Author: Wildbow

Crossed with Silver – 19.14 | Pale

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“You’re sure you want to come?”

“Yes,” her mom replied.

“Because this will be weird.”

“I saw the town I had my children in transform.  Mobs of wizards- practitioners causing a fuss.  Just yesterday, I was in some laser hologram world.  How much weirder can it be?”

Avery arranged the stuffed animals on the table.  Monkey, Duck, Squirrel, Bear, Pig, Yak, Fawn.  “Landlord’s out?”

“No, she’s there,” Snowdrop said.

“I hope you’re right.  Invitations are taped to the table, stuffed animals set.  That’s our entrance.  Our equipment, got my bag.  You?”

“Handbag.”

“I always have tons of stuff,” Snowdrop commented.  “No need to ask.”

“Layered clothing, easy to put on and take off?” Avery asked.  “With something nice enough for when we get to the other side?”

“Think so.  Like going on an airplane.”

“I don’t have any particular attachment or fussiness to my clothes,” Snowdrop said, pulling the bottom of her shirt out to read the front, which read ‘Mar-super-ial’.

“ID, money, phone that works if we somehow get chucked into Siberia or something?”

“Um, yes,” Avery’s mother said.

“Water, snacks, extra food?  I’ve got some.”

“Not important,” Snowdrop said.

“I’ve got some too,” her mom said.

“Flashlight, check, first aid, check, multi-tool, check.  Climbing rope, that’s a check.  Notebook, check.  Fireflies…”

The fireflies emerged, swirled around her, then went back.

“And…  Oh!  The contract!  One second.”

Avery left her mom and Snowdrop behind, then jogged upstairs.

What a move that would’ve been.

She caught her mom and Snowdrop having a conversation as she came back down.

“-in the garage?”

“Sucks.  It’s terrible.”

“I see.  I was going to offer for you to stay in the house.  Little cat bed, maybe.  Regular food?”

“I can imagine the fifty flavors of shit fit Sheridan would throw if she had to share a room with another living creature,” Avery said.  “And if Kerry caught a whisper, even a whisper of us owning a pet when we haven’t had one all these years…”

“I’d be a good pet,” Snowdrop said.  “Staying put, never stealing food, clean, quiet.”

“Up at night,” Avery supplied.

“Nah,” Snowdrop agreed.

“I asked her before if she wanted me to sneak her inside some,” Avery told her mom.  “But she’s a wild animal.  She doesn’t mind the chance to get cozy, but she likes her freedom.”

“So long as it keeps me away from goblins.  I’ve gotten thoroughly sick of them,” Snowdrop muttered.  “Got the contract?”

Avery held it up, then put it in her bag.  “Okay.  So, repeating this, careful what you touch, don’t wander, careful what you say, follow my lead, and if I say to do something, do it first, think about it second.”

“Okay.”

“Declaration.  Charles, Carmine Exile, co-conspirators, I hereby declare this isn’t intended to mess with you or have secret meetings.  Don’t sabotage me.”

She waited for some signal, didn’t get one, and shrugged.

“Now just stand here…” Avery guided her mother over, standing with her back to the table.  Snowdrop helped, standing on the other side.  “Close your eyes.”

“I would rather do whatever this is with my eyes open.”

“Are you sure you want to do this at all?  Really truly positive?” Avery asked.

“I’m wanting to take a more focused attempt at guiding you, Sheridan, and Rowan in your life goals and objectives.  Kerry and Declan too.”

Avery stepped up onto the card table they’d set up for this purpose.  Snowdrop did too.  Her mom turned to look, and Avery gently pushed on her mom’s cheek to get her looking the other way.

“Look, I’ve been doing it with Rowan already, but I’d like to step up my efforts with you and Sheridan.  If you have something you want to do and you want to do it seriously-”

Avery, hand touching her mom’s cheek to keep her looking the one way, glanced at Snowdrop, and then nodded.

“-I want to be in a position to support that.  Whether that’s equipment for Sheridan-”

Avery gently clotheslined her mother, arm at her neck, one hand at the back of her coat, throwing her weight backwards toward the far end of the table.  Snowdrop did something similar.

They crashed over and through the card table, animals scattering, and landed roughly on the other side.

“What the hell, Avery!?” her mother exclaimed.  “Did you think that was funny?”

She was glad the Path meant she couldn’t hurt herself on the landing.  But it was startling.  She lay on her back, taking the implicit tip from Hazel’s writings in 100 Years Lost and taking stock before doing anything else.

Her mother started to stand, then froze.

“Stay still,” Avery said.  She moved her head around, looking.

The alleyways were covered in graffiti, none of the buildings looked accessible, with the few doors and nooks she could see being boarded up or rusted shut.  Half the time she could barely tell a door was there due to the density of graffiti, which went up two stories on just about every surface around them.  On the second and third floors, there were homes, all in a style that made her think of apartments in a Chinatown style district, except it wasn’t China.  The balconies weren’t really balconies in the sense that they stuck out, but most of the apartments above had a short ‘outside hallway’ with a railing, inset into the building.  Balcony-ish.

Avery checked herself over.  She’d heard a story about someone doing Bound to the Party, getting transformed into a horse as part of the conceit, and then breaking their legs because they didn’t know how to walk.  They’d never walked right again, even after turning human.

Her shirt had changed.  So had the coat with the antlers that Verona had made for her.  The shirt was patterned after a deer, the coat had turned black with the antlers in tan, the ruff more exaggerated.

Avery’s eyes widened as she saw her mom.  Heavy makeup, the side of her head was shaved where it wasn’t tightly braided, jewelry fixing hair close to one side of her head.  Her mom’s clothes had changed too.  She wore a shirt that said ‘Bambi’s mom has got it going on’, with a doe framing the words.  And she had tattoos, Avery noticed.  An antler tattoo across the side of her face, a tattoo saying ‘just doe it’ at her neck, and doe hoofprints on her palms.  She had a gold necklace, a gold bangle at her wrist, and about six rings across ten fingers.

“Okay.  we’re good to stand and take stock, pause, examine the area further…” Avery said, climbing to her feet.

Her mom’s eyes widened as she saw her.

“It’s temporary.  Probably.  Ninety-nine percent sure we’ll be fine if we do this right, and I know what to do,” Avery said.

Her mother stood, looking around.  Avery pulled an uncooperative Snowdrop to her feet with a grunt.

“Should you be showing me this?” her mom asked.

“You’re asking that now?  No, it’s… I take responsibility.  But I figure if this goes wrong and you get hurt, then normally I’d suffer for it, but like, you’re my mom.  If something happens, I suffer anyway, obviously.”

“That’s a worrying direction to take things.”

“Yeah, well, hmm.  Anyway, I figure it works the same as parents awakening their kids.

“And it’s that easy to get… here?” her mom asked.  She jumped a little as she saw her hands.

“Kind of have to do some stuff first.  The Forest Ribbon Trail makes it way easier to get to places like this,” Avery said.  She pulled off her winter coat, undid the top flap of her bag, and draped her coat across the top before pinning it there with the flap buckled down over it.

