up.  A few times, she didn’t try at all, working with her fingers.

He sat down behind her, reaching over to put one hand over hers, helping with the sequence.

Until they had it.

He hummed as her murmurs became singing.  She wasn’t very good, and she wasn’t great at the guitar part either, but he was decent at the guitar and way worse at the singing.  So she played, with his occasional help, and he hummed instead of singing.

She could feel the low vibration against her back.

When she had it, he got up.  She didn’t want him to.  He kept humming.

She shifted to laying on her back, guitar at her stomach,  looking up at him, as he went to the kitchen, getting water.

“I’m not going to drink out of a dog bowl if I can help it,” he said.

She smiled, and she sang, playing.

He didn’t have that haunted look in his eyes, in that moment, as he cleaned the glass and put it away.

As a dog, he padded his way across the floor.  He settled down, lying in the sun by her leg, moving his chin up to rest on her leg.

She played until she’d done all the parts of the song she knew, then she played the first parts over again, making sure she had it down okay.

Room for improvement.

She moved her head up, carefully, so she woudln’t jostle him.

He’d fallen asleep like that.

So she lay there, guitar flat against her stomach, hands keeping it steady, head partially turned, watching as a warm summer wind blew a few stray leaves and cherry blossoms into the dining room, just inside the back door.

The music continued, even though she’d stopped.

She lay in bed, a bit cold, even though her mom had come in to move the covers back over her.  She had her music in, and it pressed awkwardly against her left ear, which didn’t have the earring.  It played indistinct, until she fixed it where it sat ajar.

The dog tag had a sharp bit that jabbed at her.

She felt heavy, her brain weighty in her skull, like she hadn’t slept or dreamt at all, and it was letting her know it was overloaded, still.  It was dark, and she had no idea if it was six o’clock in the evening or three in the morning or six o’clock in the morning.

She made herself move, and she checked, while pulling the dog tag out of her shirt, so it dangled on the outside.

It was midnight.

She was probably not going to sleep normally tonight, because she’d ‘napped’ for as long as she had.

That’s not my dream, she thought.  It’s not, it wasn’t, it doesn’t count.

She went downstairs and she found the oven cold.  Made sense.  The leftovers were in the fridge though, and warming it in the microwave wasn’t so bad.

While the microwave did its work, humming loudly, providing some of the only light in the dark kitchen, she looked at the spot on the floor where the dream had taken place.

A dream, but not her dream.  Different words for different meanings.

Her mom wanted her to find a dream.  Something in the future to strive towards.

Not something in the past that she couldn’t reasonably achieve.  John had had to go, to save his Dog Tags.  He’d had to go because the Carmine had been killed.

The only way that dream would be possible would be if Charles hadn’t killed the Carmine Beast.  And Lucy would have had to awaken for other reasons.  Maybe because people were nosing around about the Hungry Choir, and they needed representatives.

It didn’t matter.

It was a mere fantasy.

Her mom wanted her to find a dream.

And she was mad enough, she found, that a perfectly nice dream had been rendered mere fantasy, that it kind of spurred her on.  Past the heaviness in her head, past the cold that leaked in through the walls, and past the weight of knowing she had three possible overwhelming dangers to confront in the coming days or weeks.

While the microwave finished, she turned on the bright kitchen lights.  She got books, and she got her laptop, and by the time she was underway, fork in a microwave safe container filled with lasagna, the table was covered in old materials and notes, and blank papers she planned to fill with new and relevant ones.

Rule of law wording in practice.

Competitive clauses of Establishment.  Capital E.

Petitions and challenges.

Orders of operation; hierarchies of greater powers.

Guilherme could give her an edge in a fight.  And that edge could matter against any of her enemies.

She’d find a similar kind of edge on other fronts.

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