Snowdrop just turned into an opossum, climbing over Avery’s shoulders, hopped down, and became human again, discarding the coat in the process.

Avery paused for a moment to admire her tattoos, pushing the collected bracelets and things up her arm to see some of them better.  Deer silhouettes formed a flowing pattern from shoulder to fingertip where they twisted in air, and the voids between the dark deer shapes were women.  On the inside of her arm, running from armpit to the paler, less freckled part of her wrist, there was a lengthy bit of script, that was kind of awkward to read.  ‘Spring forth, wayward children.  Prance and the world prances with you.  Fall, and you fall alone.’

She looked at her mom.

“No.  You know the deal.”

“Right.”  Avery pulled her phone from her pocket.  “Snow?  Picture.”

Snowdrop took Avery’s camera, then shot some pictures of Avery.  Avery moved over to her mom to let her mom in on it.

“Not sure if these will revert when we go back,” Avery said.  “Maybe if I had a technomancy camera.”

“Worst case scenario, there’s a mother daughter photo I didn’t have to twist arms to get?” her mom asked.

“Yeah, maybe.  Come on.  We have an appointment to make.”

“Just the one,” Snowdrop added.

“True.  Good point.  Two appointments to make.  A party, and the negotiation in the lion’s den.”

“Which is a weird contrast when you think about it,” Snowdrop said.

“True.”

A man sitting on stairs stood up as they approached.  Big, muscular, wearing a yellow tank top and jeans, a massive belt buckle that looked like a barrel, and he was hairy.  He looked like a bouncer, a perpetual ‘watch yourself’ glare on his face, beneath heavy, hairy eyebrows.  He was Bald, but making up for it with thick black hair on shoulders, arms, the back of his hands…

Gold Banana on a gold chain at his neck, tattooed letters on his fingers reading ‘ooook’ and ‘ooook’… okay.

“Mr. Monkey?  Are you going to the party?”

“Mr. Ape.”

“Yeah.  Oh.  Are you going to the party?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”  He sighed, like it was the most annoying thing in the world he had company.

Mr. Bear was a heavyset guy wearing a leather vest over a white tee.  Avery put Snowdrop on the task of annoying him.  Duck was a kid wearing a baseball cap and a shirt with the sleeves torn off, hair flipped up in a weird way at the side and at the back, by the neck.

Avery was getting the pattern – everyone looked a bit like some exaggerated gang member, or someone who could hold their own in cartoon gangland.  It was a cool aesthetic, even if it made all of this a bit more intense, visually.

“Nice to meet you, Duck,” Avery said.

“Nice to meet you,” Ape said.

Duck nodded, glancing around, wary.

“Can we talk?  Pass the time while we walk?” Avery’s mom asked.

“Uh, no, I think it’s best if I concentrate,” Avery said, watching as Snowdrop bothered Mr. Bear.  She was making enough of a commotion that Mr. Ape was avoiding her.

“Okay.”

“Hey, Mr. Ape?” Avery asked.

“Hey, Ms. Stranger.”

“I’m calling you out.  You’ve been copying me, but you didn’t when I replied to my mom.”

“Oh?  Didn’t realize I was doing that,” he said.  “Yeah, I guess that’s why it’s best if we concentrate, thanks.”

“Yeah, sure.  And Mr. Bear?  Are you okay?”

“I can deal, thanks,” the man said, in a low voice.

“I didn’t even want him to give me a ride on his shoulders like some people would.  Wouldn’t make sense,” Snowdrop said.

“Oh yeah?” Avery asked.  “I hear you.”

Mr. Pig was eating at a restaurant that was inset into the rows of alley like the balcony-ish areas had been.  A big man with an upturned nose, and a lot of scars.  He paid for his meal and joined them.

Avery started unloading the extra snacks she’d brought, letting him pig out.  She’d gone for volume over quality.

“Thanks,” he said, as he took some more convenience store sponge cakes.

She kept a mental count.  Three.

If they did what their animal names verbed as, as a default thing, then she was supposed to look out for the exception, keep them on track.  If they didn’t, she was supposed to force it.

Mrs. Yak was a tall, heavyset middle-aged woman with short, dense, curly hair and horn-rimmed glasses, and she talked a mile a minute, punctuating statements with heavy smacks of a mitt of a hand into the other.  Squirrel was a nervous, mousy girl with frayed clothes and a bandage taped over one eye, which fit because the old stuffed animal had been missing one inset eye.

The narrow alleyway had a wheelchair ramp for access to a place, and Duck went up it, just because it was more clear footpath than the walk down the alley with three rather large men accompanying them.

Avery sent a signal to Snowdrop, who went after Duck.  As Duck went to hurdle the railing at the end of the ramp, Snowdrop intercepted her, bullying her out of the way.  Duck went under either, and Avery put out a hand to help them step down.

“Thanks.”

“Yep,” Avery agreed.

“Oh my god, look at you!” a girl cooed, looking down from a balcony-ish space above.  Avery looked up just in time to see the girl hopping down.  ‘Y’-shaped, truncated antler hairpin, fuzzy coat, short skirt, and boots that were more heel than anything.  She used the railing Duck had just gone under to step down, then hopped down the rest of the way.  She skipped forward, arms perpetually cocked out to the side.  A bit younger than Avery, but just barely.  She acted and looked like a teenager sneaking out to go to a club, trying to look older than they were.  ‘Bambi’ was in gold on a short necklace that was barely more than a choker.  “We almost match!  You look so good.”

“I guess we do,” Avery said.

She still had bases to cover, and this was everyone.  She only barely caught-

“Mrs. Yak?  You were saying?”

“Oh yes, thank you…”

“You look so good, the tattoos really work for you,” Fawn said, hugging Avery’s arm.  “Can we be best friends?”

“I’ve already got a very cool animal companion.”

“Oh.  So you do,” Fawn said.  She looked at Snowdrop.  “You look, uh…”

“You were going to say something nice?”

“I was going to try, yes.  Thank you.”

Avery could hear the club music.

She looked at Squirrel, hands on her hips.

“What?” Squirrel asked.

Avery used her Sight, tracking connections.  She was free and clear of anything trailing between herself and something Squirrel was carrying, but…

She reached over, Squirrel grabbing her before she could grab Squirrel, fighting back-

Snowdrop helped.  So did Mr. Ape.

“You’re so cool,” Fawn said.

“Avery?” her mom asked.

Avery reached into a pocket, pulling out some receipts and… a gold wedding band.

She passed it to her mom, then gave Squirrel a light push toward the club.  “Let’s just go.  Mrs. Yak, you were saying?”

Mrs. Yak resumed going on about types of grass.

“What would have happened if you hadn’t found that?”

“Not-good things.  But I was on the lookout,” Avery said.  “It’s cool.”

“Yep.  It’s cool,” Mr. Ape said.

Avery did a final check that everyone was on track, she’d triggered or kept them doing their thing once each…

She pushed her way through into the club, the animals, her mom, and Snowdrop with her.

“And our guests are here!” someone said over a microphone.

The room exploded into confetti, dancing people who were barely visible in the lights, and a boom of music.

The last times she’d been here, she’d been playing by different rules.  She’d brought Florin Pesch here, and so she’d been exempt from rules, and she’d been exempt from getting rewards.

She squinted, trying to see the box’s color as the lights of the building shifted colors.  When she couldn’t, she reached for her charm bracelet.  “Guys?”

The fireflies emerged, then went where Avery pointed.  They produced a faint yellow light, but clustering together as a trio, they were able to illuminate a patch of the box’s material.  Avery pointed at the next, then the next, double checking.

“Thanks guys.”

They returned, slipping into the cup of the little silver lacrosse stick, the hollow of the witch hat, and one going to another bracelet.

Avery picked a red present box as she passed the table.

“I hope it’s not food, please don’t be food,” Snowdrop whispered, barely audible over the booming music and cheers.

The box was a foot across on every side, red, and tied with a thick ribbon.  Avery opened it, then took out a bullet.

“Woohoo,” Snowdrop said, without enthusiasm.

“A bullet?” Avery’s mom asked.

But the music was too loud for an explanation.  Avery took her mom’s arm.  She wanted out of here in case the Path tried to move things along to another length.  Bound to the Party could connect to the Party Down, which could connect to Down the Tubes, which was best described as going down a child’s slide with a razor blade embedded in it, a fast track down to the Abyss.  But the Party Down wasn’t the only option.  This place could become the Party Crash, which was a fast and frenetic transition to Crash Course.

Avery much preferred those sorts of connecting ideas between paths, but it was really down to the discovering practitioners to do that.  She hoped if she was ever mapping out new territories, she could do that, with a logical sense connecting the ideas.

It was hard to see in the dark, so she borrowed Snowdrop’s night vision and gave her arm a shake to shake the fireflies awake.  They circled around her feet, spread out and looping, casting a faint glow and avoiding obstacles, giving her a sense of where tripping hazards could be.  Avery kept pushing her way through hallways and doors until she and Snowdrop shoved open a set of double doors and came face to face with a wall of snow.

“Coat on,” she told her mom.  Snowdrop undid the buckle on her bag and handed her her coat.  “Thanks.”

“What’s the bullet?”

The fact the snow was right there and the music came from the other end of the building made it a little easier to talk.  She held the bullet between her fingers, then put it and her hand through the doors.  The bullet disappeared, and a nugget of metal traveled a path that left a trail of floaty iron shavings behind it.  Like a steely firefly.

It settled into the ‘barometer’ bracelet she’d made herself a while ago, where it became a little circle of metal, held fast by the weave around it.  The woven friendship bracelet had little bits and bobs here and there, wedged between the fibers, or included with the fibers.  A thin ribbon worked into the weave, a white stripe in the mix.  A little key in primary school red.  A bit of fishing-line style material that caught the light easily.  There was a loose thread here, eager to be caught, and one of the fireflies had taken roost in another hollow, from the Left Field.

There were others, but she didn’t have time to really dwell or hunt for them.  Some were sneaky.  One was always pointing away from her line of sight – she had to feel for it, and it was a bit tacky to the touch.

“It’s a boon, a little bit of magic I get for finishing the Path.  Bound to the Party gets walked a fair bit so it’s a bit weak.  Most of the easy paths are, just because they’ve been used a lot.”

Her mom was buttoning up her jacket and pulling a hat on.

“Anyway, means about once a day, I can ask a stranger for something you can have in large numbers and run out of, and they’ll probably have it.  Notecards, pen, bullet…”

“Food,” Snowdrop muttered.

“Not food.  There’s three boxes, each has a set of rewards that they tend to give.  There’s a cherry pit pie, and if you eat the slice, you find random food a lot.  Random box of cookies sitting by the road, or whatever.  Or if you’re stuck in a desert, like, a box will fall off a passing plane.  Makes it hard to starve to death.”

“It sounds so awful,” Snowdrop protested.

“And we didn’t get lucky, Snow.  Sorry.”

“It’s okay.  Really.”

“You ready?” Avery asked her mom.

“I guess?  You’re not going to pull another wrestling move on me, are you?”

“Not for now.”

Avery took her mom’s hand, Snowdrop’s hand, then leaped through the door, her mother a step behind her.

The distance looked like a foot, but space distorted as they made the leap, and it ended up feeling more like five feet, and the ‘wall’ ahead of them was actually a field, so they had to flip at right angles too.  The passage through the door helped with that.  Still, Avery felt a lurch in her stomach as she made the mental transition.

They landed in snow.  Avery felt the ground ripple a bit under her feet.  Her mom grunted.

Tattoos and bits gone.  Avery was almost disappointed.  She was glad her mom wouldn’t kill her, but man, it would’ve been fun until she could find a way to fix it.

“You good?” Avery asked.

“I think so.”

She knew Snowdrop was good, but she asked anyway.  “You?”

“I’m okay.  I’m so glad we didn’t get the cherry pit pie.”

“Don’t be too cranky about it, okay?”

“Fine.”

Avery smoothed down Snowdrop’s hair.

They were standing in snow off to the side of a road, but it wasn’t an official road, and might’ve even been dirt, so it had a lot of snow packed into it.  She could smell nature.  Trees.  Manure.

She turned, looking, and saw the house.  It was the kind of house that went for two million dollars, and had six different cars parked at various angles on a driveway that was spacious enough that Avery’s Kennet home and Thunder Bay home could have been plopped down side by side on it.

The driveway wasn’t even the most spacious part of the property.

The building had wings, but the wings were tightly arranged together.  It was stone, old, each window squared off at the bottom and peaked at the top, surrounded by metal framing, with sheer curtains tied off to either side just past them.  The cars looked nice, most of them sleek and black, but Avery wasn’t much of a car person, and winter had a way of taking nice looking homes and cars and bringing everything closer to neutral.

Avery could see a woman standing by the side door, wearing what Avery realized was a maid uniform; the dress was ankle length with frilly bits beneath, glasses, a frilly collar with ribbon, and she wore a black coat that looked like it had been tailored.

No maid cap, but she wore a little party hat, and held a balloon.  The woman put a little noisemaker to her mouth and blew.

“That’s the first time in my life I’ve seen a maid outfit that wasn’t a costume, outside of shows and movies,” Avery’s mom said.

“Thank you!” Avery called out.  She had to work to extricate herself from the snow she was almost knee deep in.  Her mom was a help, longer-legged, capable of reaching over to give some support.  Snowdrop became an opossum, bounding across the harder crust on top of the snow.

“Why is she doing that?”

“Giving us a destination,” Avery said.  “If there wasn’t a party of one nearby, we’d go to the next nearest.”

“Which is how you could get sent to Siberia?”

“Yeah!” Avery said, perking up.  “Hey, you’re paying attention.  Yeah, there’s lots of stuff like that.”

“I remember the one Jude’s… cousin?  She got sent somewhere.”

“Yeah.  But yeah, you can path back if you memorize ways, but just in case, it’s nice to have a passport and money.”

“Wouldn’t you get some questions if you were using your passport to get from some obscure place, with no explanation how you got there?”

“Connection blocks.”

“Okay.”

“But yes.  Good point.”  Avery shook the snow from her legs, kicking the road to get more snow free.  “Do I look presentable?”

“Terrible.” Snowdrop said.

Avery fixed a few stray strands of Snowdrop’s hair, but it felt like more pried themselves up to make up for what had been fixed.  Snowdrop flashed a toothy smile, and Avery pushed her head lightly, sending her toward the house.

The maid blew on the noisemaker again as Avery, her mom, and Snowdrop drew closer.

“You don’t have to do that anymore.  Thank you though.  It helped.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the maid said.  She pulled off the conical party hat, then tucked the balloon under her arm with a rubbery squeak.  “If you’ll please come with me to the common greenhouse?”

“Sure.  Sorry if that was awkward.”

“Not at all, ma’am.  A change in routine.  This way.”

They walked down a shoveled path all the way around the house, snaking past what might have been a guest house, and walked along a fenced in field that probably had horses in it in warmer weather, going by the smell.  Past the guest house was a long greenhouse attached to a stone tower in the same style as the main building, with a smaller greenhouse attached.  They went to the small one, the maid holding the door for them.

Snowdrop went small, and Avery handed her to her mother.

Inside were rows of counters, tables, and troughs of herbs and plants.  It was warm, too.  And Avery could see Fernanda, two women who could’ve both been Fernanda’s relatives, twentyish and thirtyish, a young woman with black hair and what looked like broken glass earrings and necklace, and an older woman who looked similar but wasn’t wearing the same.  Raquel Musser stood there, arms folded, looking anxious.

“You made it,” Fernanda said.

“Heya,” Avery greeted her.  “Hi Raquel.”

Raquel smiled like she was genuinely pleased, but the anxiety and defensiveness didn’t drop.

“Mom, this is Fernanda Whitt, fellow student at the Blue Heron.  Nicolette’s mentor’s little sister.”

“Actually ew,” Fernanda muttered.  “What a way to be described.”

“Sorry.  She showed me around the Faerie market, she was a big help.  We kept in touch.  Raquel Musser, niece to Abraham Musser.  We’ve stayed in touch some, she’s Sheridan’s fan.  Maybe number one fan.  I’m afraid I don’t know anyone else.  Everyone, I announce myself as Avery Kelly, this is my mother, Kelsey Kelly, and my opossum spirit familiar, Snowdrop.”

“Andrea Fulton, my daughter, Cara Fulton,” the black-haired woman said.

“Fernanda Whitt, as introduced, my cousins, Valeria Hull, née Whitt, and Regina Degroat, née Whitt.  Come in, coats off.”

“Née?” Avery asked.

“Means originally.  Miss Braaten?” Fernanda asked.

“Yes, mistress?”  The maid turned.  She’d stepped off to one side, to talk to a maid that looked about sixteen, who was wearing a slightly more rugged version of the maid outfit, frill-less, complete with a stiff apron with tools in the front and work gloves.  Same general outline, though.

“I would be grateful if you didn’t mention this ongoing meeting, if it can be avoided.”

“Mistress,” the maid curtsied slightly.

“If you’d like to take a break and be at ease, I could tell the housekeeper I asked you to be at my disposal.”

“If it pleases mistress, I have duties to return to elsewhere.”

Fernanda nodded.  “Try to stay out of the way of anyone nosy as you go about those duties?  Please?”

“I will.  Mistress Fernanda, Mistress Raquel.  Guests,” the Maid said, ducking her head down, curtsying.  Then she left, cold swirling in while the door was open.

“Darn,” Fernanda said.  She walked around one of the counters, until she faced Avery.  “That increases the risk of interruption.  Someone’s going to ask for details sooner or later.”

“Hi, by the way,” Raquel said.  “Make yourself comfortable.  This is a Musser house.  The Whitts were attacked in theirs, we offered this property for them to use, but as things are going the direction they’re going, we’ve had to adjust.”

“More families in this one house,” Fernanda said, indicating Andrea Fulton.

“You guys got attacked too?” Avery asked.

“How freely can we talk?” Andrea asked, glancing at Avery’s mom.

“With my mother here?  I take responsibility.  Say whatever.  She’s not awakened and probably isn’t going to be, but I’m not really hiding stuff or making this awkward by trying to talk around certain subjects.”

“Okay.  We didn’t get attacked, but the Lord and Carmine Exile changed balances.  Our power base and everything we’d established were destroyed or put out of reach.  It’s as if… imagine you bought a property, hoping to set up a bakery, only for the government to rezone and disallow business in your neighborhood, specifically to counter you.”

“To get away without interference, I said I wouldn’t plot against him,” Avery said.  “But this isn’t really about the Carmine.  I’d like to say it’s about survival.”

She said that because Raquel had stressed that.

“Yeah.  Thank you.  We have to do tough things, walk odd lines,” Raquel said.  “Navigate the uncompromising.”

“Thank you for allowing us to talk to your circle of navigators, then,” Avery said.

“Ooh, well said,” Raquel replied.  “That could be a line in the show.”

“Oh my god, shut up about your show,” Fernanda replied.  “Please.”

Raquel sniffed her amusement.

“Set the ground rules?” Regina asked.  Fernanda’s thirty-something cousin.

“This isn’t about rebellion,” Fernanda said.

“Right,” Avery agreed.

“We’re not going against our families.  If we did, whatever you got, it would be short term,” Fernanda said.

“Poisonous,” Regina added.

“Poisonous, even.  It’d come with problems later.  I know things are desperate, and getting a win like that is tempting, but we can’t do that,” Fernanda said.

Avery nodded.

Raquel sighed heavily.  “Okay.  I’m going to give you the rundown I couldn’t give over email.”

“Can we trust her?” Regina asked.

“I think so.  She’s one of the only people who’s been decent with me these past few months,” Raquel replied.

“Decent is good, it’s important, I’m glad you have that,” Valeria said, voice soft.  “But it’s not necessarily the kind of thing we need right now.”

“If I’m wrong, I’ll make it up to you,” Raquel said.

“Alright,” Regina said, stepping away a bit, like she was distancing herself a bit from the conversation, even as she relented.

“Thank you.  I’m getting the impression this is heavy stuff?” Avery asked.

“The maid in the corner?” Fernanda asked.  “That’s Sadie Braaten.”

“Mistress?” the teenager in the gardening version of the maid’s outfit asked.

“It’s okay.  You can relax, Sadie.”

The maid nodded, peered through the window, then sat down in the corner, pulling out a phone.

Fernanda leaned into the counter.  “Servants are drawn in with promises.  Little favors.  Sometimes it’s love,” Fernanda said.  “A simple but decent boy from a small town is offered a job as a servant, gets told that if he’ll work for our family, someone will tell him when and where to go talk to the girl he’s admired from afar.  Right place, right time, no practice.  Only a few Whitts keeping an eye out, watching someone’s heart to see where they stand.  If he does as we say, he’ll find her in a position to have her heart stolen, to be stolen away from a cruel father, a distant husband, a frustrating circumstance.  The job is easy, he gets paid okay, he and she get a cabin to hide away from the world in, on the outskirts of a Whitt property.  Good food, nice clothes, gifts when a child is born.”

“But?” Avery asked.

“One of the hooks is youth.  Alchemy that keeps them young, but there’s an effect.  Someone like Sadie’s mother, who is in her forties but looks twenty, the world starts to push back.  More true for people like Sadie’s grandmother, who is seventy but looks thirty.”

“Like with Aware,” Avery said, glancing at her mother.  “Or more problematic Aware.”

“People get uncomfortable, it gets hard to find other work.  ID stops lining up with the details as they seem.  They can’t leave.  They get promoted, brought further into the family interior, working with more important members of the family.  Sometimes unkind ones.  Ones that would drive a servant to leave, if the servant could.”

Avery nodded.  She glanced at her mom.  Her mom was frowning.

“The children become servants too.  And the children’s children.  When a third-generation servant like Sadie decides she wants to leave, she gets told no.  Sent to the stables,” Fernanda explained.  “Gardening.  Shoveling manure.  With the idea that with enough dirt, toil, and time, she’ll stop asking about leaving.”

“Slavery.”

“We call it other things,” Fernanda replied.  “There are a lot of things like that.  For me, for Raquel.  We weren’t offered promises, but I got to ride on a unicorn, I had stars in my eyes until I saw a very angry family member dragging her nephew by the hair until hair came out of scalp.  He dropped to the ground, and she had a handful of hair, and he had a bleeding scalp where the hair had come out.  I tried to tell people and I realized pretty quickly that very few people cared enough to do anything about it, and the ones that cared weren’t in a position to act.”

“It’s so hard to convince people to change when they profit on the status quo,” Regina said.

“Yeah,” Fernanda said.

“It all sounds horrifying,” Avery’s mom said.  “Can we help?”

“No,” Raquel said, very quickly, alarmed.  “If you try to intervene directly, you’ll make things worse.”

“You’d only be removing a drop from the bucket.  ” Fernanda said, quiet.  “From the servants to the top.  They stack up.  It becomes this warning.  Act this way, play the game, do this, cooperate, marry the person you’re told.  If you’re a good girl, a pretty, sexy girl, maybe the person will be nice.”

Fernanda glanced sideways at Raquel, who was staring down at the counter, arms folded.  Raquel looked like she was going to say something, then just said, “You can hope.”

Fernanda turned to Avery’s mom.  “You see it but you’re not in a position to do anything about it, or talk to anyone about it.  Usually.  If you have enough fire in you to fight back or try to change the status quo, they’ll keep you away from others who are similar.  Surround you with people who pressure you to stay in line.”

“The upside of a messy situation like what we’re dealing with, is there are cracks forming,” Regina said.  “They’re too busy to keep us apart.”

“Which is why and how we’re here, meeting,” Fernanda said, very seriously.  “Sadie is a triple-crosser.  A rebel first, told to keep an eye on us for her mother’s sake, but she passes them a filtered story.  If we get caught, we’re wide-eyed and guileless little idiots, playing our games in the background to try to get a little bit more power, or better husbands.”

“Understood,” Avery said.  “Look at me, people keep telling me I’m a ditz.”

“The ditz, the bitch, the snob,” Fernanda said, looking from Avery to Raquel.

“Why the fuck am I a snob?”

“Do you know how to use a washing machine?” Fernanda asked her.

“No.  Why?”

“Cara?” Fernanda asked.

“Sure.  I think.  For a basic load?”

“Avery?”

“Yeah.”

Avery’s mom rubbed her back for a moment.

“And you do?” Raquel asked Fernanda.

“I do.  The Whitts dress big, buy nice things, keep nice houses and cars, but it’s about appearances.  It works, even.  But we don’t have servants unless we have people over.  Rest of the time?  I do some laundry.”

“Huh,” Raquel replied, sounding dissatisfied.

“You’re such a snob you don’t even realize you’re a snob.  The rest of the world doesn’t live like you do.”

Raquel drew her eyebrows together.  “That’s annoying.”

“It’s reality.  Snob,” Fernanda told her.

“Let’s stay focused?” Regina asked.  “For all we know, someone with nothing better to do is quizzing the maid about what she was doing earlier, and they’ll be coming our way.”

“It’s likely,” Fernanda said.  “Okay.  That’s the rundown.  Those are the stakes.  So long as we’re ditzy, bratty, stupid little girls playing at scheming, the stakes stay low.”

Avery nodded.

“This can’t be about rebellion,” Raquel told her, insistent and quiet.  “It can’t be about stopping my uncle, hurting our families.  It can’t even be about saving Sadie.  Because if it is and we’re caught, that’s it.  It’s not our place, we’re not positioned to confront it directly.  My cousin, Uncle Abraham’s son, he was positioned, he even did everything his father wanted.  But he waded into a warzone on my uncle’s orders, got hurt, and that was enough of a failure.  He got plunged into the Abyss to harden him up, then thrust into a fight to the death he lost.  I don’t think Uncle Abraham even blinked over it.”

“If we go against what they want and fail, they won’t even be that kind,” Regina said.  “So we will follow the very letter of what they want.”

Avery nodded at that, slowly.  She’d caught the inflection.

There were two kinds of law.  The letter of the law and the spirit of the law.  That so much emphasis was placed on the one…

Andrea spoke up, “the same goes for my family.  We’re not a part of a dynamic like what Fernanda and Raquel are describing.  But we’re close enough to them that when they go to war, bombs can land in our metaphorical backyard.”

Regina spoke again, “Anything we do must, at worst, raise both of our families or situations up.  If we’re caught having our little meetings like this, we need to be able to say we were trying to serve our families.  We were trying to raise ourselves up, serve our situations, get stronger, but we were helping to raise our families up while we did it.”

“Or we were trying,” Fernanda said, shrugging.  “We brats, little girls, and idle wives.”

Cara, Andrea’s daughter, chimed in, saying, “Musser’s in a bad position, we don’t want-”

“Cara,” Regina said, interrupting.

The greenhouse was humid, but Avery felt the chill in the word.

“Exactly my point,” Fernanda said, shrugging, leaning forward over the counter.  “That’s not the kind of thing we talk about here.  It’s inappropriate, it could get us in trouble, and frankly, if Avery knew, there’s no need to tell her, and if she doesn’t know, there’s no need to inform her.”

“Why don’t you go sit with Sadie?” Andrea suggested.

“What a good idea,” Regina said, voice still chilly.

Cara nodded and then went over to sit near the maid who was slumped in a reclining chair that hung from a beam overhead, listening to something with her earbuds in.

“What would you even do if something happened?” Avery asked.

“Scatter, maybe end up somewhere far from this Carmine Exile’s realm,” Raquel said.  “Depending on how bad that something is, maybe start over from square one.  Which we may end up doing anyway, so… why not fight?  Why not support the family?”

And, flipping that question around, why not let the family fall and get away from the traps they’ve worked to put you in?

Okay.  Avery had a sense of the terms of this negotiation.  By the letter of the law, everything had to be legit.

But by the spirit?  These women and girls wanted out.

“Okay,” Avery replied.  “I want to do business.”

“We’ve been doing business already,” Regina said.  “Side things.  Online.  Little enchantments, magic items, resources, currencies, tools.  When we had to abandon one of the primary Whitt properties, we took the books, the more important tools and items, they said to burn the rest.  We went the extra mile to save some things, and sold some later.  It took some doing, we drove hours with boxes in our laps so heavy our legs went numb.  But we earned something, bartered for other things.  Much of which we put back into the family.”

“For your benefit, for the family’s,” Avery said.

“Exactly.”

And you kept some for yourselves.

“We can funnel some things your way, if they’ll be useful in starting from square one,” Avery said.  “Cheap.”

“We have sources for things,” Regina said.  “It would be hard to explain why we went to you, someone our families are on uncomfortable ground with, when we could go to more traditional channels.”

“Very cheap?” Avery tried.  “If they’ll go to a friend.”

“That’s more in the right direction,” Regina said.

“It’s hard to sell things,” Valeria interjected.  “Markets being what they are.  Everyone in emergency mode, being attacked, relocated, dealing with dangerous Lords and uncooperative higher powers.  Sometimes even the spirits are unfriendly.”

“I won’t say we’re not in emergency mode too… but our market’s open,” Avery said.  “I hate to ask, but is what you’re selling reasonably ethical?”

“Don’t you have goblins in your market?  It was a goblin market to start with, wasn’t it?” Fernanda asked.  “And you sell Abyssal things?”

“Yeah, but we’re steering things in a positive direction, adding regulations here and there.  I know it’s not perfect, but we’re trying and that’s why I’m asking.”

“Remember the Fae market you wanted to go to?” Fernanda asked.  “They had a currency.”

“Like, baby’s tears or something?  Marbles.”

Fernanda pointed at her older cousin.  “Regina’s part of the Whitt family primarily works as heartforgers and heartfishers.  Capturing and crystallizing emotions, turning them into objects.  Like those currencies.  We don’t use glamour to do it, we use dreams.  These things- do you have any?”

Regina reached into a pocket and placed a lopsided ball of what looked like molten glass down.  As the glass heated up and cooled inconsistently, it settled into shapes that looked like screaming faces, or ridges were highlighted in ways that looked like pulsing veins.

Fernanda explained, “They’re like… nuts and bolts at the hardware store.  If you’re building certain things, they’re really useful to have.  Evoking emotions, controlling or balancing emotions, giving a little bit of an edge to a curse.  Building a personality for something like a doll, six of one kind of thing, four of another, and so on.”

Avery nodded, looking at the little slug of glass.

“We have heartfisher items.  Tools that help harvest these things.  The product of these things.  Heartforger items… a knife made of anger, a phone saturated with black, bilious resentment.”

“Anything happy?” Avery’s mom asked.

“You wanted ethical.  If we take happiness, we’re taking someone’s happiness away from them.  You might get something that helps spread happiness, but at what cost?”

“But on the other side of that,” Avery said, leaning forward to tap the counter near the glass slug.  “If we take someone’s anger, maybe they calm down, but we get something angry, that spreads anger?”

“We had two major buyers.  One family of necromancers that liked to make echoes solid, who could channel a lot of their strength into a weapon like the angry blade I just talked about.  Wiped out, house set on fire, books burned.  Ground salted.  Kids orphaned,” Valeria said.  “Pair of heartless, been around a long time.  Paid their dues, retired, but they’re basically immortal.  Pay enough, you can get them out of retirement.  They liked our stuff, because it was the only way they could feel certain emotions.  Musser paid enough to get them out of retirement, they went up against a Lord, and now they’re trapped.  We can’t rescue them, Musser can’t or won’t.  Now we have items with nowhere to go, and we’re still making more.”

“Have to keep making more,” Fernanda said.  “The means of acquiring the sentiments and emotions are out there.  If we don’t use them to make stuff, we end up with closets full of distilled trauma.”

“I can imagine that leading to some nasty Others popping up,” Avery said.

Fernanda nodded.

“I know that sounds like we’re in a desperate position and you can pay very little to get a lot, but we’re trapped by circumstance, deals, and expectations,” Valeria said.  “We can only go so low.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “Tricky material like that, that can do bad things in the wrong hands, we want to give them to salesmen we can trust.  Vendors we can trust.  Ones that can read or read up on a customer.  So either you need to send someone our way to handle the sales in our market…”

“Not in a position to do that,” Regina said.

“…or we need time, luck, or we need you to recommend people you trust that we can trust.”

“I can’t think of one off the top of my head,” Regina said.  “But if nothing spoils what we’re doing or pulls me in another direction, I’ll check the family’s Dramatis Personae soon, and see if anything stands out.”

“We were able to get away with more things than I think the Whitts were,” Andrea said.  “We want to sell, because having money or other currencies give us the ability to change our circumstance.  We don’t want to leave, but we don’t want to stay either, because we’re accruing an unspoken debt.”

“What do you have?” Avery asked.

“Tools.  For managing and analyzing spirit, animus, vestiges.  Tools for measuring incarnate forces.  Magic items.  Some scattered relics for heroic lines we’ve stopped keeping track of.”

“Relics.  Huh.”

“We hoped to trade them to the Mussers to pay our rent, so to speak, but if we have something in wood, they have it in steel.  If we have something steel, they have it in silver.  Anything we have in silver, they have in gold.  Always better.  We can’t even offload to lesser Mussers who are getting set up.  I think it’s more convenient for them that we hold onto them, we pay for the storage lockers, we wait, the implied value of the items dropping.”

“All this space and you can’t store that somewhere?” Avery asked.

Raquel shook her head.  “Store rooms full of specialized furniture, magical tools and things here on this property, and if the situation changes, you might get relocated, the items left behind, or the items might get moved by servants, and then what?”

“Any ethical concerns?” Avery asked.

“Not especially.  Some pieces of history kept in private hands instead of museums,” Andrea said.

“Okay.  Sounds more immediately doable,” Avery said.  She got her phone out, opened up the messages, and clicked the little plus sign, before sliding the phone over.  “Put your information in there?  We can agree on someone to independently assess the items.  I think the augurs can move around relatively freely- they’re not enough on Musser’s side that the Lords are picking on them.  It might be Nicolette, or the Bitter Street Witch.”

“I don’t know that last one.  I’ve heard of Nicolette.”

“A friend.  Related to the market and the Augurs.  Nicolette can walk her through assessing and pricing the stock.  Then we’ll find a way to take possession of the items, sell them through the market, give you a cut.”

“How many pieces?”

Avery puffed out her cheeks.  “All?  Depends on the price.”

“Hmmm.”

“Maybe not all at once,” Avery said.

“How much do you have?” Avery’s mom asked.  “Whisper it?”

Avery leaned over to whisper in her mom’s ear, “Last time I heard a number being thrown around, it was like, thirty thousand dollars spare.  To bring in new people, build stuff, buy stock.”

“Hmm,” her mom murmured, then she whispered back to Avery, “That’s not that much.”

“Really?” Avery asked, surprised.

“We should talk to Toadswallow.  Mrs. Fulton?  Can you give me a rundown of your items, your best guesses of the prices?”

“Can you do that off to the side?” Regina asked.

Avery’s mom glanced at Avery, who nodded.

They went to the next counter down, Andrea on one side of the counter, Avery’s mom on the other.  Avery’s mom pulled out her tablet, and began taking some notes.

“Avery,” Fernanda said.

“Hmm?”

“I’m pretty good at reading people.”

“That’s your thing, kind of.”

“And when you came here, you didn’t come here like you were open to possibilities, wondering if there was a score for your market.”

“I mean, I’m not not, right?”

“You came with something in mind, didn’t you?  Something more important.”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “Two things.”

“Which are?” Raquel asked.

“A contract.  To establish a business relationship.  No tricks or traps, nothing sketchy.  The emphasis on responsibilities falls on Kennet, to uphold certain standards.  A bunch of others have signed.  Markets, individuals, families.”

“Why?” Fernanda asked.

“It turns Kennet into something else.  We were hidden before, diverting and distracting people who got too close, but that fell apart.  We tried to set up a perimeter, fight off all comers, but that didn’t work.  We have an angle now.  A market, a three-layered city with a potential for a three-layered market, that can cater to different groups.  Something people are invested in enough they don’t want to see it wiped off the map.”

Fernanda narrowed her eyes.

“What?” Avery asked.

“What are you up to?  Because you might actually be a ditz if you think that’s enough,” Fernanda said, eyes studying Avery.

“Can’t it be enough for now?” Avery asked.

“It wasn’t enough for the Blue Heron, and the Blue Heron had more, wider, more powerful investment than anything you could’ve set up these past few months.”

“The Blue Heron was a cleaner, easier target,” Avery said.

“Was it?  I don’t mean to gainsay, but the Blue Heron had Ray, Durocher, and measures by Alexander.  Layered defenses.”

“But it can be captured by anyone that takes the headmaster’s seat.  Which is why Bristow fought Alexander.”

“And Kennet can’t be taken by taking a Lordship?”

“We’re hoping it isn’t as clean and easy a move.”

Snowdrop became human, making Avery’s mom startle.  “We don’t even have as many goblins anymore.”

“Which makes us a little less clean,” Avery agreed.

“What’s the other thing?” Raquel asked.

“That it sure would be nice if we could deal with the Dropped Call.”

“That’s what it’s called in the black box, right?” Raquel asked.  “I browsed.”

Avery nodded.  “It’s pretty annoyed at me for letting Milly Legendre bind an Other it wanted to work with.  A child taker.  Something old.  Honestly?  It’s messing with Christmas plans.”

Raquel sniffed her amusement.  Arms folded on the counter, she toyed with the sleeves of her sweater with her thumbs.  “That’s so mundane.”

“I’m bringing a date home for Christmas, so it sure would be nice to get a mystic coalition of enemies together to defeat or scare off a demiurgic tech god or whatever it is, keep the route clean?”

“I remember!” Raquel exclaimed.  “The date.  Wow.  Spicy.”

Spicy sounded more like a thing from the show than a thing Raquel of early summer would’ve said.

“Not too spicy,” Avery’s mom said.  “Please.  You’re fourteen.”

“That makes it more spicy,” Raquel whispered.

“Mistress.”

Avery turned her head.  The maid, Sadie, had stood, and was smoothing out her dress and apron.  Phone put away.

“What is it?” Fernanda asked.

“Someone’s coming.  It looks like Mrs. Karla Whitt.  She’s coming from the main house as I speak.”

“So that’s it then,” Fernanda said.  “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“What’s it?”

“Our meeting.  There are people who could react worse to this meeting, and people who are nosy enough to find us, but not many are as nosy and as big a problem as Karla.  This was good.  If we can force it, we’ll be in touch.  Get something going with your market.”

“Sadie?” Regina asked.

“Yes, Mistress?”

“Tell them we were trying to arrange something for money for Christmas gifts.  That people have been talking about Musser taking Kennet as such a sure thing, it’s money that circles back to the family anyway when he takes everything the town has.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Is that even a fib?” Valeria asked.

“I hope it’s a fib,” Avery replied.

“Is it a fib?” Raquel asked.  “Do you have plans?”

“If I told you I have plans, wouldn’t it be-”

“Andrea?” Regina asked.  Still making plans, maneuvering.  “We got snappy with Cara after she said something thoughtless, Cara backed off, you stepped back, imply you were not all too happy with us.”

Andrea hesitated, then nodded.

“-wouldn’t it be problematic?” Avery asked Raquel.  “That just gives you information that could be extracted.”

“But it’s important,” Raquel told her.  “Do you really think you can stop him?”

“Dangerous question to be asking,” Fernanda said, voice low.

“She’s at the stable,” Sadie said, as she busied herself in the garden.

“I don’t know,” Avery replied.

“I need you to know,” Raquel said, insistent.

“Dangerous topic,” Regina said.

“I don’t know, though!” Avery exclaimed.  “He’s strong, he’s dangerous, he’s relentless.  But he needs to take things, get back into the swing of things.  Last time around, Kennet was one of the last pieces of the puzzle he needed.  He didn’t get it.  This time around, it’s like we’re the first piece he needs to remove.  Nothing else is budging, he needs something.  Maybe we can counter him.”

“Why is this important?”

It felt like Raquel’s question could so easily be her grasping for something to salvage her position with the Mussers.  Something to avoid the worst of the sting from being caught having a clandestine meeting with an enemy.  Or a sort-of-enemy.

But it could easily be something else, too.

Avery decided to trust.  “It’s like he’s starving.  He takes, the longer he goes without taking, the hungrier and weaker he gets.”

“What does the contract do?”

“She’s close,” Sadie said.

“It helps make Kennet too big to eat.  Or too big to eat in one bite.  And I’m not sure he’s in a position to take multiple bites.”

“But you’re not sure he isn’t?” Fernanda asked.

“Give me the contract,” Raquel said.

Avery dropped her bag, opened the flap, and pulled out the contract in the hard-cover folder that kept everything flat and tidy.  She put it down on the counter.

Raquel quickly turned it around, taking Avery’s pen, searching for the places to put her name.

“You’re signing it unread?” Fernanda asked, galled.  “Don’t be stupid.”

Avery was left with another question, but she felt a similar kind of gall, she figured.

Rather than ask or distract Raquel, she put a hand out, finger touching Raquel’s hand.

She had a gold band around her ring finger, one large diamond inset in it, two smaller diamonds beside it.

She’d had her arms folded up until now.  Hiding it.  She hadn’t said anything.

“Who?” Avery asked.

“Does it really matter?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Raquel,” Fernanda said, insistent.  “This is going against everything we were saying at the start.”

Raquel answered Avery’s question, ignoring Fernanda.  “He needs to get back to where he was.  A wife seals an alliance. in a way other things can’t.  Ties the husband’s fortunes to my uncle’s, and vice-versa.”

Karla Whitt, maybe ten years older than Avery’s mom, with gray in her hair, joined by two twenty-ish men, came into the greenhouse with a draft of cold air.

“Braaten?” Karla asked.  “Take Ms. Cara to the main house, upstairs.  We’ll separate key people here, see if stories line up.”

“Yes, mistress,” Sadie said.  She snatched her coat off a hook, pulling it on quickly, then helped Cara with hers, taking her outside.

“Fernanda?” Karla asked.  “Main house, sitting room.”

Fernanda hesitated.

“Now.”

Raquel stopped short of the final page of the contract.

“Tell me this counts,” Raquel whispered.

“It helps but I’m worried it doesn’t count for as much as you need it to,” Avery told her.

“Raquel Musser.  I dearly hope you aren’t signing a contract without the approval of your uncle.”

“I advised her not to, auntie,” Fernanda said.  “I even called her stupid.”

“You don’t have the authority to tell me what to do,” Raquel said.  “None of you here do.”

Karla didn’t even flinch.  “I’m going to assert that authority, and I’ll apologize to your uncle later if I was wrong to do so.  Boys?  Take Ms. Musser to the main house, the study.  Our intruders to the barracks.”

“Raquel,” Avery said, her voice quiet.  “I don’t know.”

Raquel looked up at Avery, meeting her eyes.  She murmured, “Work on it then.”

Then she scribbled her name, pushing the paper toward Avery as one of the boys grabbed her by the upper arms, near the shoulders, pulling her back.

The other boy circled around toward Avery.

“What were you up to?” Karla Whitt asked.

“Talking business,” Avery said.

“What business?”

“Christmas money,” Fernanda said.

“I’m going to tell your older brother and father you were disobedient.  You should have left when told.”

“Okay,” Fernanda said.  She didn’t leave.

“We were talking opportunities,” Andrea said.  “Mrs. Kelly runs a company, the Whitts keep girls who model.  It could be an opportunity.  A burst of cash in tough times.”

“I cannot speak for lesser families such as yours, Mrs. Fulton, but our times are more than fine, financially,” Karla replied, cold.  “Modeling?”

“Five to six women, three to five men, catalogue and print runs going to a national chain, international distribution,” Avery’s mom said.  “It wouldn’t take much to pull strings and use the Whitt’s agency.”

“How much would that pay?” Karla asked.

“Mid to upper six figures.”

It seemed like Avery’s mom and Andrea had been talking in the background, sorting things out on a level.

Which was kind of cool, because Avery sort of saw herself as the person on the flanks, doing jobs to set things up and score the surprise hits.  And here her mom was, kind of being that.

Karla, while pretty-ish, looked like she could suck on a lemon and make the lemon want to twist up from how sour and bitter she was.  But like… she couldn’t say a lot about this?

And the impact of that was like, the guy pursuing Avery stopped in his tracks, checking with Karla Whitt, who didn’t urge him to go forward, as she considered.

“It’s a cool idea,” Fernanda said.

“Yet it’s an idea that should be presented to the likes of Musser himself, or Chase or Tomas Whitt.  No, I don’t trust this gathering.  And I don’t trust this contract-”

Still, it had bought them time.

She reached for it.  Avery put her hand on it and pulled it out of reach, before continuing to retreat from the guy who was circling around the counter.

“I signed it on impulse, alone, without the say so or agreement of the other ladies present,” Raquel said.  She touched her engagement ring.

“What a stupid girl.  Take her to the house.”

The boy manhandled Raquel toward the door.  He paused to throw the coat over her shoulders, not even putting her arms through the sleeves.

“Raquel,” Avery said.  She wanted to give Raquel something more, but she didn’t know what to give, except, “I have a Christmas present for you.  Something dumb, from Sheridan.  In case she makes it big, you could say you were the first big fan.”

“Hold onto it,” Raquel said, resisting being pushed through the door.  “I don’t think I’ll be in a position to enjoy it for a bit.”

Then she was pushed outside.  She stumbled a bit through snow, being roughly pushed along.  Avery watched her go, while retreating from the goon.

“You,” Karla said, turning to Avery.

“Heya.”

Avery, walking backwards, bumped into her mom, who held Snowdrop.

“We’d like a copy of that contract.”

“Reach out by official channels, I can oblige in seven to ten business days.”

“Meaning that what you intend to do takes effect before those seven days?”

“Not what I said.”

“But it’s clear enough.  I can See meaning, intent,” Karla said, and her eyes flashed as she said it.

“Probably a good cue for me to get out of dodge then,” Avery said.

She dropped a spell card, putting a foot out to brace it against the incoming guy’s lower stomach, before he could grab her.

Light flashed, bright, and Avery took advantage of the momentary blindness, black roping through the window and into the woods at the edge of the property, her mom and Snowdrop in tow.

“Oh my gosh,” her mom said.

“Eyes stay closed, move in the direction I’m tugging.”

The guy who’d been coming for her pressed against the window.  Avery saw him shimmer, blurring at the edges.

“Snow?  In my bag, dig for salt.”

Snowdrop went from Avery’s mom to Avery’s shoulder to Avery’s bag, worming her way in.

Avery black-roped her way through the woods.

The guy came through the woods like a ghost with a rocket strapped to him.  He wove through trees, blurring, extending out, and shed contempt so thick in the air Avery could taste it, and it poisoned her a little.  He wasn’t even getting close, but it made her feel smaller and weaker when she got the fallout from being thirty feet away.

She felt Snowdrop’s surge of victory.  Salt found.  Avery stopped dodging, leaving her mom behind while she put herself in the way of the guy who had turned himself into an astrally projected emotion bomb.

Snowdrop struggled to get to where she could pass the salt to Avery.

“Come on, Snow!”

Snowdrop stretched herself up, Avery got the salt, and she unloaded it, cap off, a full dose, right into the guy’s face as he charged her.

The emotion rolled past her, but the guy disintegrated.  The traces of him reeled back in toward his body.

Avery sagged, catching a tree to stop from falling entirely.

“Are we okay?” her mom asked, quiet.

“Let’s keep moving before they send anyone or anything else,” Avery said.

“Okay.”

Avery didn’t feel strong enough to move, and her mom didn’t budge.

“Maybe, uh, you stay home from now on?” Avery asked.  “I get you wanting to help and stuff, but-”

“Did I hurt things?”

“No.  You’re good.  You’re like, really good at those surprise deals and stuff.  But…”

But protecting you is hard.  This is all hard.

“…Trust me?” Avery asked, when no better phrasings came to mind.

“I won’t say no.  What am I trusting you to do?”

“Right now?” Avery asked.  She tested her legs to make sure they had the strength she needed.  “Taking you home.  Then I need to get to Kennet.  Because I’m pretty sure they’ll have some idea of what we’re pulling after interrogating or magically interrogating those guys, and once they catch on, Musser is going to want to come for Kennet ASAP, before we can get stuff sorted.”

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